<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the State Secretariat for International Cooperation, has launched a call for grants, corresponding to 2025, to foundations and associations dependent on political parties for the implementation of activities planned within the framework of the Cooperation Master Plan.</strong></h4> The resolution, signed on September 12 in Madrid by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs, Diego Martínez Belío, and published five days later in the Official State Gazette (BOE), establishes that the beneficiaries of these grants will be foundations and associations dependent on political parties with parliamentary representation at the national level. The objective of these grants, according to the Official State Gazette (BOE), is "to contribute, through international cooperation for sustainable development, to the global promotion of democracy and the contribution of party systems and other political actors to the acceleration of the implementation" of several goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in a manner aligned and consistent with the provisions of the Law on Cooperation for Sustainable Development and Global Solidarity and the Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2024-2027. Specifically, the subsidized activities must comply with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 (“ensure women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political and public life”), SDG 10 (“empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all people, regardless of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic or other status” and “ensure equal opportunities and reduce inequalities in outcomes”), and SDG 16 (“promote the rule of law at the national and international levels” and “ensure equal access to justice”, among other goals). The subsidized activities must be carried out in countries receiving official development assistance or other countries defined as priority countries in the Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation in force at any given time, or in Spain when the ultimate beneficiaries of the activity come from countries defined as priority countries by the Master Plan and are part of a program or project to promote the development of the country. of the development of their countries of origin. The total amount allocated for these grants amounts to €800,000, and the amount received by each applicant cannot exceed €500,000. Therefore, the same amount for each foundation will remain the same for 2022. This amount is still lower than the €900,000 awarded between 2012 and 2019 (except in 2016, when the then caretaker government distributed around €785,000 among party foundations and associations). In 2020, in the midst of the first year of the pandemic, no calls for these grants were issued. Applications will be scored based on both the technical assessment of the project and the total number of seats in the Congress of Deputies and the Senate held by the political party to which the foundation belongs at the time of publication of this call. The percentage resulting from multiplying both factors will determine the amounts to be distributed. the beneficiary entities.
