More than a year ago, my colleague Mercedes Oleaga and I built a reflection whose essential elements I allow myself to recover now because they seem valid for the “Competitiveness Pact” process that is marking Germany and in the that urges other states of the Union to be involved, including of course Spain. It can also be valid for that other concertation process that runs in parallel at the Madrid Government level between union and business representatives and the Spanish government itself.
I would also like to encourage the governments of the Autonomous Communities (and particularly mine, the AC of the Basque Country), to join this process of shaping shared commitments because in their hands are the great powers necessary to make the goal a reality. change. The educational system depends on them; in their hands are active employment policies and industrial and business promotion policies; all have transferred healthcare and have extensive powers in technology, environment, territory, housing or infrastructure, to name some of the key attributions of this process.
The town halls must also quickly turn to this movement, without whose participation any structural change would remain lame. They are the closest to the citizen and it is they, more than anyone, who have to internalize that the current urbanization model of our municipalities is exhausted and that it is necessary to reinvent the city.
The approach is complex and, in any case, exceeds a simple opinion article. Even so, we dared at the time to collect ten keys on which to support the agreement as a decalogue for sustainable and unifying economic development. I expose the statement of the same and you can go to read the full development in the reference article.
1. Visibly and radically prioritize investment in knowledge (and in its main generation tool, R&D), strengthening the structure and system of innovation and knowledge and cementing the links between education, training and the sector productive.
2. The convinced and coordinated commitment to the key technologies of the new world economic order as a mechanism for accelerating industrial diversification and updating the technological skills of companies. It would be a matter of reinforcing, at least, those that seem nuclear in the future, such as Bio-Sciences and Bio-Technologies; Nano-Sciences and Nano-Technologies; Advanced Electronics and Information and Communication Technologies; as well as energy technologies.
3. Awareness that the very challenges of the Western society in which we are immersed are also a source of great economic opportunities in areas such as health, socio-sanitary services or the progressive aging of our society, which will require of new products and new technological solutions yet to be developed.
4. Be aware of the physical basis of our planet (finite resources) and finally decouple economic growth from the consumption of natural resources, internalizing environmental costs.
5. The conviction that it is the citizenry as a whole that must forge the change and that it is not a matter of a sector of society or an elite.
6. The adherence to new values linked to risk and the passion to undertake; to creativity and innovation; to share to compete; to quality, excellence and the ambition to do things well; to a new relationship of citizens with the natural environment; to sustainable consumption and solidarity as a value of coexistence also in the new model.
7. The recognition that companies are the fundamental actors in the change process.
8. An explicit commitment to good governance based on effective administration and a new and healthy institutional architecture adapted to the demands of the new context.
9. An agreement to agree on a broad tax reform aimed at economic reactivation that includes a reconsideration of the role of VAT, changes in the taxation of SMEs on investments in R+D+i and includes environmental damage from business activity.
10. Lastly, the commitment to the construction of cities on a human scale, understanding the City as a catalyst for creativity and knowledge generation, taking advantage of economic opportunities in new urban services and committing to urban and landscape regeneration derived from the consequences of the model still in force.
Reiterate support for everything that goes in this direction and encourage political and institutional representatives to gain some perspective to understand that the agreements should not help lead to structural change in the current social and economic system.