Spain’s Constitutional Court bans Romeva’s chancellery from using ‘Foreign Affairs’ title

The Spanish court rules that it could be "mistaken" with Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Catalan government had already changed the office’s original title to the Ministry of Transparency and Foreign and Institutional Relations and Affairs

Mariona Ferrer I Fornells
2 min
La diplomàcia catalana ha de tirar d’imaginació per fer-se present al món.

MadridA year and a half after Mariano Rajoy’s government lodged a complaint against Raül Romeva’s newly-created Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Spanish Constitutional Court [TC in Catalan] has issued a ruling expressly prohibiting the Catalan chancellery from using that name. The court had already warned about it when it first ruled against Romeva’s office in February last year. The TC believes that "copying" the Spanish ministry’s name for its chancellery could lead to "confusion" and interfere with the administration and execution of Spain’s foreign policy.

In order to avoid problems, last March the Catalan government rushed to change the chancellery’s name to “Ministry of Transparency and Foreign and Institutional Relations and Affairs”. According to TC sources, the new ban only affects the original name and not the current one. In this regard, and pending the final ruling, the high court’s decision will have no effect on the chancellery headed by Raül Romeva.

The TC lifted part of its suspension a little under a year ago, endorsing some of the ministry’s functions, while maintaining the prohibition over the use of the title "Foreign Affairs". The high court ruled that the Catalan government had acted lawfully and that it could maintain relations with foreign governments.

Nevertheless, one thing is the chancellery itself and another is the law under which it operates, that which concerns foreign affairs. In December 2016, the TC prohibited the Catalan government from having diplomatic relations with other countries. And now it has issued a reminder that the Spanish state has exclusive powers on all matters relating to foreign affairs. Furthermore, in accordance with the Statute, the Catalan government is only authorised to conduct activities aimed at projecting itself to the outside world, in line with its powers and the need to promote its own interests, as long as it respects the Spanish Constitution. That is, it is allowed to "conduct foreign affairs with the endorsement of the Spanish government", as is the case with other Spanish regions.

As with every decision related to the independence process, the high court judges were unanimous in their ruling. They partially recognised the conflict of responsibility against the Catalan government’s decisions regarding the creation of the ministry. However, as usual the "liberal" judge, Juan Antonio Xiol, agreed with the court’s ruling, but not with the legal argument in its entirety.

According to TC sources, the Catalan government has already been informed of the decision, even if the details are not known yet. Sources within the Chancellery of Foreign Affairs, however, stated that they have not heard anything and that they will respond once they have been informed of the decision in full. The PSC [the Catalan branch of Spain’s PSOE socialist party] lamented the fact that the Spanish government has resorted to the courts instead of negotiating a change in the chancellery’s name to “Foreign Office”, a change that, from its point of view, "would have embodied the spirit of the Catalan Statute more closely".

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