On June 10, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved the Spain’s Foreign Action Strategy 2025-2028, a Strategy that replaces the one in force between 2021-2024, and which contains in its subtitle, A foreign policy with its own identity, three important challenges: ambition, autonomy, and effectiveness. Structured in three Parts (I: Spain’s strategic perspective; II: Spain in the world; and III: Foundations and tools of foreign action), it is preceded, by way of introduction, by a letter from the Minister, and followed, as a conclusion after these three parts I have just mentioned, by an Annex with more than 100 actions for the cited period. Its reading, however, raises questions of diverse scope and content, starting with the terminological confusion between “foreign action” and “foreign policy,” which it uses interchangeably, despite being different concepts.

Foreign Policy and Foreign Action

Both, in fact, are duly collected and perfectly defined in the Law 2/2014, of March 25, on State Foreign Action and Service, defining “foreign policy”, in its article 1.2.a), as “the decisions and actions of the Government in its relations with other actors on the international stage”; and “foreign action”, in article 1.2.b), as “the actions carried out abroad by constitutional bodies, public administrations, and the organisms, entities, and institutions dependent on them”. There are, therefore, important nuances in each that make them distinct, for while the former is the “what” and the “why” of international relations: strategies, principles, objectives; the latter is the “how”: activities, tools, steps, to develop the former, hence the advisability of maintaining the existing differential criterion between them.

Foreign Policy and State Policy

The second question relates to whether foreign policy should be a State policy or not. In principle, although the Constitution says nothing about it, the importance of the aims, values, and interests at stake should require a basic consensus among the parties that make up the parliamentary spectrum, in order to avoid not only the recurrent identification of the State’s foreign policy objectives with those of the Government, but also the repeated discontinuity of these aims, principles, and interests each time there is an alternation in power. Although in various passages of the Strategy it is affirmed that it is “an action of the State and of the country,” the truth is that, with the exception of its presentation in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress, parliamentary debate has been conspicuously absent, thereby accentuating its presidentialist character.

Commitments and cross-cutting principles

The last question is that posed by the contradictions between the commitments undertaken in the “three cross-cutting principles of action” and their fulfillment, upon observing, in that of “a reinforced Europe”, that the Government is strengthening its bilateral relationship with Beijing at a time when Brussels calls for unity of action. In that of “peace and security”, that the Government rejects the 3.5% contribution to the NATO budget, despite admitting the existence of a new context “that obliges Spain to contribute more to shared security”. And, in that of the “multilateral system”, that the Government defends a selective multilateralism, that of the United Nations in particular, but not that of other institutions, such as the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), whose awards in renewable energy matters it systematically fails to comply with.

Southeast Asia

Unlike what happened with the Strategy in force until now, which had barely dedicated a couple of pages to the Asia-Pacific area, and within it, a couple of lines to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the current one recognizes the need to “bet on a footprint (in this area) through a new strategy for the region,” after admitting that “it is the center of gravity of international relations.” This starting point, which in itself is already an important qualitative leap, has two sides: the “foreign action” of the European Union and the “foreign policy” of Spain. In the first case, the community goals and objectives, which are collected in the Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, a much broader term from a geographical, geopolitical, and geoeconomic point of view than the Asia-Pacific one used by our Strategy, will continue to be, conceptual nuances aside, “(our) main reference.”

A reference that would have been desirable to have its own profile, a continuation of those outlined, under the inspiration of Josep Piqué, in the Asia-Pacific Framework Plan 2000-2002, and later in the Strategic Vision for Spain in Asia 2018-2022, but this has not been the case. In the current Strategy, it seemed there was an intention to have them in the specific case of ASEAN, by committing to the challenge of deepening relations with it, but this deepening, unlike what Italy has done, is nothing more than part of the “foreign action of the European Union”. Italy, in fact, while remaining an “active partner” in this “foreign action,” has developed an assertive foreign policy, reflected, ultimately, in the ASEAN-Italy Development Partnership Committee, whose last meeting, focused on trade, investment, and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, was held in Kuala Lumpur in 2024.

Nevertheless, I alluded earlier to the qualitative leap in our foreign policy, and this can undoubtedly be seen in the fact that the Strategy explicitly highlights, within Southeast Asia, three main partners: Indonesia, which “will be a priority partner for Spain”; the Philippines, which “will be a cooperation partner and a base from which to develop technical cooperation (in this area)”; and Vietnam, which will be a “strategic partner” to “promote investment, a new bilateral action plan, and cooperation in science, technology and innovation, and in security and defense”. Although in the cases of Indonesia and the Philippines it would have been appropriate to specify a bit more, as in the case of Vietnam, the sectors subject to the respective cooperation, at least in the case of the Philippines the possibility is recognized for it to become a platform for Spanish penetration in the region, something that should have happened a long time ago.

Antonio Viñal
Lawyer
Avco Legal (with its own offices in Malaysia and the Philippines)
madrid@avco.legal