Pedro Sánchez commits to inclusive and transforming post-pandemic recovery

Andorra

The President of the Government outlined the phases that Spain has followed to overcome the pandemic: resistance, reactivation and recovery. Pedro Sánchez specified that, in the first phase, when it was necessary to lock down the Spanish population, new mechanisms were set up, such as Temporary Lay-off Plans (Spanish acronym: ERTEs), and "we managed to protect 3.6 million people at the toughest times of the lockdown, along with 1.6 million self-employed workers". A Minimum Living Income was also created and billions of euros of resources were mobilised through the Official Credit Institute.

During the economic reactivation phase, the Government of Spain mobilised 11 billion euros in direct aid for the worst affected sectors, a figure on top of the 40.8 billion euros that the government allocated in 2020 to liquidity and measures to provide direct support for the self-employed and those unable to work due to the pandemic (15% and 5% of GDP, respectively). In this regard, Pedro Sánchez recalled that many of the measures, such as the ERTEs, are still in place and underlined that "we are now at the beginning of the end and that the State, as a whole, will continue to help its companies and its workers to remain afloat in this final phase of the pandemic".

Along this line, the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, with 140 billion euros in investments for Spain, will increase our GDP by around an additional two percentage points a year and create 800,000 jobs.

Lessons learned from the pandemic: new economic model

Pedro Sánchez highlighted other lessons learned from the pandemic: "the need for unity; we must strengthen all multilateral collaboration and consensus mechanisms, and the pressing nature of the ecological transition".

Spain, with cutting-edge companies and a population that is very sensitive to the ecological transition, renewable energies and sustainable infrastructures, sees great investment opportunities in this sector for Ibero-American and Spanish companies. In this regard, Pedro Sánchez recalled that the future Spanish Climate Change Act has now been approved by the Lower House of Parliament.

In fact, the Government of Spain, which considers investment in the ecological transition to be fundamental, will invest 39% of the funds under the Recovery Plan in these areas to reduce our country's energy dependence and create between 250,000 and 350,000 jobs. "The recovery must be transforming", highlighted the President of the Government.

The President of the Government stressed the importance of the internationalisation of economic activity because "Europe and the Ibero-American Community have a great deal to do in the coming years to consolidate free trade agreements between the regional blocs present here today". To this end, Pedro Sánchez indicated that the Portuguese Rotating Presidency of the European Union could help give a "definitive boost" to these trade agreements with MERCOSUR, Chile and Mexico.

The President of the Government concluded his speech by underlining the "sense of responsibility of the social stakeholders, both the business organisations and the trade unions in Spain, because during the pandemic they placed the general interest above any other consideration", to ensure everyone came out of the crisis together.

Non official translation