The Government resubmits the Treaty of Friendship with France to Parliament after “interpreting” its most controversial point

Eduardo González The Council of Ministers approved on Tuesday, April 21, the submission to the Spanish Parliament (Cortes Generales) of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Kingdom of Spain and the French Republic after both parties accepted the “interpretation” of the controversial article that allowed members of the government of one party to participate in the Council of Ministers of the other. This article was rejected by the People's Party (PP) and led to the treaty's defeat in the Congress of Deputies almost a year ago. On Tuesday, the Government requested that the text be processed under the urgent procedure and authorized Spain's expression of consent to be bound by the aforementioned Treaty. The agreement was authorized by the Council of Ministers on January 17, 2023, and its signing took place in Barcelona on January 19, 2023, during the Franco-Spanish Bilateral Summit. The foreign ministers of both countries agreed, through letters exchanged on April 6 and 10, on “the interpretation of Article 2.4 of the Treaty.” Given this interpretative agreement, “it is necessary to request once again that the Council of Ministers agree to its submission to Parliament.” The exact nature of this “interpretation” of the aforementioned article has not been specified. On May 15, 2025, the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies rejected the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Spain and France due to the votes against it by the People's Party, which insisted on the need for the Constitutional Court to rule on the text before any approval, and the abstentions of Junts and Podemos. The Treaty can only be ratified with the support of both Houses of Parliament, but regardless of what happens in the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament), the future of this text depends on the decision of the Constitutional Court. Finally, last December, the Constitutional Court opted not to rule on the appeal previously filed by the Senate at the initiative of the People's Party (PP), considering that the parliamentary "no" vote prevented the validation of the text. The Treaty and the controversy The "Treaty of Barcelona," signed on January 19, 2023, in the Catalan capital by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, within the framework of the 27th Spanish-French Bilateral Summit, is the first of its kind between the two countries and elevates bilateral relations to the highest possible level, comparable to that already enjoyed by Spain and Portugal since the Trujillo Summit of October 2021. France has already ratified the text, but Spain has not yet been able to take that step, precisely because of doubts about its constitutionality. At the end of January 2025, the Council of Ministers agreed to submit the text to the Spanish Parliament (Cortes Generales) for the first time on an urgent basis and also authorized Spain's expression of consent to be bound by the treaty. However, just one week later, the People's Party (PP) filed a constitutional challenge against the Treaty, arguing that one of its articles, which stipulates that "a member of the Government of one of the Parties shall be invited to the Council of Ministers of the other Party, at least once every three months and on a rotating basis," is incompatible with the Constitution. On February 12 of the same year, the Senate plenary session approved the challenge to the Constitution of the Treaty, with votes in favor from the PP (which holds an absolute majority in the Upper House), the Navarrese People's Union (UPN), and Vox, and votes against from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and its other usual parliamentary partners. A month later, the Constitutional Court accepted the request made by the Lower House. The Socialist Group had asserted, contrary to the arguments of the PP, that the Constitution does not expressly prohibit the presence of non-Government members in the Council of Ministers and recalled that the presence of foreign representatives in government meetings of other European countries is not uncommon, and even that Pedro Sánchez himself has attended meetings of the German Government.

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