This is the script for my video posted on October 2, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.
Andorra is one of the smallest countries in the world, and it has some very strange geopolitical dynamics. While it is sovereign, its two co-princes are always the French president and a bishop selected by the Pope, meaning that Andorrans elect their own government but have no say over who their heads of state are. But why is Andorra set up like this, and what impact is this having on European affairs?
Andorra's national tradition credits Charlemagne, the Frankish king who was crowned Emperor of the Romans in 800 CE, with granting freedom to the people of the Andorran valleys in exchange for help fighting the Moors of the Iberian Peninsula. This is likely a myth, but it's still a core part of the country's identity.
What isn't a myth is that the valleys fell within Charlemagne's territory and then under the Counts of Urgell, who then ceded them to the Catholic Diocese of Urgell in modern Spain, placing bishops in control.
These bishops lacked the means to defend the valleys and sought protection from local nobles, and through marriage those rights eventually ended up with the Counts of Foix, a powerful noble family based on the French side of the Pyrenees. The Counts of Foix then claimed lordship over the territory.
The competing claims between the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix led to armed disputes, which were resolved in 1278 and 1288 with the Pareatges. These established shared equal lordship over the territory, tributes owed to both lords, and a joint justice system.
Basically, the Pareatges did not give Andorra independence, but rather made it a territorial condominium that neither party could absorb without breaking the deal. Andorra's later sovereignty grew out of this dynamic.
Over centuries of dynastic marriages, the Foix claim passed to the kings of Navarre and eventually into the House of Bourbon. When Henry III of Navarre became King Henry IV of France, the claim to Andorra merged into the French crown under a 1607 edict.
It then passed to nearly every French head of state. Interestingly, in the early 18th century, the co-ruling Bishop of Urgell argued to the new Bourbon rulers of Spain, themselves relatives of the other co-prince, that Andorra had always been neutral and separate from Catalonia. Catalonia had recently been defeated in the War of the Spanish Succession and was about to have its self-governing institutions abolished.
This intervention kept Andorra from being subject to the Nueva Planta decrees that dissolved Catalan institutions, and it allowed the country to survive as a Catalan-speaking state partly by insisting it wasn't part of Catalonia.
The French Revolution renounced the claim in 1793 as a feudal remnant, but Napoleon restored it in 1806 after lobbying from Andorra itself.
It took until 1993 for Andorra's situation to be enshrined in a constitution though. Before then, Andorra had never had a written constitution, and the co-princes' prerogatives had never been formally defined. But the country faced political and economic pressure in Europe to formalize its system and democratize if it wanted to integrate with the rest of the continent. The constitution also paved the way for a 1993 treaty in which France and Spain formally recognized Andorra's sovereignty, and for UN membership that same year.
The constitution states that the co-princes are jointly and indivisibly the head of state. They are always the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France, who are chosen by the Pope and by French voters respectively.
However, while France and Spain are generally seen as Andorra's protectors, the 1993 treaty only commits them to consult with each other and with Andorra if its sovereignty is threatened. This is important because Andorra has no regular military forces and relies instead on its national police and a traditional volunteer-based militia that is realistically far too small and ceremonial to be of value during an emergency.
Still, Andorra has a long track record of staying neutral, often with help from its neighbors. It kept out of both world wars, and France posted a detachment there to deter spillover from the Spanish Civil War.
While Andorra is treaty-bound to avoid harming its neighbors' security, the more realistic threat it has posed is illicit finance. In 2015, the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, found reasonable grounds that Banca Privada d'Andorra was of primary money laundering concern, alleging that its senior managers helped launder money tied to organized crime, corruption, human trafficking, and fraud.
FinCEN moved to cut the bank off from US correspondent banking, Andorran regulators took control of it, and police arrested its CEO. FinCEN withdrew its finding a year later after Andorra wound the bank down. By then, though, its Spanish subsidiary had collapsed and Andorra's reputation as a financial center had taken a serious hit.
The country is really complex from a financial standpoint, in part because it didn't have an official currency until 2012, when a monetary agreement it signed with the EU took effect. Before that, it used the Spanish peseta and the French franc side by side, and then the euro informally.
Money is one of the main reasons Andorra is currently trying to become an EU associate, because this would give it access to the single market and allow it to diversify its economy while protecting its own interests as a microstate.
The EU Association Agreement with Andorra and San Marino has taken a long time to finalize, in part because of a legal debate over whether it could be approved solely by EU institutions or had to be a "mixed" agreement ratified by every member state individually. The mixed approach won out, and the EU Council authorized signature in July 2026, with signing scheduled for 19 October.
Signing won't change anything on the ground yet, though. The deal still needs approval from the European Parliament, a referendum in Andorra, a vote in the Consell General, and ratification by every EU member state. If it clears all of that, it would bring Andorra into the EU single market. Its banks would get phased access, and EU citizens would get gradual freedom to live and work there, albeit with quotas, border controls, and safeguards Andorra can trigger if new arrivals worsen its housing crisis. However, this comes with a tradeoff, in that Andorra would take on EU rules that it doesn't vote on itself.
Keep in mind that the French president is one of the co-princes here. Andorra's own government negotiated the deal, but Emmanuel Macron formally consents to Andorra's treaties as co-prince while also shaping the EU's position as French president, which is a somewhat problematic but unavoidable conflict. When Andorra asked him to support an EU-only approval, Macron insisted the deal be mixed, which was not in Andorra's interest, and France got its way.
The Bishop of Urgell has conflicts too. As a Catholic bishop, he is opposed to abortion, and Andorra bans it in all cases. The government has promised to remove criminal liability for women who get abortions while keeping the procedure itself illegal in Andorra, although that bill has yet to be tabled as of early October. This is a deliberately ambiguous approach intended to avoid forcing the Bishop to authorize abortion outright, a step his predecessor said would have led him to resign.
Having two very different co-rulers seems like it would be less than ideal, but Andorra has made it work for centuries. The country is an incredibly unique geopolitical case study, because it is fully sovereign yet shares its head of state between two foreign officeholders. That means it has to hedge between two co-princes with their own agendas and two powerful neighbors all at the same time.
Keep reading
- How has tiny San Marino survived for 1700 years?
- Why is tiny Luxembourg so important to Europe?
- How do Vatican City and Italy coexist?
I’m writing a book called Groundwork about the buried history beneath geopolitics. Join the waitlist to hear when it has a publisher, a cover, and a release date.