catalan views

We are commemorating 300 years since the signing of the treaties of Utrecht, which left Catalonia's aspirations blatantly abandoned by its European allies. This is one of the meanest pages of the continent's modern history, failing to spare Catalans from deathly aftershocks.

2012, probably not the end of the world outside Europe. After these doomed years of Icelandic ash, Greek tragedies, Spanish influenza and what-have-you; amid desperate efforts to save the Euro from this kulturkampf-reloaded now involving the whole subcontinent... A sensible observer would see the language regime of the European Union (EU) neither as a matter of top concern nor as the source of its biggest problems. Yet a certain degree of nuance would do our observer no harm. United in Diversity, the unborn Constitution’s unwanted motto for 'Europe'. Just how diverse, though?

...an out-of-business company doesn’t create any

Catalonia’s labour relations framework needed to become closer to European standards: we understand that the recently approved reform takes us in the right direction. For Catalonia, the context for optimal business activity is a strong, leading, and solvent Europe, and the past few years have shown us that better coordination and greater unity of action is needed. Because we share a market and a currency, we consider it obvious that the distance between the different fiscal and labour treatments in place in the different member states and regions must be shortened. The Spanish Government’s labour reform, already in force, points in that direction: it levels us with European standards.

Just four months ago, the new Government took office with a sword of Damocles hanging over its head: the responsibility to adopt the right measures to overturn our labour market’s critical situation. Up until now, it appeared that it was not enough having 400 companies going out of business everyday over the last three years, reaching an absolute unemployment record or returning to the situation of an economic recession. The Labour Reform was one of the most awaited measures and it had the entire country with their fingers crossed in order to see that for once the Government had carried out the right changes within our labour market and provided the tools to make the continuity of our business projects viable.