{"id":2504,"date":"2025-07-29T20:52:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/?p=2504"},"modified":"2025-07-29T20:52:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:52:52","slug":"spains-foreign-action-strategy-2025-2028-southeast-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/en\/2025\/07\/29\/spains-foreign-action-strategy-2025-2028-southeast-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"SPAIN’S FOREIGN ACTION STRATEGY 2025-2028. SOUTHEAST ASIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 10, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved the Spain’s Foreign Action Strategy 2025-2028<\/em><\/strong>, a Strategy that replaces the one in force between 2021-2024, and which contains in its subtitle, A foreign policy with its own identity<\/em>, 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<\/em>), 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 \u00abforeign action\u00bb and \u00abforeign policy,\u00bb which it uses interchangeably, despite being different concepts.<\/p>\n

Foreign Policy and Foreign Action<\/h2>\n

Both, in fact, are duly collected and perfectly defined in the Law 2\/2014, of March 25, on State Foreign Action and Service<\/em>, defining \u00abforeign policy\u00bb<\/strong>, in its article 1.2.a), as \u00abthe decisions and actions of the Government in its relations with other actors on the international stage\u00bb; and \u00abforeign action\u00bb<\/strong>, in article 1.2.b), as \u00abthe actions carried out abroad by constitutional bodies, public administrations, and the organisms, entities, and institutions dependent on them\u00bb. There are, therefore, important nuances in each that make them distinct, for while the former is the \u00abwhat\u00bb<\/strong> and the \u00abwhy\u00bb<\/strong> of international relations: strategies, principles, objectives; the latter is the \u00abhow\u00bb<\/strong>: activities, tools, steps, to develop the former, hence the advisability of maintaining the existing differential criterion between them.<\/p>\n

Foreign Policy and State Policy<\/h2>\n

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<\/em> it is affirmed that it is \u00aban action of the State and of the country,\u00bb 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.<\/p>\n

Commitments and cross-cutting principles<\/h2>\n

The last question is that posed by the contradictions between the commitments undertaken in the \u00abthree cross-cutting principles of action\u00bb and their fulfillment, upon observing, in that of \u00aba reinforced Europe\u00bb<\/em>, that the Government is strengthening its bilateral relationship with Beijing at a time when Brussels calls for unity of action. In that of \u00abpeace and security\u00bb<\/em>, that the Government rejects the 3.5% contribution to the NATO budget, despite admitting the existence of a new context \u00abthat obliges Spain to contribute more to shared security\u00bb. And, in that of the \u00abmultilateral system\u00bb<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

Southeast Asia<\/h2>\n

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)<\/em>, the current one recognizes the need to \u00abbet on a footprint (in this area) through a new strategy for the region,\u00bb after admitting that \u00abit is the center of gravity of international relations.\u00bb This starting point, which in itself is already an important qualitative leap, has two sides: the \u00abforeign action\u00bb of the European Union and the \u00abforeign policy\u00bb of Spain. In the first case, the community goals and objectives, which are collected in the Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific<\/em>, 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, \u00ab(our) main reference.\u00bb<\/p>\n

A reference that would have been desirable to have its own profile, a continuation of those outlined, under the inspiration of Josep Piqu\u00e9, in the Asia-Pacific Framework Plan 2000-2002<\/em>, and later in the Strategic Vision for Spain in Asia 2018-2022<\/em>, 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 \u00abforeign action of the European Union\u00bb. Italy, in fact, while remaining an \u00abactive partner\u00bb in this \u00abforeign action,\u00bb has developed an assertive foreign policy, reflected, ultimately, in the ASEAN-Italy Development Partnership Committee<\/em>, whose last meeting, focused on trade, investment, and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, was held in Kuala Lumpur in 2024.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>, which \u00abwill be a priority partner for Spain\u00bb; the Philippines<\/strong>, which \u00abwill be a cooperation partner and a base from which to develop technical cooperation (in this area)\u00bb; and Vietnam<\/strong>, which will be a \u00abstrategic partner\u00bb to \u00abpromote investment, a new bilateral action plan, and cooperation in science, technology and innovation, and in security and defense\u00bb. 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.<\/p>\n

Antonio Vi\u00f1al<\/strong>
\nLawyer
\nAvco Legal (with its own offices in Malaysia and the Philippines)
\nmadrid@avco.legal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions\/2505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spain-asean-dispatch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}