On 8 June, La Coordinadora de Organizaciones para el Desarrollo (Spanish Development NGO Platform, La Coordinadora) presented its proposals for the Spanish Presidency of the Council in an event attended by Pilar Cancela, Secretary of State for International Cooperation, María Lledó, Secretary General for the European Union, and Antón Leis, Director of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation.
La Coordinadora, which represents more than 600 NGOs, hopes that Spain will ensure that all measures adopted within the EU are governed by three main principles: to contribute to social justice and the reduction of inequalities; to protect the respect and exercise of human rights by guaranteeing the necessary spaces and mechanisms for citizen participation; and to promote a feminist, decolonial and intersectional approach.
Pilar Cancela, Secretary of State for International Cooperation, stressed in her opening speech that the 2030 Agenda “is the roadmap of this Presidency”. And she added: “we are committed to high-level political dialogue and to strengthening and defending multilateralism”.
The Secretary General for the EU, María Lledó, praised the commitment and solidarity of Spanish society, “which is also deeply pro-European”. And she assured that social Europe “will not be an isolated pillar, but a cross-cutting one in all the Presidency’s actions”.
For his part, Antón Leis, Director of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) remarked, during the closing ceremony, on the evident delay in achieving the 2030 Agenda. “Only 12% of the targets are on track. There are alarming figures such as the fact that gender equality is 286 years away”. AECID’s proposals for this Presidency are aimed at transforming the logic of current cooperation towards a focus on alliances: “cooperation funds are an investment to solve everyone’s problems“, in reference to the global and interconnected crises that determine the current context.
“Spain must take advantage of this unique opportunity to vindicate the importance of the founding values of the EU and to champion the reconversion of our societies through a triple just transition – ecological, socio-economic and digital – from a feminist approach and policy coherence for sustainable development, inside and outside the EU”, said Irene Bello, President of La Coordinadora.