The Diplomat
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress approved yesterday the opinion of the Bill on Cooperation for Sustainable Development and Global Solidarity, which will be debated next week during the plenary session of the Lower House before passing to the Senate.
The opinion was approved with 21 votes in favor, 14 votes against and one abstention. The text and the amendments to the articles that remain alive will be debated in the Plenary of the Congress, before being sent to the Senate. During its processing in the Committee, the original text of the Government was modified with the incorporation of 75 amendments and 41 compromise amendments of the parliamentary groups Socialist, Popular, Unidas Podemos- En Comú Podem- Galicia en Comú, Republicano, Plural, Ciudadanos, Basque, Euskal Herria Bildu and Mixed. The rest of the 380 amendments presented by the parliamentary groups have been rejected.
The new regulation, which the Government wishes to bring forward this year, updates the current Law on International Cooperation for Development of July 7, 1998 and has, as its main objective, the modification of the Spanish Cooperation system, which contemplates the reform of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID), the establishment of the new Cooperant Statute, the regulatory development of financial cooperation through a regulatory framework of subsidies to provide the system with “greater efficiency and agility” and the creation of new instruments to improve evaluation, monitoring and accountability.
It also provides for the creation of the Spanish Fund for Sustainable Development (FEDES), a financial cooperation instrument that will assume the functions of the Fund for the Promotion of Development (FONPRODE). Likewise, the future regulation would give “legal status to Spain’s commitment to allocate 0.7% of GNI to Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 2030”, according to the Government. Among the geographical priorities of Spanish Cooperation, the draft law includes the Sahel for the first time and maintains the traditional areas, including Latin America and the Caribbean. Likewise, aid will be reinforced in the event of unforeseen crises.
The amendments and compromise amendments approved yesterday incorporate as objectives of the law the protection of women, adolescents and girls against sexual and gender-based violence, the rights of children and adolescents with a gender approach and the protection and promotion of the rights of LGBT people around the world. It also broadens the definition of bilateral cooperation, recognizes decentralized cooperation and establishes that public administrations will help NGOs operating in the field of cooperation for sustainable development.
Once this debate has been held in committee, the plenary will see the opinion and the amendments to the articles that were not incorporated at the stage of the report and committee and that the parliamentary groups decide to keep alive in order to submit them again for debate and vote in plenary session. If approved, the bill will be sent to the Senate, where it will follow its parliamentary procedure. The Upper House may approve the text in its terms, present amendments or propose a veto. In the latter two cases, the initiative will return to the Congress of Deputies for a final debate in plenary session.
During the debate, Noemí Villagrasa, member of the Socialist Group in the Commission and rapporteur of the draft submitted to vote, defended “a sustainable cooperation that pivots on feminism, human rights and climate action” and said that the new legislation responds to “a demand of the sector that has been working for more than a decade and to the changes that have occurred in recent times in development and global progress”. He also wanted to “acknowledge the work of all the parliamentary groups, except one”, in reference to Vox.
