The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, received yesterday at the Moncloa Palace the Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Ángel Gurría, before whom he defended the “transforming will” of the Spanish Recovery Plan after the COVID-19 crisis.
According to Moncloa in a press release, during the meeting -which took place two weeks before Ángel Gurría leaves the organization, a job that, according to Sánchez, “has transformed the institution“-, the two leaders talked about the present and the future of the organization and about the Spanish presidency of the OECD Ministerial Council during 2020, a stage that Gurría valued “very positively” and in the course of which Spain presented the initiative for safe international mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also discussed the possible incorporation into the OECD of Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria, candidatures which, according to the President of the Government, “have Spain’s support”.
During the meeting, Sánchez and Gurría also discussed the Spanish Recovery Plan and its four axes: digital transformation, ecological transition, social and territorial cohesion, and gender equality. According to the head of the Executive, the plan “has a clear transformational will and, for the first time in our recent history, the necessary resources to undertake these transformations”.
After this meeting, the Mexican leader was received by the Second Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, with whom he addressed “the economic situation and the importance of Spain’s Recovery Plan to promote more sustainable and inclusive growth”, as reported by the Ministry.
Ángel Gurría will meet today with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and will participate next Monday in the IV CEAPI Ibero-American Congress for Leaders of Companies and Business Families, which will be inaugurated by Pedro Sánchez and closed by the King. The event will be held at the Caixaforum center in Madrid on May 17 and 18, in a blended format, and Gurría will participate in a panel with Rebeca Grynspan, Ibero-American secretary general (SEGIB); Mauricio Claver-Carone, president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Núria Vilanova, president of CEAPI; and Enrique V. Iglesias, honorary president of CEAPI.
Last February, Ángel Gurría declared during an informative meeting of New Economy Forum that the European recovery fund after COVID-19 is an opportunity for the “modernization of the economy” in Spain, a country in which the pandemic crisis has had a “very severe” impact due to “the importance of the service sector and tourism”, the “high percentage of small companies” and the temporary nature of employment in our country. In this sense, he added, the Government’s Recovery Plan “is going in the right direction” because it will help to generate “a more resilient, greener and, above all, more inclusive growth”, in contrast to “the previous recovery” after the 2008 financial crisis, in which “many people were left out”.
