The Government has just signed a new bilateral agreement with the United States for the deployment of two new US Navy ships at the Rota Naval Base. This new agreement comes on the eve of Pedro Sánchez’s visit to the White House on Friday 12 May, where he will meet with President Joe Biden. It was the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, who signed the agreement together with the US…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Employers and unions have reached an income policy agreement on their own which is coherent with the previous ones signed during the last decades. There is no break in the social pact policy that accompanied Spanish democracy for decades. The agreement (a salary increase of 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024) is indicative, a recommendation for decentralized collective bargaining, thousands of sector, province, company agreements……
Funcas | The growing imbalance in the size of the older and younger generations poses a challenge for intergenerational solidarity, with important implications at the economic, social and political levels. Spain is a good example of this demographic trend. While in 2012 the population aged 65 and over accounted for 17.4% of the population, by 2022 already exceeded 20%. In contrast, the population under 20 years of age fell to…
The total number of people employed in the Spanish agricultural sector at the end of the first quarter was 748,200, compared to 827,700 in the first quarter of 2022. Nearly 80,000 fewer employed than a year ago. This is the largest annual fall in a first quarter since 2015, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute’s Labour Force Survey (EPA). You have to go back to the first quarter of…
Bankinter : Preliminary Q1 2023 GDP +3.8% year-on-year (versus +3.1% expected and +2.9% year-on-year in Q4 2022 revised up by 0.3 percentage points. Quarter-on-quarter GDP growth of +0.5% (versus +0.3% quarter-on-quarter estimated and +0.4% quarter-on-quarter foreseen revised up two tenths). The implicit GDP deflator stands at +6.2% year-on-year (+1.1 p.p. versus the last quarter). The analysis team’s view: it has been a stronger start to 2023 than was expected. Manufacturing…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The EPA for the first quarter of 2023 allows for different readings to suit all readers’ tastes. Employment fell slightly compared with the previous quarter, but grew by 370,000 compared with the previous year. Therefore, a certain slowdown in job creation, but with a target figure of 20.45 million employed, the highest figure in history. Compared with the previous quarter and the previous year, the data…
The reform of fiscal rules proposed by the European Commission will prohibit public spending from growing above GDP in countries with more than 60% debt or 3% deficit, which will have to present consolidation plans four to seven years ahead. Europe already has the new rules of the budgetary game proposed by Brussels on the table. After years of suspending deficit and debt targets to allow EU partners to fight…
The European Parliament is urgently demanding information from the Spanish government and the European Commission. The long-awaited report of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control, which visited Spain this past February to audit the use of EU funds in our country, is about to be published. The draft report details the main conclusions of this visit and describes the meetings held with the different agents and members of the…
The World Bank has sent a devastating letter to the Spanish government to demand payment of the awards that condemn our country to compensate the companies and investors affected by the retroactive withdrawal of the premiums granted to renewable energies. The ICSID, the World Bank’s international arbitration tribunal, reminded the PSOE and Podemos government that it cannot neglect its obligations and that it must compensate the companies that have suffered…
The Professional Association of the Judiciary, the Francisco de Vitoria Judicial Association, the Independent Judicial Forum, the Association of Prosecutors and the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors have announced in a joint communiqué their intention to call an indefinite strike in the judicial and prosecutorial careers from 16 May. For the moment, the association Judges and Judges for Democracy and the Progressive Union of Prosecutors have not joined the…