The Cercle d’Economia positioned itself this Thursday in favor of “a transversality that allows the center to be repopulated” to form the new Government of the Generalitat. Without expressly citing it, the proposal from the institution chaired by Jaume Guardiola suggests a pact between the PSC and Junts to take over the Catalan executive and thus avoid a repeat of the elections.
The Cercle recognizes in the Opinion Note published this Thursday that the proposal they formulate “involves leaving the bloc and agreeing with forces that have legitimate political horizons and in some aspects conflicting.” During the press conference to present the Note, Guardiola declined to specify what the majority should be that would break with the blocks.
The opinion published yesterday is the position that the Cercle makes each year on economic and political issues before the Annual Meeting that will be held next week in Barcelona and in which, among others, the president Pedro Sánchez and the acting president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès. According to the Catalan entity, what is best for the country is the pact and transaction to forge solid and stable majorities that allow ambitious policies to be made. And that courage that they demand from the parties “has to have the support (…) of the other leaders of the country, social and business.”
The president of the Cercle d’Economia assured that an electoral repetition would be to maintain the “institutional abnormality” that entails having had elections every two and a half years in Catalonia since 2010.
In the Note, Cercle recalled that in 2018 they already proposed a reform of the regional financing system that would improve the income of all communities. The model proposed at that time and which is still in force is that of a federal system in which the collection would be shared between the central and regional administrations. With this change, in addition, the regional communities (Navarra and the Basque Country) could be incorporated into the solidarity mechanism between autonomies. The Cercle also makes a reference to the “singular financing” model or fiscal pact proposed by the ERC Government and which represents a leap forward compared to other proposals.
Improving regional financing is one of the levers that can contribute to improving productivity in Spain. Most of the Opinion Note is focused on the negative impact of chronic low productivity on the Spanish and Catalan economy. The institution warned that “the recent dynamics are worrying” and that “they show an economy doomed to mediocrity if urgent, coordinated and determined action is not taken.”
The entity points out that “there is a close relationship between productivity growth and the population’s income.” Cercle recalls that in “the most productive regions of Europe, workers receive higher salaries and, at the same time, precisely because they are more productive, they work fewer hours.”
The Opinion Note adds that “greater productivity is the key element so that all citizens can enjoy a better quality of life.” Between 2000 and 2022, the distance in productivity between Spain and the European Union has doubled. At the beginning of the century, Spanish productivity was 6% lower than European productivity and now it is 12%. “Our economy increasingly resembles that of the less productive regions of the EU,” says Cercle.
The general director of Cercle, Miquel Nadal, asserted that “the distance between north and south is widening,” and added that the European capital of productivity “is increasingly further away from Spain.” In the note, the institution proposes a series of measures to correct the situation. Among these, the reform of the educational system stands out.
