Spain expects 45 million foreign tourists this year. Minister Maroto considers it “prudent” and “realistic” to estimate that half of the prepandemic visitors will come.

Optimism regarding tourism . Spain expects to receive 45 million foreign visitors this year , as anticipated by the Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto , during the presentation of a campaign to promote the country of car this summer.

Last season, the sector registered a collapse of 80%, from 83.5 million tourists in 2019 as a result of restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic . Previously, the Executive had already estimated that it expected to reach half of the pre-pandemic levels this same year.

“It is a prudent forecast , it is realistic to recover half of the international tourists we receive in 2019,” Maroto said at a press conference. Before covid-19, Spain was the second world tourist destination.

The ministry has precisely launched a promotional campaign to which it allocates about 8 million euros, to return to being an attractive destination, despite the obstacles caused by the pandemic. The Government trusts that the acceleration of the vaccination process will forge the image of a safe destination.

The campaign has the slogan ‘You deserve Spain’ and is aimed at the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Poland and Sweden. The minister has stressed the importance of British tourism and has asked the authorities of that country to allow visits to State territories with low incidences.

The United Kingdom has not included Spain among the 12 countries that have the ‘green traffic light’ to travel with practically no restrictions on the return. Maroto has said that he hopes that in its next review, Lonsres will take into account the epidemiological differences between the territories and allow travel to areas with low accumulated incidences of covid , such as the Valencian Community.

A recognition of the sustainable innovation of SMEs and the self-employed. The Fundació Antigues Caixes Catalanes and BBVA announce the second edition of an award that distinguishes companies with good environmental practices.

The Predictive Company, Cargobici, Oimo and Shotl are the firms that are up for the award.

The preponderance of SMEs in the Catalan and Spanish business fabric is well known. Up to 99.8% of the country’s companies are included in this category , although companies considered small – from 10 to 49 workers – and medium – from 50 to 249 workers – are also a minority, and only represent a little more. 6% of the companies, while the rest are micro-businesses and self-employed.

In response to this reality and with the aim of promoting business innovation in the field of sustainability, the BBVA Award for Environmental Innovation for SMEs and Self-Employed was launched in 2019 .

This year the second edition of the award is celebrated, the winners of which are chosen taking as a reference the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, established by the United Nations General Assembly, and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) , with special attention to the that focus on the environment.

The award is convened and co-organized by the Fundació Antigues Caixes Catalanes and BBVA, and also has the collaboration of the Fundació Pimec, CECOT, the Col·legi d’Economistes and EL PERIÓDICO .

4 FINALIST COMPANIES
In the second edition of the awards, 36 projects were presented, from which 4 finalists were selected.

This is The Predictive Company (TPC) , a spin-off of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia that has developed energy efficiency software for buildings; Cargobici , a start-up that offers last-mile logistics solutions in the urban environment; Oimo , an emerging new materials and ecodesign company specializing in the development of sustainable biodegradable marine packaging; and Shotl, a firm that helps transportation operators and cities make better use of their bus system by replacing low-occupancy routes with on-demand transportation systems.

The winner of the award will be announced during a closed-door event at the Recent Modernista in San Pau on Wednesday, May 19 at 5:00 p.m. , and can be followed live through this link .

During the award ceremony, the presentation SMEs and the SDGs: a business opportunity, too , will be given by Mireia Cammany , vice president of PIMEC and deputy general director of EPI industries family of companies. The conference will focus on the economic environment derived from the 2030 Agenda and how this context can represent a business opportunity for SMEs.

Spain will receive over the next five years a total of 142,000 million euros from NextGeneration EU funds for post-covid reconstruction and (a part of) citizens want to know who takes them, why they and not others and what they use them for.

This Wednesday the Open Generation EU platform was presented in society , formed by a group of researchers and activists who demand more transparency from the Government in the management of these funds and to guarantee an “auditable process for citizens” so that they do not remain only in large companies and “reach SMEs, the self-employed and the social economy.”

“We want to be able to know for whom these funds are going, for what, and to be able to control whether the objectives set in the [Recovery and Resilience] Plan are being met,” said Sandra Vicente , one of the platform’s spokespersons.

From Open Generation EU they denounce the lack of resources in control bodies, such as the Independent Office for the Regulation and Supervision of Procurement ( OIReScon ); that it only has 12 workers to supervise all the public contracting derived from the arrival of those 142,000 million.

In this sense, the speakers recalled that the Council of State published a report in which it assured that there were clear deficiencies in the guarantees of control and transparency in the law that will regulate the management and allocation of funds.

For this reason, they have urged the Government to provide more resources to the transparency portal and the administrative litigation courts , in the event of possible complaints of violation of the criteria for the allocation of said funds.

“It is a lot of money, they are going to ask us for a lot of reforms in return and it is the last opportunity to undertake the social, ecological and economic transformation,” added Emma Avilés , another of the spokespersons.

The Open Generation EU spokespersons have warned of the risk that part of the management of European funds ends up falling on private consulting firms, thus deriving a significant part of public resources to pay for these services.

An example of this, as they have stated, is the 1.5 million euro tender that the Ayuso Administration announced on May 5 so that, in just two days, the consultants will apply to advise the Community of Madrid on the management of EU funds. “If these funds are to modernize the public administration, why do we outsource it to private consultancies,” Avilés asked himself.

Congress has a vote pending
Open Generation EU has been presented in society this Wednesday, although it has been working with different political groups in Congress in recent months to introduce amendments and modify the royal decree approved by the Executive that will govern the governance of the funds.

As a result, Más País and CUP have already registered their amendments; while ERC, Bildu and C’s have transferred to them that they will do the same with theirs shortly.

