Pedro Sánchez is brimming with economic optimism on his seventh trip to New York as president to participate in the UN General Assembly. During his speech at the forum Latin America, the United States and Spain in the global economy, Organised by EL PAÍS and the Spain-United States Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by DLA Piper, Iberia, Inditex, Indra, NTT Data and Total Protect in collaboration with the Organisation of Ibero-American States (OEI), Sánchez even joked about the fact that in Spain no one talks about the positive data and sometimes neither do leaders when they travel abroad, so he wanted to be clear: “Spain is experiencing one of the best times in recent decades, this must be said abroad as well”.
At the forum, Sánchez defended his government’s policies and, above all, its commitment to public investment and intervention in markets that are not working well, such as the energy market, in order to improve them, in contrast to the “neoliberal dogma” that, in his opinion, failed in the previous decade, in the Europe of austerity.
In a context in which some world leaders such as the Argentine Javier Milei, but also the Republican candidate Donald Trump in the United States, are leading a crusade against the State, Sánchez defends the opposite and intends to become a reference that social democratic policies are more successful economically. In his opinion, the data in Spain prove this after six years of government, first by the PSOE alone and since 2020 in coalition, first with Unidas Podemos and now with Sumar.
Sánchez has also attracted to his camp a representative of the world of markets such as Mario Draghi, former president of the ECB and former Italian prime minister, who has just made a report in which he also advocates public investment to get out of the crisis. Sánchez has also vindicated the former governor and his report in the part in which he defends the mutualisation of European debt, an issue that the Spanish prime minister has always defended and that was only partially achieved with the European recovery funds.
“Our country paid a high price under the neoliberal dogma of austerity. We lost precious time, and today the European Union as a whole is paying the consequences. Europe must increase public investment, not reduce it. Europe must involve the State in the generation of wealth, not push it aside. In our country, we have been applying these policies for six years. And now we know that they work, even in a complex international context marked by uncertainty. We must redouble public investment in technology, innovation and ecological transition, promoting public-private collaboration as we have been doing. Only in this way will we be able to make up for the time lost in the past decade and move forward with a firm step,” the president insisted.
Sánchez assumes and makes his own all the ideas of the Draghi report, especially the mutualisation of debt to make large investments. “We must face the challenge of improving competitiveness in line with the main recommendations of the Draghi Report, which Spain fully shares. Europe needs reforms to avoid falling behind in the most cutting-edge technological sectors, and it must also make better use of all the instruments at its disposal to strengthen its strategic autonomy and guarantee its economic security. But it also needs more public investment: in research, in the development of new technologies and in green infrastructure. This is the path followed by Spain in recent years, doubling public investment in R&D and allocating two out of every five euros of the Recovery Plan to the ecological transition,” he insisted.
As proof of the success of intervention in the markets when necessary and of public-private collaboration, Sánchez cites the results of energy prices in his country. “Spain suffered a tremendous shock from the Covid-19 pandemic. Four years later, we are leading the growth of the major European economies, and the real income of Spaniards is growing faster than that of Germans or Italians. Today we have updated the forecasts, we are expecting strong growth,” he explained, finishing with the example of the Spanish energy market and its effect on controlling inflation.
“Since the beginning of this episode of rising prices, the accumulated inflation in the EU is 18.9%, almost 4.5 points higher than in Spain. This difference is largely explained by the energy component. Let us consider that, compared to 2021, while electricity is almost 33% more expensive on average in the countries of the euro zone, in Spain it is 13.6% cheaper than then,” the president said. Sánchez also claims that all the reforms being made in the country, including that of pensions, are done with agreement, something unusual in Europe. “We have made social peace a hallmark of Spain,” he insisted, after also claiming that inequality is being reduced in Spain, according to the Gini index.
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