A month has passed since Russia invaded Ukraine and its consequences are going to be very relevant. On Thursday, Larry Fink, the chief executive of Black Rock, said that Ukraine would force a reversal of globalization, which would inevitably have inflationary effects.
At the moment the summits in brussels from Biden and of the EU leaders are facing the new reality. Yes to Putin NATO unnerved it, the invasion has reinvigorated it. Now NATO, which recently Macron said he was in cerebral palsy, will significantly increase the delivery of weapons to Ukraine. Zelensky It has achieved something that seemed impossible, resisting the offensive of a much superior power. Putin does not get out, but he has nuclear weapons. You have to bend him, without coming into direct conflict because the consequences could be terrible.
And beyond the war, Europe must welcome more than three million people. The largest volume of refugees in many years. A great humanitarian challenge. Poland, the main neighbor, is overturned, but it is already at the limit.
How far should and can the sanctions on Russia go? The needs of all countries must be considered. Biden is pressing for Europe to stop buying Russian gas and thus suffocate Putin more, but Germany is highly dependent and cannot do so in the short term. The chancellor scholz he has said in the Bundestag that doing so would drag Germany, and Europe, into a recession and put entire industrial sectors and tens of thousands of jobs at risk. With common sense he says that “sanctions cannot harm European countries more than Putin himself & rdquor ;.
In addition, governments must prevent the increase in the price of gas and the scarcity of raw materials abort the economic recovery. It is not easy because inflation has already reached very worrying rates – higher than 5% in the EU average and 7% in Spain – which will generate discomfort. The German coalition government has just agreed – not without tensions between its three partners – another support package for the economy.
On the contrary, in Spain there are many pending urgent decisions. The truckers’ strike, not promoted by the representative organizations of the sector but in social networks – and which the Government clumsily ignored – threatens supply and already has a lot of impact. The CEOE and the foster -who recently agreed with Sánchez on the labor reform- affirm “that the Government’s inaction is beginning to be desperate and puts the economic survival of companies, families and the self-employed at risk.” They are not minor words.
Related news
But, just as Germany cannot do without Russian gas in the short term, our big problem is that the increase in the price of gas has turned the European pricing system electricity – which has its reasons – into an absurdity. It automatically leads to aligning with that of gas -which does not count much in our production- the price of that coming from renewables, hydraulics and nuclear. Today in Spain, perhaps less so in other countries like Germany with more weight from gas, decoupling its price from that of electricity is an urgent need so as not to condemn many companies to closure and so that families do not see their purchasing power drastically curtailed. It will not be easy. How and who compensates the gas companies? And without endorsement from Brussels it would be even more complicated.
The economy and social peace of Spain are therefore going to depend a great deal on the results of the Brussels summit. And Pedro Sánchez risks his future.