After a long negotiation, Sumar has managed to convince his PSOE partners so that the draft Industry Law that the Council of Ministers will approve this Tuesday includes in the text formulas to avoid the relocations of industrial companies.
According to sources from the formation, after the negotiation led by the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, “the Law places decisive obstacles on this phenomenon through two very important measures.” The first, that “whoever leaves the European economic area has to return 100% of the public aid they have received”, including the ERE and what is known as the RED mechanism.
Furthermore, “in no case” can a relocation be the justification “for traumatic measures such as a dismissal, a substantial modification of working conditions or a withdrawal from an agreement, neither individual nor collective.”
With this, the speculative investment funds that transfer companies from Spain to Africa or Asia, after receiving important public aid, “will not be able to benefit from the internal flexibility measures included in our legislation,” negotiation sources highlight.
According to negotiation sources, there was a lot of resistance in the Ministry of Economic Affairs to include in the text the return of public aid by companies that leave the Euro zone. Despite “the resistance of the Government partner”, Sumar has managed to ensure that the project that the Minister of Industry, Jordi Hereu, is going to present this Tuesday after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, “addresses relocations, conditions the aid and places the ecological transition in the center.” In the negotiation, the threshold of the total subsidies received required for companies that abruptly dismantle their activity to have to reintegrate them has also been reduced by half, to 3 million euros.
“The Second Vice Presidency has managed to incorporate into the Law the principle of conditionality of industrial policy in our country. In this way, public-private collaboration in Spain will always be conditioned by criteria such as maintaining employment or environmental responsibility,” Sumar sources highlight.
The objective is to place “the ecological transition at the center of industrial policy so that our country takes advantage of the advantage provided by renewable energies as a lever for reindustrialization, also reinforcing territorial cohesion.”
The first in 32 years
The Council of Ministers plans to approve this Tuesday the bill, which was presented as a draft in 2022 by then-Minister Reyes Maroto. Sources from the department headed by Hereu describe this norm as “historic” and the result of “consensus” with social agents. The text will be the first sectoral law of this century. It will replace the current law, which dates back to 1992. The future Law on Industry and Strategic Autonomy, which will be the first sectoral law for this activity in 32 years, “aims to ensure investments made in Spain,” the ministry emphasizes.
The text that the Executive will now send to the Cortes should be the starting point for the creation of a reserve of products related to sectors such as pharmaceuticals, defense, energy or raw materials.
The bill establishes the creation of this Strategic Reserve based on National Industrial Production Capacities, called RECAPI, to ensure the supply of essential or strategic resources in times of crisis or pandemics. The preliminary project aims to “ensure that the industry can face today’s technological challenges and achieve the objectives that we set for ourselves as a government and that Europe sets for us” in terms of industrialization, the Hereu ministry points out.
The text, highlights Industria, “has received contributions from the entire society: companies, social agents, public administrations and the rest of the sectors involved.” It has had a favorable opinion from the Council of State since last November 28 and has been submitted to the observations of unions, employers or the Economic and Social Council (CES).
The objective is that “it represents a before and after for the Spanish industry, that it provides our industry with effective instruments to face technological challenges”, and specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI), “and promote reindustrialization, innovation and the transformation of our productive fabric.”
Among the main novelties of the text is the creation of a State Council for Industrial Policy and the so-called strategic industrial projects, to facilitate the procedures for those investments that are of general interest for the country.
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