The General Council of the Judiciary acts in three areas within the field of international relations:

1. Cooperation for the development.
2. Judicial Aid.
3. Institutional Relations.

Cooperation for the development. The Council supports judicial powers in other countries, generally with the economic support of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for the Development and of the European Comission. The international action of the Council is coherent with the Spanish and the European external policies, giving support to the Executive Power in its policy of cooperation for the development. It also collaborates with other international actors in the judicial field, such as the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank.

Judicial Assistance. The Council is one of the key actors in the so-called International Judicial Assistance, aimed to facilitate and speed up the processing of cases with international connections.  Such judicial assistance is carried out through, from one side, applications made in the Courts and, from the other, those coming from the Justice administrations of other countries. With that aim, a network of specialized judges has been created throughout the whole national territory in the diverse jurisdictional orders.

Institutional Relations.The General Council of the Judiciary maintains stable institutional relationships with the General Councils and the Supreme Courts of the European Unions and Latin America. They consist of international networks of agreement and cooperation aimed to the improvement of the judicial systems and the strengthening of the State of Law.

The International Relations Service, integrated into the Central Service of the General Secretariat, is responsible for deploying the international action of the Council:

• The General Council of the Judiciary is a member of the European Network of Councils of the Judiciary. 
• The Council is part of the Latin American Judicial Summit. It currently carries out its Permanent Secretariat. 
• It is the contact of the following cooperation networks: Eurojust, Criminal European Judicial Network (CEJN), Civil and Commercial European Judicial Network and Latin American Judicial Network (IberRed).

All international activities of the General Council of the Judiciary will be carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in accordance with the guidelines on foreign policy matters that, in the exercising of its competencies, are set by Ministry, notwithstanding the competencies on matters of international legal cooperation held by the General Council of the Judiciary in accordance with the stipulations of the current Organic Law (Article 562 LOPJ)