Economic policy of Zapatero’s government: continuity, change, new unknown factors

Abstract

As we did in the final years of previous governments, our board proposes with this text an assessment of the economic policy of the present socialist government. The first section will analyse the growing model of the preceding period (the Aznar–Rato era). But Spanish economy has an underlying problem (section 2); it is noteworthy the persistent differential inflation, due to excess demand and lack of offer adaptation that is translated into a strong adverse balance on current account, in other words, lack of sufficient competition and competitiveness loss from low productivity. Section 3 analyses the economic policy of Zapatero’s government, going over some of its most significant fields of performance; a field, by the way, relatively reduced due to the Euro zone membership. The National Reform Programme, that we qualified as “frustrated” is summarised in section 4; we also assess briefly the performance level of objectives. The title of the next epigraph, “The policy of the economic policy” reflects how some action lines of the current government determine significantly the future economic policy. Our editorial concludes with a summary of what we call the “chiaroscuros” of managing continuity and change at the same time.