<h6><b>Eduardo González</b></h6> <h4><strong>Past Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved the submission to Parliament of the Agreement between Spain and the United Kingdom on the Free Exercise of Paid Activities by Dependent Family Members of Diplomatic Missions and Consular Offices, signed in London on September 16, 2024, while also authorizing Spain's expression of consent to be bound by said agreement.</strong></h4> The agreement, which seeks to improve the working lives of dependent family members of diplomatic, consular, administrative, and technical staff of Diplomatic Missions, Consular Offices, and Permanent Representations, has been provisionally applied since October 15 and, according to the Government, "will strengthen the development and dynamism of relations between the two states, by facilitating professionals from different fields from one country to carry out their work in the territory of the other." The beneficiaries of this agreement are dependent family members who are part of the household of a member of a diplomatic mission or consular office of the sending State and who wish to engage in paid employment not subject to applicable international law, such as the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, or any other equivalent bilateral agreement. Under the agreement, published in late October by the Official State Gazette (BOE), the dependent family members of these individuals are authorized to engage in paid activities in the receiving State, under the same conditions as nationals of that State, once the corresponding authorization has been obtained in accordance with the provisions of this agreement. Spain has ratified agreements of this nature with more than thirty States. For the purposes of this agreement, dependent family members are understood to be spouses, common-law partners, or partners with whom the spouses are in a union analogous to conjugal (provided that it is recognized as such by the authorities of both countries), unmarried children under the age of 18, children between the ages of 18 and 25 who are enrolled full-time in an educational institution approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the host country, and children, regardless of age, who are cared for by their parents and have a physical or mental disability. According to the Government, this type of agreement responds to the social transformation that Spain has undergone in recent decades, which has also been reflected in the status of partners and dependent family members of Spanish foreign service officials, who have evolved to a different profile than the traditional one. The vast majority of these individuals have an academic background, a university or college degree, technical training, and work experience that they do not wish to interrupt, but rather, rather, want to develop while accompanying their partner on an official mission abroad.
