Speech by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, at the Spain-Chile business forum

Santiago de Chile (Chile)

SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN, PEDRO SÁNCHEZ

Good morning and happy International Women's Day, 8 March.

Dear Minister, Presidents of the CEOE, of the Confederation of Production and Commerce, and of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, representatives of Chilean and Spanish companies, friends.

Chile was the first Ibero-American country I had the honour to visit as president of the Government of Spain in August 2018. And since then, we have worked hand in hand in many areas. Among others, I would like to recall the one that made it possible to hold COP25 in the city of Madrid, which we worked on together with the Chilean government.

We are united by many things: we are united by language, we are united by a shared history, a shared culture - this has already been said, I do not want to dwell on it. As a result of this forum, we are also united by a deep economic bond, as many of you can testify today.

Our economies share a very valuable attribute in times of great change, and that is that they are particularly complementary. The strengths of one country build on and accentuate the strengths of the other.

It has been said, and it is true, that the signing of the Association Agreement between Chile and the European Union, in force since 2003, was a real accelerator in this area and contributed to relaunching trade relations between our two countries. And since then, the value of Spanish exports of goods to Chile has increased almost fourfold, reaching no less than 1.675 billion euros in 2023. In the same period, imports have more than doubled. And in terms of exports of services, they increased by almost 40% in 2022, to more than 1.2 billion euros.

Finally, as you know, Spain has a strategic relationship with six countries throughout Latin America. Chile is one of them, and the figures, moreover, fully justify the reason for this permanent link.

Spanish investment in Chile exceeds 16.5 billion euros in accumulated investment and is concentrated primarily in strategic sectors such as financial services, as we have seen in the video, road and rail infrastructures. Also in areas of enormous potential, and I am referring to fields linked to this double transformation, to which reference was made earlier, green and digital, such as telecommunications, renewable energies and the extraordinary opportunity for Chile and Spain represented by green hydrogen.

And thanks to bilateral economic and trade agreements, Spain and Chile have a regulatory framework that offers full legal security to business investors in both countries.

And this regulatory framework is also allowing something that the president of the CEOE has mentioned and which I would like to underline, which is public-private partnership. It is, in my view, a strategic way to realise the transformations of our time and to turn them into opportunities to modernise our economies.

Chile offers, I truly believe, an exceptional opportunity for Spanish companies to collaborate. Companies, many of them present here today, have already contributed new technologies, knowledge and great investment experience to Chile's economic development.

But, beyond shared economic and commercial interests, I believe it is worth noting that Spain and Chile share another equally valuable asset, which is that of values, principles and priorities with great potential to transform our societies and economies.

Which is the first one? Well, obviously, it is the commitment to renewable energies. It is no coincidence that Chile generates more electricity with solar and wind power than with coal, nor is it a coincidence that in 2023 Spain became the first major European country to obtain more than 50% of its electricity from renewable sources.

As you know, the world is preparing to accelerate the energy transition, and Spanish companies are already key players in this transformation in any part of the world, as is already happening in Chile. Last July, I had the honour of receiving President Boric in Madrid, as part of his first visit to Europe.

There, both countries agreed on the need to strengthen our strategic partnership in this area, in the field of energy transition. And a few days later, under the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, we had the opportunity to hold an historic summit between the European Union and CELAC in Brussels. We wanted to do it in Brussels, not in Madrid. We wanted to do this in Brussels because we also wanted to convey to Chilean public opinion and also to all European governments the importance of a solid strategic relationship between the European Union and the Latin American continent and the Caribbean, in this case, too.

It was a summit that had not been held since 2015, and we have managed not only to make a commitment to hold biannual bilateral meetings between the two continents, but also to draw up an agenda of transformations, investments and strategic relations that the various ministers of the departments in charge will have to follow. Therefore, I believe that we have strengthened the strategic partnership between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. I think this is extraordinary news for both regional blocs, but I think it is also extraordinary news for global geopolitics as a whole.

