Yesterday, the European employers’ association sent the Spanish Government its priorities for the next presidency of the European Union. At the meeting, the First Vice-President and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, announced a fund of 1,000 million euros in credits to modernize the tourism sector in Spain; on the other hand, the representatives of 40 business confederations demanded fewer regulations to improve competitiveness.
Calviño announced that the addendum to the recovery plan that the Spanish Government will send to Brussels next week will include funding from the private sector, including 1 billion for modernization, sustainability and green and digital transition of the tourism sector.
This addendum is the second part of the recovery plan, and will add 7,700 million in additional transfers and 84,000 million in credits. The deadline for presenting it is the end of August, but the central government has been preparing it for months and will approve it at the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. These are funds that will be used to promote projects in energy, agri-food, technology and industry, in addition to strengthening investments in the 12 Perte already underway.
For their part, the businessmen handed Calviño the Madrid Declaration, the document that sets out their priorities for the Spanish presidency of the European Union, which begins on July 1. The big request of the business confederations is to gain competitiveness and they claim that, to achieve this, the way is less rules.
The president of the European employers’ association, Fredrik Persson, places as a priority an improvement in the competitiveness of companies that must be achieved with fewer regulations, working longer hours and avoiding attacks on employers. At a breakfast at the New Economy Forum, Persson claimed that it is necessary to fight against regulatory inflation, the excess of rules with which “we are placing new regulations on top of the old ones and the cost of doing business in Europe is very high” .
The thesis of the president of BusinessEurope is that “the only formula to achieve social progress is through economic progress”, and that it is necessary to prioritize the competitiveness of companies because it gives rise to economic progress and the latter is what allows it to continue progressing socially He also added that to achieve this competitiveness “we need to work more hours, not less”.
On this point, the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, specified that what they are looking for is more flexibility in schedules and to negotiate through social dialogue. “What the president of BusinessEurope says is that what companies need is more flexibility. In other words, you can work more hours on some days, and at the end there is a time control of the hours during the year and what companies need, it depends on how the demands and production are, is that there is this possibility . But we will always raise this within the bipartite social dialogue”, stated Garamendi.
Persson also defended Spanish businessmen and expressed concern about the attacks they have suffered from the Spanish Government. He considers that it is “shooting oneself in the foot” to attack employers because, in order to have a strong and resilient Europe, it is necessary to start by having a competitive industry, and that is why employers are fundamental.
