Collaboration Agreements

Cooperation agreements are agreements between the state administration and one or several Autonomous communities. Constitute, together with sectoral conferences, the instrument of cooperation more often used in the Autonomous Status for the freedom of contract feature of this figure, which attaches particular suitability and flexibility to set the content of the agreements that want to reach the State and the autonomous communities.

Cooperation agreements have a basic regulation in chapter VI, of the preliminary title, of law 40/2015, of 1 october, from The Legal Regime of the public Sector, which establishes the requirements to be met. This regulation is completed, to the General state administration with the order PRA/1267/2017 of 21 december 2017, which publishes the agreement of the council of ministers of 15 december 2017, which approved the instructions for the application of conventions.

Although formally the conventions are considered as instruments of cooperation bilateral in nature, in practice the government and the different Ministries have gradually been engaged in a multilateral approach to the conventions, proposing the same or similar text, all or a large part of the autonomous communities. As a result, an important part of the agreements entered into are “ widespread subscription conventions ”, as they have already been signed by all or most of the autonomous communities and respond to general policies to develop in collaboration with the autonomous communities and at all or most of the national territory.

At present, a stability and continuity in the conclusion of conventions, so that a significant number of them is multi-year period or extends annually, cooperating very already established.

A significant number of conventions contains financial commitments by the state, by which in practice they are used by the government to promote policies and concrete actions to be carried out by the autonomous communities. These state budgetary contributions complement the inputs of the autonomous communities and encourage the lines of action of the communities that the government is keen to encourage by its importance for the conventions in the field of social policies, infrastructure and environmental policies. In other cases the contributions of the parties are compensated for the activity carried out by administration in the interests and on behalf of another different administration.