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The Government of Catalonia has inaugurated the first institutional delegation in Asia. He did it this last week in South Korea, in Seoul. This office is part of the network of Government delegations abroad, which currently has 12 headquarters and covers 72 countries on all continents, including all member states of the European Union and almost all countries on the continent. American. During the year 2024, the Government hopes to open the headquarters of the Delegation in Japan, Tokyo, and later in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent with the aim of covering the entire region.
The President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the European Union, Meritxell Serret i Aleu, traveled to Seoul last week to inaugurate the Delegation, and to maintain an agenda of meetings that has made it possible to strengthen ties with institutional, economic and cultural actors in the country, with whom the Government, now that it has an office in the country, will intensify cooperation even more.
“We are not inaugurating another delegation, but rather we are taking a great leap forward in the foreign relations and international policy of Catalonia,” stressed President Aragonés at the inauguration ceremony. “We are laying the first stone of the Government’s institutional deployment on the Asian continent,” he added. This office, in the words of the president, “will allow us to have a more solid and fluid relationship with Korean institutions, companies and societies, and open ourselves to the continent as a whole.”
The Republic of Korea is a strategic country for Catalan foreign action. Cooperation began in the eighties with South Korean business investments in Catalonia. Since then, institutional, commercial and cultural ties have been increasing.
Throughout 2023, Catalonia has recovered its international projection and the ability to be a proactive partner on a global scale, expanding its foreign action. This is demonstrated by the high degree of dialogue at an international level, especially in geographical spaces that are priorities for the Government: the European Union and the Mediterranean.
This maximum dialogue has translated, for example, into 10 meetings or meetings between President Aragonés and other Government Councilors with seven European Commissioners, including the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Vice President Margaritis Schinas. Furthermore, this year the Government has already held meetings with six ministers from European Union states. Another example of the relaunching of Catalonia’s international projection is the meeting that President Aragonés held with the Pope of Rome, 40 years after a similar meeting did not take place.
At the inauguration of the Government Delegation in South Korea, Minister Meritxell Serret i Aleu recalled: “we come from a very tough 155 that tried to completely dismantle the Government’s foreign action.” “Six years later we can affirm that not only have we not allowed it, but that we are stronger than ever,” she concluded.
This is because the Government has a greater institutional presence around the world than ever. In fact, there is no other government other than a state that has a representation network similar to that of Catalonia.
Throughout 2023, the network of delegations abroad has made a qualitative leap. The Government made it a priority to consolidate the delegations abroad and has fulfilled it: it has inaugurated the delegations in the Southern Cone (based in Buenos Aires) and in South Korea; has appointed four new delegates (in Brazil, Andorra, Japan and the Andean States); It has provided a larger budget and staff to the strategic delegations, and has created new figures, such as special envoys. The Catalan executive is now working on expanding the network of delegations abroad, which plans to advance the institutional presence in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Africa.
To further professionalize all of this foreign action of the Generalitat, the executive has created this year the foreign action and European Union body, which should allow the different departments to have personnel specialized in international relations. All of them will be in charge of internationalizing the Government’s public policies, projecting Catalonia even more in the world and having more impact on the country and the lives of citizens.
The scope and ambition of Catalonia’s institutional presence abroad is reflected in the communication campaign ‘Som al món’, launched by the Government last week, which reviews the reasons why the executive has delegations throughout the world. “To work, to build, to share ideas, to provide solutions to global problems, to say ours, to dialogue with all cultures,” the spot points out.
The reason for being of the Government’s delegations abroad, like all the foreign action of the Generalitat, is to open the way for Catalan society and generate opportunities for the country in the world, in addition to contributing to responding to the great global challenges
