Spain occupies the twenty-ninth position among the 38 OECD countries in which epersa freedom is concerned (it obtains 75.2 points), which implies a setback of E by more than six points and seven positions compared to the year 2012, a marked year by the debt shock and the consequences of the financial crisis. This is clear from the report prepared by the Heritage Foundation and published this Monday by the Institute of Economic Studies (IEE). The ranking places the country in the lower-middle area of the table, far from the most prominent positions, which are currently occupied by Singapore, Switzerland and Ireland.
“The consequence of our lack of economic freedom and reduced business freedom is a loss of economic dynamism, job creation capacity and long-term potential growth,” says the employer’s study service. According to the CEOE’s ‘think tank’, among the variables that hinder our economic freedom the excessive size of the public sector, the high tax burdens and the strong fiscal imbalance. In what has to do, specifically with free enterprise, they point to “deficient regulatory quality” as the variable that is penalizing it the most.
According to the same study, the situation is very similar when it comes to economic freedom in general. Spain would be one of the countries that is placed at the bottom of the organization that includes the most developed economies, placing itself in position 35 of the 38 states that conform it after the sharp deterioration that this variable has registered in the last decade. . According to the IEE, in 2012 the national economy ranked twenty-second out of 38.
According to the report, the economies where the freedom of enterprise is higher have lower unemployment rates, of 6.2% on average, compared to those countries with lower records in freedom of enterprise whose average unemployment rates are 10.7%. In Spain and according to data from the Active Population Survey (EPA) for the first quarter, the unemployment rate stood at 13.26%. At the same time, there is a positive link between economic development and free enterprise, since the latter implies “greater flexibility and adaptive capacity of economic agents,” he maintains.
considering the GDP per capita of 2022, in dollars and with purchasing power parity, it is obtained that the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that present a very high freedom of enterprise reach, on average, a GDP per capita of almost $63,900, which is 44.5% higher than the $44,200 per capita, on average, in countries with high or moderate freedom of enterprise.
Criticism of the Financial Client Defense Authority project
In the IEE, an example of regulations that limit the freedom of business is the bill that sought to create the Independent Administrative Authority for the Defense of Financial Clients, which has declined with the recent call for general elections on July 23 and the consequent Dissolution of the Cortes. From his point of view, the initiative infringes the constitutional right to free enterprise, the competent ordinary justice for reasons of the matter (civil or commercial jurisdiction), as well as the lack of balance between the parties when financing the Authority, distance the regulations contained in the Bill of the principles of proportionality and minimum intervention constituting, in our opinion, an “attack on the principle of free enterprise”.
Moreover, they recall that the Bill has suffered strong criticism, not only from companies in the sector, but also in the reports made by both the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the Council of State, and they have an impact on that in a relationship between individuals it may be “contrary to the Constitution” to create a system of out-of-court conflict resolution that is obligatory and that effectively prevents a certain controversy from being resolved by the courts of justice.
