Congress processes France’s Treaty of Friendship despite the appeal of the Senate

Eduardo González The Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Spain and France has passed the process of the Congress Bureau this Monday so that it can be debated in the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Lower House, despite the recent decision of the Senate plenary to approve a request for a summons to the Constitutional Court, presented by the People’s Group, to rule on the constitutionality of this text. On February 12, the plenary session of the Upper House approved the appeal of unconstitutionality against the Treaty, with the favorable votes of the PP (which has an absolute majority in the Upper House), UPN and Vox and the votes against of the PSOE and the rest of its usual parliamentary partners. The PP filed its appeal for constitutionality, on an urgent basis, on February 7, just one week after the Council of Ministers agreed to send the text to the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament), also on an urgent basis, and authorized the manifestation of Spain's consent to be bound by the aforementioned treaty. The PP argues that the Treaty (signed by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, in Barcelona on January 19, 2023, within the framework of the XXVII Bilateral Spanish-French Summit) provides, in its article two, that "a member of the Government of one of the Parties will be invited to the Council of Ministers of the other Party, at least once every three months and on a rotating basis." This clause, according to the appeal, "could violate the provisions of articles 13.2, 23.2 and 98.1 of the Spanish Constitution," in relation to the possible presence of the King "as the only attendee at the Council of Ministers who is not a member of the Government." Furthermore, according to the PP, article 95 of the Constitution states that “the celebration of an international treaty that contains provisions contrary to the Constitution will require prior constitutional review (in this case, the cited articles) and that “the Government or any of the Chambers may request the Constitutional Court to declare whether or not such a contradiction exists.” With all these arguments, the appeal asks the Constitutional Court to rule on these contradictions between the two texts “prior to their authorization by the Cortes Generales and with suspension of the processing of the Treaty.” Despite the appeal authorized by the Senate, the Congress Bureau (the governing body and collegial representation of the Lower House, with representation of all groups and in charge of internal government and the organization of parliamentary work) qualified the Treaty on Monday and, therefore, did not put any impediment to its debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee, before being submitted to the Plenary presumably in March. This question was raised precisely this Wednesday during the speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, in the Plenary Session of Congress, in which he accused the PP of “boycotting relations with our neighbours” and of boycotting “the first Treaty of Friendship with France in our history”. The so-called “Barcelona Treaty”, the first of its kind signed between the two countries, raises bilateral relations to the highest possible level, comparable to that which Spain already has with Portugal since the Trujillo Summit in October 2021 and to that which France has maintained with Germany and Italy since Aachen in 1963 and Rome in 2021, respectively. France has already ratified the text, but Spain has not yet been able to take that step, precisely because of doubts about the constitutionality of the clause that provides for the presence of representatives of one country in the councils of ministers of the other. José Manuel Albares himself assured at the end of January, during his official visit to France and after meeting with his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, that Spain will ratify the Treaty of Friendship "by the summer at the latest."

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