The Diplomat
The Parliamentary Group of Ciudadanos in the Congress of Deputies demands the Government to put an end to the appointment of ‘political’ ambassadors, a practice that has been maintained, to a greater or lesser extent, by the last Governments, including the current one.
Through a question from the spokesperson in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Marta Martín Llaguno, and a non-legislative proposal (PNL), Ciudadanos demands that ambassadors and permanent representatives to multilateral organizations be appointed based on their merits and not on “cronyism”.
Ciudadanos stresses that the Law of Action and the State Foreign Service approved in 2014 establishes, in paragraph 2 of its Article 57 that the appointment of State Foreign Service personnel will be made “based on criteria of professional competence and experience in accordance with its specific regulations and with the principles of equality, merit and capacity.” Therefore, it understands that there is a legal framework by which the appointments of ambassadors and permanent representatives of Spain abroad “cannot be made arbitrarily and by political criteria, but based on the professional competence and experience of the personnel of the foreign service of the State”.
The orange formation recalls in the explanatory memorandum of its parliamentary initiatives that the practice of appointing ambassadors who do not belong to the Diplomatic Career has occurred both in the PSOE and PP governments, although more profusely in the former. And citing the Civio Platform, it recalls that up to 2017 and, since the first legislature of Felipe González, which began in 1982, more than 550 ambassadors have been appointed, of which 26 were outside the Diplomatic Career and “mostly close to the party that headed the Government of Spain at that time”.
According to Civio, the governments of Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero appointed 21 ‘political’ ambassadors and those of José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy appointed five.
In addition -underlines Ciudadanos-, since its arrival at La Moncloa, the Government of Pedro Sánchez has already appointed five ambassadors or permanent representatives to international organizations to as many people outside the Diplomatic Career, among them the former Minister of Health Carmen Montón to the Organization of American States (OAS). The most recent appointment was that of Ángel Martín Peccis as ambassador to Cuba.
In line with the protests expressed by the Association of Spanish Diplomats (ADE) against this type of appointments, Ciudadanos states that such behavior “frustrates the professional advancement of our diplomats who have dedicated their lives to foreign service and to defending the image of Spain abroad”. And it adds that it is inadmissible that this leads the members of the career to assume that they can only reach the top of it “through ‘cronyism’ with a political party, especially when the work of an ambassador must have loyalty to the interests of the Spanish above any other loyalty of a political nature”.
Therefore, the formation led by Inés Arrimadas asks the Executive what is the number of ‘political’ ambassadors appointed since June 2017 and what criteria it will follow for the appointment of our top representatives abroad.
In the PNL, it proposes that the Congress of Deputies urge the Government to comply with the Law of Action and Foreign Service and appoint ambassadors “with criteria of professional competence and experience and with the principles of equality, merit and capacity”.
