<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, chaired this Thursday the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for the Internationalization of Public Administrations (FIAP), a body of the Ministry dedicated to international cooperation in administration and public policy. In 2024, FIAP carried out a total of 113 projects in areas such as peacebuilding, the green economy, justice and the rule of law, digitalization, and social policies.</strong></h4> During the meeting, held at the Ministry's headquarters, the Foundation's strategic planning for the next four years, 2025-2028, was addressed, and the FIAP's new roadmap was approved. This roadmap focuses on greater integration into the Spanish Cooperation system and our country's foreign action, as well as the internationalization of Spanish public administrations, particularly at the regional and local levels. Likewise, the Board of Trustees approved the 2024 activity report and the annual accounts, which received a favorable audit without qualifications, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The FIAP is a structural element of our new 2025-2028 Foreign Action Strategy," Albares stated. "Public technical cooperation not only contributes to the sustainable development of the host society, but also enables mutual learning to innovate in the provision of services to Spanish society itself," he added. <h5><strong>2024 in figures</strong></h5> Throughout 2024, the FIAP worked with a total of 1,070 public institutions (142 in Spain and 928 from the rest of the world) and 80 international organizations. Peacebuilding, the green economy and just transition, justice and the rule of law, digitalization, and social policies were the main areas of cooperation in which the Foundation mobilized public talent from the General State Administration, autonomous communities, local authorities, and the judiciary, among others. In addition, 698 Spanish civil servants participated in 2024 in international cooperation projects managed by the Foundation, designated by their home governments. 61 did so by working permanently on projects (47 as seconded staff in 20 countries), and 637 did so on short-term missions. In total, FIAP implemented a total of 113 projects during 2024, the vast majority of which were delegated European cooperation projects and through "twinning" projects funded by the European Union. The former FIIAPP, renamed FIAP last March, has been chaired since January 2024 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself. Until then, the presidency was held by the First Vice President of the Government. This change in the presidency coincided with the addition of three more ministers (Interior, Equality, and the Presidency) to the board of trustees, considered to be those with the greatest international reach, and, most significantly, the entire leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the four Secretaries of State and the director of the AECID). "The objective of all these changes is to incorporate foreign action into the Foundation's usual international cooperation work in administration and public policy, splitting its mandate into 'development cooperation and foreign action,'" according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Foundation obtained formal recognition of its specific function in the 2023 Law on Cooperation for Sustainable Development and Global Solidarity, after which the process of renewing its statute began.
