catalan views

...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.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

Things in Spain are never exactly what they seem to be. This is a painful lesson that even Angela Merkel must have learnt in recent days, especially since she put her credibility so much on the line in backing the country’s deficit reduction efforts. “Spain has really done its homework and I think it is on the right track,” is the message she has been trying to sell to the world. Finding out that the Spanish deficit was not the 6% of GDP she had been promised, but a minimum of 8.2% in 2011 cannot have been a pleasant experience for her.

On December 10^th we commemorated the 63^rd anniversary of the approval by the General Assembly of the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1]. As we celebrated the Human Rights Day and the immense triumph of the international community we need to closely read the text and remember the fundamental freedoms enshrined in it, which each human being without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language or religion, is entitled to.