Cooperation agreements are agreements between the State Administration and one or more Autonomous Communities. They constitute, together with the Sectoral Conferences, the instrument of cooperation most frequently used in the Autonomous State for the contractual freedom characteristic of this figure, which gives it a special suitability and flexibility to determine the content of the agreements that the State and the Autonomous Communities want to reach.

The cooperation agreements have a basic regulation in chapter VI, of the Preliminary title, of Law 40/2015, of October 1, on the Legal Regime of the Public Sector, which establishes the requirements that must be met. This regulation is completed, for the General Administration of the State with Order PRA/1267/2017, of December 21, 2017, by which the Agreement of the Council of Ministers of December 15, 2017, approving the instructions for the processing of agreements, is published.

Although formally the conventions are considered as instruments of cooperation of a bilateral nature, in practice the Government and the different ministries have gradually promoted a multilateral treatment of the policy of conventions, proposing the same, or similar text, to all or a large part of the Autonomous Communities. As a result, a very significant part of the signed agreements are considered “generalized subscription agreements”, since they have been signed with all or the vast majority of the Autonomous Communities and respond to general policies to be developed in collaboration with the Autonomous Communities and in all or most of the national territory.

Currently, there is a stability and continuity in the formalization of agreements, so that a significant number of them are valid multi-year or extended annually, maintaining an already established collaboration.

A significant number of agreements contain financial commitments by the State, so in practice they are used by the Government to promote specific policies and actions to be carried out by the Autonomous Communities. These state budgetary contributions complement the contributions of the Autonomous Communities and encourage the lines of action of the Communities that the Government is interested in promoting. The conventions in the field of social policies, infrastructure and environmental policies are particularly important. In other cases, the contributions of the parties represent compensation for the activity carried out by one administration for the benefit and on behalf of a different administration.