However, the spokespersons have criticized that the Bureau of Congress has not yet set a date for voting on these amendments to modify the current rules for the management and governance of European funds.

And they warn that, if said vote is postponed for a longer time, the allocation and implementation of said funds will be carried out with a royal decree approved by the Government, but without the supervision of the parliamentary groups.

Open Generation EU is a platform that has the support of 27 civil society organizations , such as Intermón Oxfam, Ecologistas en Acción, Xnet, Political Watch and the Public Debt Audit Platform (PACD); among others.

4 out of 10 companies do not comply with the registration of the working day. UGT de Catalunya denounces that an important part of the companies does not comply with the obligation to effectively control the working time of their staff and that half do not pay overtime

Two years after the entry into force of the mandatory working day registration , four out of ten companies do not comply correctly with the standard. This is derived from a survey conducted by UGT among its affiliates and published this Wednesday, which confirms a broad breach of the obligation of companies to effectively control the working time of their staff.

The data are in line with the balance that the Labor Inspection data allows, according to which two out of every three companies do not pass a review in terms of working times .

From the UGT they denounce that there are a significant number of companies that do not comply with current regulations and that the coronavirus has not contributed to the directions being applied in this matter. According to data compiled by the INE union, more than 4.3 million overtime hours were worked in Catalonia in 2020 .

Of these, half were not paid. A flow of unpaid work that, according to the union’s calculations, would create 2,600 jobs throughout Catalonia and represent a loss for the public treasury of 124 million euros.

Having a working day record but that the ‘official’ hours that leave at the end of the day are not the same as those that have actually been worked is the most common non-compliance detected by the central. 19.9% ​​of those surveyed by UGT affirm that they work more hours than those registered. And then there is another 13% who do not directly register their day.

The Telework has been a novelty that has distorted routines in businesses and one of the victims of this has been the record day. Well, according to the UGT survey, half of the people who started practicing remotely stopped registering their working hours properly; Either because before they operated with a manual signing and stopped doing it, or because once after signing they continued teleworking.

From the central they consider that the scarcity of resources of the Labor Inspectorate is one of the reasons that the implementation of this law still presents clear gaps. Like the low amount of infractions, punishable by amounts of up to 6,262 euros per company , regardless of the size of its workforce.

Caixabank-Bankia, Banco Santander, El Corte Inglés, Airbus, BBVA, Coca Cola, Douglas … large Spanish companies are carrying out this year the Employment Regulation File (ERE) to reduce their workforce, which affects thousands of workers.

Some of them will be able to take advantage of pre-retirement processes, but many of them will have no choice but to look for a new job.

Obligation when EREs affect more than 50 staff members
As established by the legislation, in this type of process, whenever it affects 50 or more people of the workforce, the company is obliged to contract a repositioning program.

From Adecco they explain that the outplacement programs are accompaniment processes for all those professionals who, due to various circumstances, are forced to leave the companies.

“The main objective of these career transition programs is none other than to guide said professional in his new stage, define his objective, promote the improvement of his employability and generate new professional opportunities that fit his expectations in the shortest possible time” , they emphasize from the company.

Are outplacement programs really effective?
LHH, the Adecco Group consultancy specialized in accompanying organizations in their transformation processes, has been analyzing their outplacement programs for 15 years. And they finish the outplacement programs by studying the nearly 5,000 candidates they served during 2020.

According to Marcos Huergo, director of LHH Spain: “After one year of the pandemic it has been shown that, in the process of searching for a new job, outplacement programs are more necessary and effective than ever. The data reflects that in 2020 78% of our candidates found a new job in less than a year and 88% of them did so through long-term contracts ”.

One year after the pandemic, outplacement programs have proven to be more necessary and effective than ever

Employment battered by coronavirus
From Adecco they emphasize that “one year after the pandemic began, employment is still battered, the impact of the third and fourth wave of coronavirus infections has been harsh, and Spain is close to four million unemployed. In addition, there are almost 750,000 workers who are still at ERTE ”.

6.3 versus 12.2 months: the difference between attending the programs or not
For all this, they emphasize the importance of outplacement programs, since while the professionals relocated in this way take an average of 6.3 months to find a job again, the rest of the unemployed Spaniards (who are not covered by these programs ) spend on average twice as long, specifically 12.2 months.

Broken down by periods, we see that 24% of relocated people have taken less than three months to occupy a new job, down 14 percentage points compared to the last year (38%). Subsequently, most of the relocated (30%) relocate between the fourth and the end of the sixth month.

That is, 54% of 2020 candidates have been repositioned in the first 6 months from the start of the plan. This percentage has dropped significantly when compared to 2019, which was 86% (-32 pp), largely due to the extreme situation that occurred last year as a result of the health crisis and which caused more destruction than job creation in our country.

Finally, another 24% have obtained a job in a period that goes from the 7th to the 11th month of the program (+10 pp compared to 14% in 2019). This implies that 78% of the candidates immersed in a relocation process in 2020 have found a job in a period of less than a year, Adecco emphasizes.

Banks, the majority sector of origin of the candidates
According to the XV LHH Report on Outplacement, the sector from which the most candidates in these outplacement programs come is banking, since 24% of the participants in these processes came last year from that sector, affected by numerous staff adjustments.

In second place, but far behind, is the automotive and transport sector, with 15%. This is followed by the pharma-chemical and biotechnology sector, whose candidates account for 10% of the participants.

Below 10%, there are workers from the sectors of industrial manufacturing and services, IT and telecommunications, retail and the public sector. Less protagonism in these programs are workers who come from sectors such as energy and construction, which are around 5%.

Below that 5% are consumer services, the manufacture of consumer products, and the real estate sector. Each of these areas brings together between 4% and 3% of the participants.