And there are two tangible results of that Summit that I would also like to recall. The first of these mentioned here is the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between Chile and the European Union on sustainable raw materials and the adoption of, as Antonio Garamendi mentioned earlier, the Global Gateway investment agenda in infrastructure and strategic sectors for sustainable development.

The promotion of the lithium industry, which has been mentioned here, copper, investments such as the promotion of green hydrogen production in Chile, demonstrate the extent to which Chile and Europe, and therefore Spain, share a strategic vision of the decarbonisation of our economies, of the electrification of our economy as the backbone of the territory.

In short, I believe that we are laying the foundations for a new paradigm of relations between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean based on strategic investments in which both parties gain, because there is no extractive approach, as there is with other countries, but rather an approach of sharing prosperity, which is, I believe, the essence of the Global Gateway approach that the European Union is taking in this case in relation to third countries or blocs, such as CELAC.

Along with the energy transition, the second shared priority I would like to highlight in this speech is our commitment to inclusive and socially just economic growth. I think that, as José Luis Bonet has already mentioned, in Europe we had a bad response to the financial crisis, which widened the inequalities in our country and also the inequalities between countries within the European Union.

In the end, that generated political disaffection, generated distrust in public representatives on the part of society as a whole. We also learned from that lesson and were able to deal with the pandemic with a different kind of more positive response.

That is where the NextGenerationEU funds came from, which is, in the case of Spain, 160 billion euros that is going to help us improve competitiveness and productivity based on these two pillars; environmental sustainability and digital transformation.

With this intention of sharing this inclusive and socially just economic growth, today we are going to sign - together with President Boric - the renewal of the strategic alliance between Chile and Spain to strengthen our bilateral relationship in this horizon shared by both governments.

The new Advanced Framework Agreement between Chile and the European Union, signed in December 2023 under the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union and approved last week in the European Parliament, represents a milestone in trade relations between our two countries. An agreement that will also allow us to eliminate almost all remaining tariffs, introducing shared commitments on advanced trade and sustainability. Commitments which, as I said earlier, take on special relevance on a day like today, 8 March, International Women's Day.

This agreement, for example, sets new standards for equal opportunities between men and women. It is, in fact, the first EU trade agreement that demonstrates the parties' commitment to trade and gender issues.

But above all, it is a milestone in relations between the European Union and the American continent. It is no coincidence that Chile is leading the way, nor is it a coincidence that the country is currently recording its best ever record in reducing income inequality.

The figures for poverty reduction in Chile speak for themselves: from 10.7% of the population in 2020 to 6.5% today, which is the lowest figure since data has been recorded here in Chile.

I believe that it is worthwhile to claim these achievements and also to move forward on the path of inclusion, social cohesion and gender equality. Not only because it is fair, because it is a question of human rights, which it is and that would be enough, but because it allows us to dynamise and strengthen our economy, because it contributes to channelling all the immense potential and talent of a country, yours, incorporating more people into economic, business and employment activity.

This is the path along which, humbly, my country and the Spanish economy are also moving forward. The large euro area economy where income inequality has fallen the most since 2017, also reaching record lows today.

Does that mean we have ended inequality? Certainly not, but that we are moving towards reducing one of the main evils, if not the main evil, of all our societies, which is that of inequality.

Finally, Spain and Chile aspire to participate in this global change of economic paradigm. Economic development must be fairer, it should be more egalitarian between men and women, it should be more open and multilateral, it should be based on much cheaper, cleaner and more abundant energy, such as renewable energies.

I say all this because these are times of structural transformations and social disruption as a consequence of these transformations. This is precisely why these are also times of great opportunity.

I believe that Chile and Spain today have the best tools to be able to take advantage of them and put them into effect. We have the capabilities, we have the talent, we have the natural resources and, above all, we have the climate ambition and the social ambition to seize this undoubtedly historic moment for our societies.

But, above all, I believe that we have a productive fabric capable of contributing enormous added value to these transformations.

Therefore, on behalf of all of you, I would like to encourage you to take advantage of this forum with which two brotherly countries, united by so many ties, want to face a future full of opportunities.

I am sure it will.

Thank you very much.

Non official translation