The confrontation between the Spanish Government and Ferrovial over the transfer of the company’s headquarters to the Netherlands demonstrates economic nationalism, which departs from the idea of ​​Europe that has been embodied in successive EU treaties.
It is a low-level debate, more rhetorical than real, that ignores the rules and the commitments we have made with Europe. If German or French companies invest and set up in Spain, it is not a problem for a Spanish multinational to move its headquarters to another country in the Union.
The nation state will not disappear overnight, but it will become more and more interdependent. Ambassador Juan Antonio March recalled on Wednesday, in a conference on the current situation in the world, a Chinese proverb that says that “if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go accompanied”.
Chancellor Merkel said that Germany will only do well in the long term if Europe does well. Social market capitalism, theorized and put into practice by Chancellor Ludwig Erhard (1963-1966), was based on two fundamental variables: creating wealth and distributing it generously and equitably. All this in a framework of freedoms and demands in the business and union sphere. The State does not create wealth but merely ensures that it is distributed in a socially just manner.
For some time now, the Sánchez Government has been using a rhetoric more typical of Unides Podemos than of the social democracy of the PSOE. His parliamentary precariousness should not distance him so much from the story that has characterized Spanish socialism. He could be called more Indalecio Prieto or Felipe González than Largo Caballero. When he talks about those at the top and those at the bottom, or when he points out by name entrepreneurs who make a lot of money, he does not take into account that in order to distribute wealth, you must first create it.
And it is the large or small companies, not the State, that create the most wealth. The Executive must create a fairer society with tax policies that reduce inequalities. But it seems reckless to me to coerce companies if they act within national and European legal frameworks. The Government must move in the field of legal security, because there is nothing scarier than investors. It would have been better if Ferrovial had stayed, but the Government should ask itself why it wants to leave.
