Spanish Senate Blocks France Treaty

Madrid — Spain’s Senate on 29 September voted 142 to 106, with one abstention, to reject ratification of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with France — the Barcelona treaty signed by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and French President Emmanuel Macron in January 2023 — on the opening day of Macron’s state visit to Madrid.

The lower house, Congress, had already approved the text. France completed its own ratification in 2025. In Spain the Senate vote was the final ordinary step before entry into force. The opposition People’s Party (Partido Popular, or PP), which holds an absolute majority in the upper house, supplied the blocking votes. Anadolu Agency, citing Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, and El País both reported the tally and the timing against Macron’s arrival.

What the treaty does — and why the PP said no

The agreement is meant to deepen bilateral cooperation and set a framework for regular consultations between the two governments. The political fight has focused on Article 2(4), a clause that contemplates a minister from one country attending meetings of the other’s Council of Ministers — the formal cabinet. The PP argued that foreign ministers should not sit in Spain’s cabinet meetings.

Paris and Madrid later agreed on a written interpretation: foreign ministers would join ad hoc meetings held alongside cabinet sessions, not Spain’s formal Council of Ministers. Congress approved the treaty in June after an earlier May 2025 defeat. Spain’s Constitutional Court on 23 September ruled that the arrangement, as interpreted, does not violate the Constitution. The legal objection was gone; the political objection was not.

PP senator Pilar Rojo told the chamber that rejecting the treaty did not mean questioning France as a neighbour and ally, but that friendship should not require rubber-stamping every instrument the government sends to Parliament. She also said a treaty clause should not need a side letter to explain what it means. Socialist senators called the veto irresponsible after the Constitutional Court had cleared the text. Vox also voted no; Basque and Catalan nationalist groups were split in the debate, with some supporting cross-border cooperation language and others saying transport links in the treaty were too weak.

What happens next

El País reported that the clash between the chambers now goes to a mixed Congress–Senate commission under parliamentary rules. If that process fails to produce an agreed text, Congress can decide by absolute majority under Article 158 of the Congress regulations — a path that could still revive the treaty, but only after more political negotiation. Macron, received with military honors by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, alluded to the fight in a palace toast, saying, according to El País, “We will get there.”

The episode leaves Spain–France diplomacy intact in practice — the two governments still meet, trade, and police the border — but it shows how a “friendship” treaty became a domestic institutional fight. A pact cleared by Congress and by the Constitutional Court still cannot take effect until the Senate majority changes its mind or the mixed-commission / Congress override path succeeds.