Fedea and the Council of Economists of Spain have warned today that “there is no evidence that the Next Generation funds have contributed to increasing productivity” in Spain and reducing the gap with the European Union that has increased in the last 22 years. In a joint conference held from Madrid and broadcast online, Javier Ferri, former Secretary of State for Employment and Fedea researcher, warned that “in the last 15 years, after the financial crisis and the Covid crisis, the gap has widened to 17%” in GDP per capita at purchasing parity.
In the 2021-2022 biennium, productivity has barely grown 0.5%, although analysts believe it can improve in the coming years. Ferri has expressed the opinion that the distribution of European funds has been due to a “flood”, so they have gone to sectors or companies that would have invested the same if there had not been the Next Generation. He also gave as an example that many autonomous communities have reprogrammed the funds because they have not been distributed.
The report shows that all the autonomous communities – except the two regional ones (Navarra and the Basque Country), Galicia and Castilla La Mancha – have lost productivity compared to the European Union. Navarra has a productivity 50% higher than Extremadura, which is at the bottom. José Carlos Sánchez, from the University of Murcia, explained that the good evolution of Navarra is due to the fact that “it has had important technological developments” and to “human capital.”
Sánchez has insisted that at the community level “the current situation is recurring and only crises lead us to get closer in productivity” with Europe. In Spain, in times of crisis, the country gains in productivity because companies tend to adjust workforces and worsens in times of growth because hiring increases.
