Bloomberg, Audio studios, podcasts, radio news.
Prime Minister Spain thank you for talking to Bloomberg. It's a pleasure to have you. It's a pleasure. I just looked. Out of all Europe's leaders, you are the one who seems most prepared to disagree with President Trump. You champion the cause of recognizing Palestine, you push you pushed against the five percent limit on defense spending, also been very
close to China. I mean, when you heard his speech yesterday, did you which seemed to depict Europe as kind of hellhole, did you think that was Do you think that was aimed at you?
Well, I think i'm respectfully at disagree with President Trump a statement because you know, he took migration and climate change, as I would say, the.
Major challenges that we have to fight against for.
And I said, well, look, if you took the experience of his pain is the contrary. So thanks to claim to these green policies, we have dropped the electricity prices since twenty seventeen till now by fifty percent, so that enables us to gain competitiveness, and thanks to that, we are witnessing this extraordinary outcome of the economic growth in Spain, we represent thirty percent of the total economic growth of
the European Union. And when it comes to migration, in the last seven years we have received two million migration migrants, while at the same time we have dropped by forty percent the unemployment rate.
So only all, what.
I'm trying to say is that green transition and migration when it comes on regular basis are positive for the economic development of a country.
Do you think your fellow leaders in Europe could be braver about making those comments.
I think that we that we need to keep Transatlantic bond and to strengthen that Transtalentic bond.
It is in the.
True that we need to combine it with other policies such as, for instance, trade diversification. That is why we are we've been very vocal in reaching this agreement between the European Union and Americasur, which it would be definitely a game changer in in our economic ties with other
regions of the world. And second, what we do, what we need to do within the European Union is to do our homework, as the former central banker Maria Draghi always remind us, and that means that we need to deepen single market, that we need to review our competition policy in order to scale up a big companies in Europe and try to be you know, as good as competitive as a global corporation are in in the U.
S and other and other parts of the World's.
Very interesting that you look at what's happened. Your economy has grown very well two point seven percent. You look at what's happening in other countries on the periphery, like Greece, there is a very interesting thing. A few years ago we were used to saying the periphery is the problem and the core is great. Now it's the other way around. France, Germany, Britain barely growing at all. Do you think it is now the center of Europe that is the problem in the economy.
No, not at all.
I mean Germany is a big country, big economy, also France, and we always suspect a positive let's say, dynamic in their economy is that it isn't it true that from the south we can contribute to the economic growth of the European Union. So for instance, when you see that sixty percent of the electricity generation in Spain comes from renewable sources, that means that we have a potentiality that we can contribute to the autonomous static autonomy.
Is exposing that you to France.
Yeah, well, okay, we need to interconnect better our greeds, but we are We're trying to convince our friends in France to do so. So only know what I'm trying to say is that if you see the economic figures of the self in Europe, especially Spain, that represents and as said before, thirty percent of the total economic outcome of economic outcome of the European Union. That means that we have achieved many reforms that were demanded by the.
European Commission over the last years.
So we have achieved to reform our labor market, our patient system, our educational system, and also our energy policy and digitalization, along with the contribution of migration. So it is true that these pillars also show that the economic background or pillars of Spain are quite solid if you compare to previous periods such as the one before the financial crisis.
Also a selfish question from the point of view all the foreign investors looking at this, Many people want to invest in Spain for all the reasons you said, But you want to introduce one hundred percent tax on them if they want to buy a house there a second time.
No, not at all, not at all.
What we need to face is a real challenge that I think that across Europe and also in England in the UK you're suffering, especially the youth, but not only youth, which is the lack of or the impossibility to access to a house or to emancipate in the case of our youth. What we did is for all British people or European people that want to buy a house for living, they won't pay taxes.
Yeah, but this is the point.
We need also to understand that we need to solve a problem of housing that we have in Spain. But all in all, if you see now the figures of the real estate sector and how we are speeding the process of construction in Spain is quite amazing. Nowadays we have increased by sixty three percent construction of how let's say, public housing, whilst the private sector has increased the like thirteen percent during the last year.
It's a bit about the relationship to the economy and politics. The economy seems to be going very well for you. In politics, it's harder your party is behind the Patty do popular. We also got Vox coming up this much more right wing outfits and in the current polls you would lose if the election. What do you think the problem is? You've got a good economy, unlike most other European prime ministers, and yet you're still behind.
Pulls that polls. I mean, of course you have to look into it. You have to see.
What I am defending is that unfortunately we're seeing not only in Spain but across Europe political collapse of the center right traditional parties, which by the way, it started after the financial crisis, with the failure of governments, with all this rhetoric of austerity UH, banking UH and the financial rescue that we had to pay with taxes all
around Europe. And what you see now from the center right is that they are copying not only the way of doing politics of oi right, but also the contents. So you see now that they are like identifying migration with insecurity, which is a fake.
It is not true.
And and by the way, as I said before, when when you when when you see the figures in Spain, you can see that we had a we we have the contribution of migration, but at the same time, we're reducing unemployment rates in Spain and our sectors such as construction, agro industry, or social services or tourism, which in Spain are quite important. We're up to twenty thirty percent of the total workers comes from different countries and other Spain. So what we need to do is to face that
we need migration. But for that migration, what we need to open is a path of regular migration. And this is what we are doing with many countries in Latin America, also with the US administration, with the previous administration, we reach a very interesting program in order to have this circular migration coming from the US and of.
Course some countries in North Africa.
But in all the contribution of migration to the economic growth in Spain is quite quite positive.
A few bridling for that fight. So you will, you will definitely lead the Socialists in twenty twenty seven into the election.
Yeah, I will do it, for sure.
This is something that I have already spoken with by family and with by party, and if they allow me, I'm confident that we can repeat a majority and to keep the work ahead. Not but let me add, coming back to migration, that the dilemma that all Western societies we're facing is whether we open up and grow or we close off and shrink. This is the real dilemma that we need to face. So the challenge that we have within the Epean society is how do we integrate this migration.
So you think it's easier in Spain because you've got a lot of people from Latin America where everyone speaks the same language, that that's at least part of the argument why you might.
Have been better.
So when you listen to some center right parties and the far right there saying not what we we need to expel all these migrants come into our Okay, So what we do with demographics, because either you have natalis how do you say family policies? Yes, class migration, but they don't propose anything in these two policies, no migrants and less welfare state and therefore less family policies. Uh, and that means social services, wealth, healthcare and social security and so on and so forth.
So what I'm trying to say is that if we don't.
Have this contribution of migration, what we will face in the coming years in Europe is that we have anest technicians. We don't we won't have the capacity to growth and therefore there would be more cuts in our welfare state. So so this is this is something that we need to explain to our citizens that if we particulate a positive migration policy, that would be for the good of
the Europeans and the Western societies. So, just to give you a figure, ninety four percent of the total migrants that are living nowadays in Spain came from regular let's say systems, and they are they came on legal basis. So we're talking about only six percent and this is this is the reality. So I think that we need to fight and to give a positive, let's say message about the contribution of migration to our societies and to our prosperity.