Aurelio Martinez: “Aid from Europe has to come now. It must be used to save the sick, not to resurrect dead”
He agrees with Vicente Pallardó that “it is essential that the funds that have been approved for Europe’s recovery arrive as soon as possible, or it may be too late”
The analyst from the Institute of International Economics (IEI) points out that “these resources cannot be subordinated to countries that do not behave properly, they will have to be sanctioned in other ways but not by blocking these funds”
Pallardó: “Spain must present quality projects in infrastructure, digitalisation and green transformation to take advantage of these investments to generate employment and wealth”
The IEI analyst stresses that projects such as the new North Terminal are “essential, crucial and basic” for economic activity on the line marked by Europe
Aurelio Martínez, President of the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV), and Vicente Pallardó, analyst of the economic situation of the Institute of International Economy (IEI), have demanded, in the presentation of the Quarterly Report on the Economic Environment, the immediate arrival of the European structural funds to favour economic activity and business recovery. “The aid must be used to save the sick, not to resurrect dead, which is what can happen if it arrives within a year. It is therefore essential that the aid approved by Covid-19 for Europe’s recovery should arrive as soon as possible,” explained Aurelio Martínez.
Along these lines, Vicente Pallardó indicated that “we must act immediately to curb the economic and health costs of the crisis and apply the structural funds that Europe has approved as quickly as possible. Every month that the arrival of these funds is delayed, more companies and jobs are going to be unrecoverable”. For the IEI expert, these resources “must be used quickly and well, and to do this Europe must stop linking these funds to anything that does not work, and if a certain country behaves inappropriately, it must be sanctioned in another way, but not by blocking the application of these resources intended for recovery”.
On the use of European Union aid, the IEI analyst stressed that “Spain must have quality projects, both new ones and those already underway, which generate wealth and employment in infrastructure, digitalisation and green transformation. It is essential to support this type of project because otherwise we will be wasting a considerable opportunity. Now that Europe has committed itself and is active, we must be able to take advantage of it”.
Thus, he pointed out that investment projects such as the new North Terminal of the Port of Valencia are “essential, crucial and basic as they will generate wealth and qualified employment which is exactly what we need. Europe is telling us that it is making 140 billion available for Spain to generate high added value infrastructure projects such as the one designed for the port of Valencia”.
“The Spanish government can get into debt because the European Central Bank (ECB) is going to cover all the debt. For this reason, any project that could be supported by the central executive right now must be activated and then benefit from European funds”, underlined Pallardó, who continued that if the ECB’s purchase of debt is limited at any time or reaches its limit without the European recovery funds being in place, “we will find ourselves with company and job losses, which is why it is very important that they are functioning in the first half of 2021”. The IEI specialist pointed out that the funds have a deadline of 2021-2026, which is why “they must be applied now, because if the projects are postponed we will not be able to start them, as they are initiatives that need months to be prepared and years to see results”.
Marked by the Covid-19
During the presentation of the report, Pallardó pointed out that Spain is among the countries with the greatest drop in economic activity and cases of Covid-19 per hundred thousand inhabitants. For the IEI analyst, it is necessary to demand a careful assessment because “this is the fifth epidemic of the 21st century, more are going to arrive and we must learn from the future in order to act quickly and efficiently”.
Thus, he explained that investment has been falling in recent decades in the main European countries and what we must do is promote it “because it is future growth, it is jobs and wealth for the coming years. The West has a problem in generating the jobs of the future and therefore must encourage and favour investment projects”.