Speeches

Mr President, Madam Vice-President, today we are talking about cutting red tape to improve European competitiveness, but let us be clear: the most serious bottleneck for the reindustrialisation of Spain and Europe is energy, and not because of lack of generation, but because of inability or deliberate refusal to secure supply where it is needed. For example: in Spain, 50% of applications for high power for industry were rejected in 2024; the result: €60 billion of private investment lost. While we are flooded with regulations and discourses on energy transition, the reality is that there is not enough infrastructure or political will to modernize. Without reliable and accessible energy there is no industry, no employment and no economic sovereignty. While other countries multiply their investment in electricity networks, in Spain we are still caught between political interests and suffocating bureaucracy. If we want a competitive industrial future, it is time to end this paralysis: fewer barriers, more infrastructure and more freedom to grow.

Madam President, the Commission is selling us its new plan as a big step towards simplification, but what we have ahead of us is more of the same: empty rhetoric and insufficient measures that arrive late and poorly. We were promised less bureaucracy and more competitiveness, but what we see is a patch that keeps intact this regulatory burden that suffocates our companies. Europe remains entangled in its own web of regulations while Chinese industry moves forward with agility and practicality. Instead of creating a flexible environment for innovation and investment, we continue to add more rules, more conditions, more obstacles... And in the meantime, our companies pay the price in the form of loss of competitiveness, relocation and job destruction. A clear example is the recent regulation on the definitive ban on the sale of combustion engines by 2035, which puts the European automotive industry in jeopardy. This imposition is pushing our companies to close. It is time to give freedom back to our businesses and stop punishing progress with bureaucracy.

Mr President, Commissioner, today I address you with the firmness of rejecting the incorporation of products that do not meet the same conditions and requirements that are required of ours, our farmers, our fishermen and our farmers. This agreement with Mercosur promotes unfair competition. Does it really make up for the price we're going to pay: to consume food without guarantees, with pesticides and plant protection products not allowed in the EU, putting our health at risk? What hypocrisy, gentlemen! We suffocate our farmers with regulations and regulations to favor third countries that do not play by the same rules. It's unfortunate. Who benefits? It is time to reverse this situation and create win-win agreements and, above all, defend the health and well-being of our citizens. And I remind you that our country doesn't want to live on handouts.

Mr President, the European Commission promises us growth, but in reality it brings nothing but spending, regulations and more taxes. How long will Brussels continue to ignore reality? Former ECB President Mario Draghi has already made this clear in his report: Europe is impoverished against the United States because we do not have a dynamic capital market. Companies that want to grow are devoured by taxes and regulations and those that do run away. This plan solves nothing. It does not talk about removing tax barriers, or reducing investment taxes, or allowing labor flexibility, or what companies need to adapt to the age of artificial intelligence. While Europe continues to dream of bureaucratic solutions, money and innovation go to other countries. True competitiveness is not achieved with subsidies and regulations, but with economic freedom and less taxation.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is outrageous to see how the regime of Nicolás Maduro continues to consolidate with impunity, while the international community – including the European Union – is unable to exert effective pressure. But what is truly astonishing is the implicit complicity of the Spanish government led by Pedro Sánchez and his allies on the left, who have helped facilitate the movements of this dictatorship. What do the representatives of the left do, knowing that the Maduro government represses, imprisons and blackmails its Venezuelan citizens and foreigners? Well, nothing, just his complicit silence. It is intolerable that, under the pretext of international solidarity, the Sánchez government maintains dark relations with a dictatorship that threatens fundamental human rights. Spain and the European Union must not be the refuge of dictators or accomplices in their crimes. We must demand transparency and, above all, justice for the Venezuelan people.

Mr President, Commissioner, we cannot align ourselves with the interests of large industries and abandon those who have sustained our nations: farmers, winners and fishermen. The agreement with Mercosur condemns the Spanish primary sector to compete in inequality. Can you imagine for a moment that from January 1 your annual salary will be limited to twenty-seven days worked? Our salary would be about 7 400 euros. Well, distinguished companions, this is what is being demanded of the fishermen: that they live with alms, also paying for new networks and fired diesel and enduring an impossible bureaucracy. Brussels, what's next? They are suffocating our villages and condemning rural Spain to disappear. Europe cannot be sustainable if we destroy its roots. But of course, what can we expect? We don't see our colleagues on the left talking about the primary sector. For them the only important thing is gender quotas. Where will the Ministry of Equality be when farmers and fishermen see how villages are left empty and without opportunities? The only equality they are offered is to disappear together.

Mr President, how are we going to have affordable housing in Spain if the municipalities, the autonomous communities and the State are the main vulture housing funds, the ones that really make it more expensive, and not private activity? Housing must no longer be the source of funding for administrations. In Spain, 32% of the price of housing is land and 25% are taxes: municipal taxes, regional taxes, licenses, state taxes ... It is more than half the price that goes directly to public administrations, which need all this financing to support their structure; This is without counting on the speculation of municipal land, which degenerates into political corruption in most cases. And is that, in Spain, unlike in the rest of Europe, we lead the ranking of countries that have more municipalities and, far from merging and reducing municipalities, we have expanded them. Administrations are more efficient when there is cohesion. We need to address all these problems urgently by encouraging private initiatives in the sector with effective strategies. The mandatory merger of municipalities in Spain is the pending issue.

Mr. President, you're talking about the housing problem. Is it logical that they want to make Europe the home of millions of Africans, while Europeans have no home in which to develop their lives? Lighten up. In some of the cities of Spain, young people and families live in caravans, zulos or balconies for not being able to pay or rent one and we have the biggest crisis of illegal occupation in our history. Meanwhile, European tourists who invest in Spanish housing further aggravate the solution and the problem. There are already areas in Spain, such as the Canary Islands, Malaga or the Balearic Islands, in which three out of four homes are acquired by foreigners and that is a problem for their citizens. Just so far in 2024, the price of housing in Spain has soared twice as much as in the euro zone and more than 35% of the price is taxed. The Bank of Spain says that 600,000 homes are needed until 2025 to fill the housing deficit in our country, despite the fact that there are almost four million empty or unoccupied homes due to the legal uncertainty to which they are subjecting the owners. Therefore, we call on the European Commission, in its announced "affordable housing plan", to stop housing being the collection fund of public administrations and to protect access to housing for natives in areas of high demand.