Resumen de Parliamentary control of “other international agreements” in the new spanish treaties and other international agreements act (toiaa)

Antonio Fernández Tomás

• The new Spanish Act on Treaties and Other International Agreements (TOIAA) regulates two figures of the Spanish praxis that do not exist in the 1969 Vienna Convention and is not usually regulated in national domestic law either. These other international agreements (OIA) follow this classification: Administrative International Agreements (Executive International Agreements) and Non-normative International Agreements (Memoranda of Understanding). Only if administrative agreements may be qualified as “international” (AIA) fall within the scope of the TOIAA and must be published in the Spanish Official Gazette (BOE). The regulation of Non-Normative International Agreements (NNIA) tries to establish a minimum preventive control of the Government over the international activities of other entities, especially of Regions, which try to use them as a foreign projection of their powers. But Parliamentary control of both figures is deficient. This is notorious in the case of AIA, because the Government has recently used this figure to circumvent Parliamentary control of agreements regulating the European bailout of Spanish banks. That is hardly compatible with the provisions of our Constitution.