The supreme governing body of the entity, chaired by Meritxell Serret, also approved "Catalonia International" as a new brand name and an increase in the number of scholarships

This morning, the Plenary Session of DIPLOCAT held a remotely-attended meeting chaired by the Catalan Minister for External Action and the European Union, Meritxell Serret, acting as the representative of the President of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, who is also the President of DIPLOCAT and the Chair of its Plenary Sessions. DIPLOCAT is a public-private consortium made up of 38 institutions and entities.

Serret welcomed those present and thanked the DIPLOCAT team and the members for their work in "joining forces and positioning Catalonia as an international actor". The minister said that DIPLOCAT is a good example of consensus, a long-standing tradition in Catalan society, in this case as a "shared commitment towards worldwide exposure". Finally, Serret repeated the Government's intention to support and promote this internationalisation "with the ultimate goal of being useful to both society and our counterparts".

The Plenary Session initially approved the new Articles of Association of the consortium in order to face the final phase of the process. It also formally approved "Catalonia International" as the entity's new brand name once the Articles of Association are approved. Furthermore, it approved the Work Plan 2024 with the corresponding financial provision. The overall budget of the consortium budget was maintained at a very similar figure to that of recent years (EUR 2.1 million).

The secretary general of DIPLOCAT, Laura Foraster i Lloret, thanked the Plenary Session for its confidence in the entity's entire team and for its support for the activities carried out to ensure DIPLOCAT remains, "not just a national asset but an asset for all members of the consortium, based on diversity and plurality".

Foraster also presented a broad outline of the activities foreseen for the Work Plan 2024. Among the new areas of work, she highlighted a campaign for the international promotion of Catalonia on social media; visits for the exchange of good practices abroad with representatives of the member entities of the consortium and of civil society, such as a visit to Denmark to learn how new technologies are applied in the agricultural sector; the visit by a group of international journalists as part of the preparations for the European Nomadic Biennial Manifesta to be held in Barcelona during the last quarter of the year; and a debate on the crisis currently engulfing democracies and the treatment of fake news, coinciding with the elections in the European Parliament and in the United States. She also announced that the DIPLOCAT Scholarship programme, which is in its 40th year, is to increase the number of scholarships from the eight currently available to twelve.

With regard to the events being held, Foraster mentioned, among others, the visit to Geneva to learn about the model of the United Nations and international organisations to supplement the course "Action in international and European organizations"; monitoring of Catalonia's appearance in international media and the social networks; the #BooksAndRoses campaign to internationalise the celebration of the Day of Books and Roses on 23 April; the various digital publications forming part of the DIPLOCAT Agora collection; and the programme of international visitors that will invite foreign journalists on 23 April and in October to attend the human tower competition in Tarragona.