EsadeEcPol considers that key areas of Recovery Plan lack specifics and desire for reform and investment
España Puede, the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan by the Spanish Government, is a considerable effort to organise the strategic priorities of economic policy and provide guidelines in future years for Spain’s biggest public investment programme in decades, as part of the EU Next Generation programme. In this context, the latest policy brief “Reforms, governance and human capital: the big weaknesses of the recovery plan” by EsadeEcPol (the Esade Centre for Economic Policy and Political Economy) examines the plan’s ten leverage policies along with its governance and implementation risks. The EsadeEcPol analysis pinpoints the plan’s strong points and also its main drawbacks, including “a lack of specifics, desire for reform and investment.” In this respect, the EsadeEcPol director, Toni Roldán, explained that “to bring about the proposed transformation, it’s not enough to have several lukewarm reforms and be heavily committed to investment”.
Pros and cons of the plan
EsadeEcPol underlines three positive aspects of the Recovery Plan: firstly, “its accurate diagnosis of the main problems facing Spain’s economy; secondly, “its alignment with the priorities set out by the European Commission and the European recommendations for Spain in the European Semester, particularly regarding the digital and ecological shift”; and finally, “the elimination of several very controversial reforms suggested by certain sectors of the government”.
However, “the main drawback of the document is its lukewarm commitment to reforms and investment in education and knowledge, from non-university education to active policies and going digital, including its scant mention of university reform and low spending of the science and R&D budget”, said EsadeEcPol. It also identified the following failings: “a lack of specifics and desire for reform in key areas such as pensions, the job market, public administrations, green tax and the domestic market”.
Governance and implementation risks
As regards the governance of the plan, EsadeEcPol pinpoints two areas with room for improvement. Firstly, “excessive opacity in the way projects and investments are selected”, which “could lead to a sub-par selection of projects biased towards well-established economic agents to the detriment of more innovative ones – concerns not dispelled by the Royal Decree of December 31”. Secondly, EsadeEcPol feels that “the document reveals a lack of commitment to evaluation and accountability: it contains no metrics, processes or measurable goals for weighing up the suitability and effectiveness of earmarked investments.”
Finally, in its assessment of implementation risks, the EsadeEcPol report cautions that “one of the biggest obstacles to the plan’s success will be ensuring that responsibilities are shared by the agents needed for successful implementation.” In this respect, Toni Roldán pointed out that, “so far, almost a year after the first agreements began to be forged in Brussels, no effort has been made to reach broad agreements in parliament: not a good sign,” and likewise, “the involvement of autonomous regions, local entities and representatives of civil society in the processes has been limited,” he concluded.
