Two international organizations have just updated data on Spain and show that, despite the highest situation than other European economies, there is a structural stagnation.
In the dream of convergence with the European average income, the Gran objective of adhesion to the European Union, Eurostat makes an estimate that places Spain just as far as the one provided by this same European agency in 199925 years ago. The progress has since been void to get the welfare level of the partners, measured in gross domestic product per capita and purchasing power. It is not that Spanish income has not grown in this first quarter of a century. Eurostat places it at 27,770 euros in 2024, but that of several has grown more in real terms.
As for the Moody’s qualification agency, he concluded on Friday night that, for the seventh consecutive year, he maintains the note of Spain in approved (BAA1) away from the remarkable A or even the outstanding triple to which the country came to enjoy when entering the euro. The executive of Pedro Sánchez which qualifies as “weak” and “exposed to changes in strategy of its partners”, in allusion to Carles Puigdemont has not achieved solvency improvement throughout his mandate. The last upward revision was in April 2018, in the last months of Mariano Rajoy in power.
Eurostat estimation is particularly frustrating. It calculates that, thanks to a greater growth than other European economies, the per capita income measured in the power of purchase rises to 92% of the European average, one more point than in 2023 and increasingly further from 88% in which it fell after the pandemic and made it deserving again of the cohesion fund when it was below 90%.
With that percentage, slightly exceeded countries that had advanced him as Lithuania and Czech, which have lost bellows after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is still outside the dozen countries that exceed average and is in 14 of the 27, two positions worse than in 1999. In that year, according to a subsequent update that Eurostat made after the great expansion to the east, Spain was at the same distance from the average, but in 12th place 12. In this period there have been up José María Aznar and even to overcome it in the first of JOSÉ Luis Rodríguez Zapatero finally reaching, in appearance, the dream of convergence. But it was a mirage, because when there is bonanza the Spanish economy manages to grow above others, but when they arrive crisis, it resists much worse. The result is return to the exit box of the last century.
The previous governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos already warned last year that “Spain has stopped converging with Europe in a sustained way since the financial crisis of 2007 and the main reasons are low productivity and low employment rate.” Other countries, including those from the East, have evolved better. Other great economies such as those in France and Italy continue well above the Spanish, but have suffered important setbacks in this first quarter of a century.
The tiny size of the companies -with increasing regulatory obstacles -, the low training of workers and innovation or the aging of the population plays against the national dream of convergence. Hernández de Cos pointed out another factor: «From the financial crisis there has been a drop in the indicators of quality and institutional confidence» with loss of efficiency of the administrations.
And at this point Moody’s affects the note sent to its customers this weekend. On the one hand, he emphasizes that “the Spanish economy enjoyed a growth higher than the potential in 2024, where the economy grew 3.2%.” It attributes it to, among other factors, “the large figures of net migration” and that public spending “represented around a third of economic growth in 2024 and almost 40% in 2023”. But he adds: «The long -term growth prospects in Spain are uncertain due to structural problems. For example, there is no housing infrastructure necessary to sustain migratory flows. On the other hand, European funds have not had an attraction effect for private investment ».
Moody’s sees an advantage in which the minister María Jesús Montero It is not possible to get budgets since 2023, because the extension “contributes to containing spending and promoting a moderate fiscal consolidation”, but between “the inability of the current minority government to approve legislation” and the “growing pressure of expenditure on pensions and defense in the coming years,” does not see reasons for solvency improvement in the country. And that perpetuates the remoteness of the goal of convergence.
The Ephemeride/Hurry offer to González
Without complexes so far in his pulse with the government, the president in a hurry, Joseph Oughourlian you are trying that Felipe González very critical of Pedro Sánchez return to write in The country. Five years of their last article dedicated to Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba And Oughourlian wants to recover figures from the left center, even if they are not liking Moncloa. González’s recovery is also a wink to one of the minority shareholders in a hurry, the Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim with which the historic Andalusian socialist leader has good relations, but Oughourlian does not seem in need of great alliances after his last surprise of capital expansion that tries to dilute those related to the government in a hurry. «Joseph must meet him, to try to throw, even puts them», Says one next.
The character/ loot pronounces the cursed word
The president of Banco Santander, Ana Botín said Thursday to the International Institute of Finance in Brussels that “we need the rearma of Europe”, because “the priority now is that Europeans defend themselves.” “Rearme” is a damn word in Moncloa by political Markéting, but it is the obvious definition of the European moment and, by the way, it must be financed. For booty, hardly Germany has state margin to raise military spending, and the rest – including Spain – will need private financing. To do this, he asked to unlock “hundreds of billions” in capital accumulated in European banks for excessive regulation. And also that it does not penalize the banks to finance the defense. Revealed that this reputational problem has already explained to Josep Borrell In 2o21 with the Russian invasion. And until today.
To follow/the BEI returns to the nuclear sector
It was a condition of Emmanuel Macron To accept a Nadia Calviño at the head of the European Investment Bank and is being fulfilled. Under the Spanish mandate, the BEI is fundamentally financed activities related to nuclear energy and a sample is the 400 million loan granted to Uranium enrichment plant of the Orano Group in TRICASTIN (France). “We had not financed projects in the nuclear sector in France since 2008,” the French vice president of Bei is congratulated, Ambroise Fayolle in statements to The platform. Calviño has already opened the door to the nuclear before his appointment, despite the rejection of the government in Spain to this energy, and, according to Fayolle, the BEI thus joins the efforts to develop “decarbonized energies.” The return to finance the defense and nuclear energy, two milestones of the new BEI.