European funds need to reach SMEs
BarcelonaThe so-called Catalonia - Next Generation EU Advisory Committee, which brings together 14 experts of recognized prestige to help the Catalan Government select the projects that have to qualify to receive European funds from the anti-covid economic reconstruction plan, made its first recommendations to the government on Wednesday. To begin with, the most important conclusion is that from the more than 500 projects initially presented, a list of 400 has been drawn up, as some have been grouped together to gain consistency and others have been discarded. The recipients of the report were the vice-president, Pere Aragonès, and the Minister for Business and Knowledge, Ramon Tremosa. Aragonès remarked that the European recovery fund is a "great opportunity for the Catalan economy", and he is right. The key, however, will be both the selection of projects and the government's ability to get the Spanish government, who has the final say, to put them on the list of those who will receive funding.
Among the projects presented, for example, there are about thirty from the automotive sector, which is key for the Catalan industrial fabric. The way in which this sector is organized, through a cluster that was created in 2013, can serve as an example for the rest. The Automotive Cluster of Catalonia brings together about fifty companies, from multinationals to SMEs, which have worked together to present projects related to electric cars, new materials, or the 4.0 industry. It is precisely this horizontal collaboration that must allow the Catalan economic sectors to optimise their efforts to obtain funds and, above all, take advantage of them to make a leap towards new technologies and digitalisation, which is one of the criteria that the EU has set for allocating the subsidies.
In any case, it should be stressed that the system chosen by the government of the Generalitat, the creation of an independent committee of experts, is the best way to ensure a clean and transparent process, since the economy of future generations may depend on the way in which these funds are distributed. However, it does not seem that the Spanish government is on the same wavelength, since its decision, which will be made in the next few days, seems to be based on big business, with the creation of mixed public-private companies.
There is a danger, then, that these funds will end up in the hands of the large Íbex companies and not reach the network of SMEs which, especially in the case of Catalonia, gives strength and dynamism to the economy. These funds must have a capillary effect, they must reach innovative projects with the capacity to create value and wealth, regardless of the size of the company. The Catalan parties should take a national stance on this issue and defend before the Spanish government a distribution system that is truly meritocratic and not vitiated by the interests of the State capital.
