Sánchez apologized to Macron after the Spanish right wing voted down the French-Spanish friendship treaty

On September 30, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly apologized to French President Emmanuel Macron after the Spanish Senate rejected the ratification of the friendship and cooperation treaty between the two countries the previous evening. At a joint press conference held at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Sánchez promised that parliament would approve the agreement before the end of the current legislative term, after it was blocked by the votes of the People's Party and the far-right Vox.

In the upper house, 142 senators voted against the treaty, 106 voted in favor, and one senator abstained. The rejection created a particularly awkward diplomatic situation, as Macron was on a state visit to Spain at the time, and the vote took place just as the gala dinner held in his honor was beginning at the Royal Palace. Among the supporters, alongside Sánchez's Socialist party, were representatives of Basque and Catalan political forces, while the abstaining vote came from the Navarrese People's Union.

The agreement was signed by Sánchez and Macron back in January 2023 in Barcelona, and has since been approved by both houses of the French parliament as well as the Spanish Chamber of Deputies. The People's Party, which holds an absolute majority in the Senate, objected primarily to the provision that would allow, at least every three months, a member of one country's government to be invited to a cabinet meeting of the other country. The party cited constitutional concerns, and the matter was subsequently referred to the Constitutional Court.

In the meantime, the two governments agreed on an interpretation under which the participation of foreign ministers would take place in a format linked to, but separate from, the formal cabinet meetings. On September 23, Spain's Constitutional Court unanimously ruled that the disputed provision was not unconstitutional, but the People's Party maintained its rejection nonetheless. Pilar Rojo, a senator for the People's Party, argued that they still considered the scope of the commitments undertaken to be problematic, while stressing that their position was not directed against France as a friendly and allied nation.

At the press conference, Sánchez accused the opposition of turning an agreement between two countries into a matter of party politics, and noted that even the conservative members of the Constitutional Court found no constitutional obstacle. He said the treaty was about the relationship between France and Spain, not about the two leaders currently in office. Macron expressed regret over the outcome of the vote, but reacted with restraint, calling it a setback rather than a drama, and said he remained confident the agreement would be approved.

Ugar