The CEOE asks that the request for the 70 billion in loans from European funds be implemented as a Country Plan, with the participation of social interlocutors and Spanish Regions

The CEOE believes it is essential that the application for the 70,000 million in loans from the European recovery funds that Spain will make in the second semester be formulated a Country Plan and not only of the Government, involving social interlocutors and Regions.

“The CEOE is in close dialogue with the European Commission and the Government in this area so it can introduce some improvements. In this sense, we believe it is essential to involve both the social interlocutors and the Regions in formulating the reforms and investments that will be included in the Addendum to the (Recovery) Plan,” says the Confederation. And he adds: “We must correct the scant involvement of the social interlocutors in formulating it.”

This is set out in the third ‘Report on Monitoring of Next Generation Funds in Spain,’ which was prepared by the CEOE’s Office of European Projects and which last week was presented at the meeting of the CEOE’s Board of Directors. The report reviews the state of the roll-out of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and includes proposals for improvement from the point of view of companies.

The text underlines the fact that Spain is leading the receipt of funds already transferred by the EU, since it is the first country to apply for the second disbursement of 12 billion euros, for reaching the milestones and achieving the objectives of December 2021. “We hope and trust that the European Council will ratify the decision in the coming weeks and that this 12 billion will therefore soon reach our country,” the report says.

However, the CEOE recalls that it is essential that the speed at which Spain receives funds be matched by the pace at which the funds reach the real economy. “We see an acceleration in the publication of tenders and calls for tenders, but we still scope to increase this pace, especially in some areas, such as PERTE,” the document notes, adding that “it is necessary to focus on the agility of investments with a view to the following disbursements.

According to European Commission data reported in the document, in 2021 France led the implementation of the funds, with expenditure equivalent to 0.5% of its GDP, while Spain barely reached 0.2%.

The report also emphasises that the shared effort made by companies and the Public Sector is a key element of European funds. Thus, recognising the “very significant” effort being made by the authorities, coordinated by the Government, to maximise the impact of European funds, it recalls that companies are also “working intensely to fine-tune their projects, especially so that they can conform to the various calls for subsidies and tenders for public contracts”.

Transformative impact

Another conclusion of this third report on European recovery funds is the need to ensure they have a transformative impact, such that they provide a notable boost for Spain in terms of employment and economic growth and that calls and tenders do not become “a new Plan E”.

As for the main problems of companies’ access to the funds, those already detected still exist. Thus, the excessive atomisation of the calls and a limited innovative approach in designing them remain two major areas for improvement.

As a departure from previous reports, the CEOE warns that it is detecting high rates of unopposed tenders in public contracts (which AIReF puts at 10%), mainly due to inflation and their low budget allocation. “This uncertainty is making it difficult to mobilise private investment, since the winning company has no guarantee that the investment will be profitable,” he says.

The document also stresses that the lack of aggregate information about the degree to which the funds have been implemented remains an unresolved matter for the Public Sector. “It is necessary to delve deeper into information about calls, tenders and implementation of funds, especially to know the up-to-date details of how many funds have reached the real economy,” he says, also recalling the improvement Regions and Local Authorities.

This, the CEOE’s third ‘Report on Monitoring of Next Generation funds in Spain,’ also includes a monographic analysis of the PERTE approved by the Government and of the promotion of digitalisation, a comparison with other countries and a summary of recommendations and proposals for improvement.