Cooperation agreements are agreements between the State Administration and one or more Local Entities. They constitute the most frequently used instrument of cooperation for the coordination of actions that corresponds to the State and the Entities that constitute the Local Administration. The suitability of this figure is reinforced by the contractual freedom characteristic of this figure and which gives it a special flexibility to determine the content of the agreements that the different administrations 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 Local Entities. As a result, a very significant part of the signed agreements are considered “generalized subscription agreements”, since they have been signed with a significant number of Local Entities and respond to general policies to be developed in collaboration with the Local Administration in all or most of the territory.

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 Local Entities, including often through nominative subsidies. These state budgetary contributions complement the contributions of the other Administrations and encourage the lines of action of the other administrative levels that the Government is interested in promoting.

In the field of local cooperation, the cooperation agreements signed with the aim of articulating state and local competences in the same territorial space, especially in the field of road infrastructures, stand out. Likewise, the signatories in the cadastral area stand out, as well as those that aim to promote entrepreneurship and economic and social innovation in local entities.