 Good morning to our audience and in particular to our guest, the vice president and economy minister of one of the euro area's largest economies. Before very briefly framing today's discussion, let me introduce our speaker. Nadia Calvino has been second vice president and minister for economic affairs and digitalization of Spain since March 2021 and a senior member of the Spanish government since the current socialist party administration took office in 2018. Before her career in national politics, she had a distinguished period as a civil servant in the European commission in Brussels, serving as director general of the of DG budget, deputy director general with special responsibility for financial services and deputy director general in DG competition with special responsibility for mergers and antitrust including cartels. In her remarks today, over 20 minutes or so, the vice president will provide a Spanish perspective on the future of the euro area. Having slowly overcome the truly existential crisis, the single currency suffered in 2010, 2011 and 2012, a new euro crisis beckoned as the pandemic broke out last year, causing economies around the world, including those in Europe, to plunge into recession. Agreement on the euro's only economic policy response was not immediate and acrimony among the members reigned in the first weeks and months of the pandemic. But by last summer, a groundbreaking agreement had been reached which allowed European institutions issued debt in considerable quantities and distribute the monies to member states in the forms of both loans and grants. How all this will be managed, how effective it will be, and how significant development it will end up being are topics the vice president and our discussion are likely to cover over the course of the next hour. As usual, you can put your questions via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, and if possible, please identify yourself when putting forward those questions. Today's discussion and the Q&A are both on the record. Vice president, welcome to the IREA and the floor is yours. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really sorry, I can't go to Ireland and this invitation has been extended for years now and one reason after another made it impossible to make it to Ireland and I'm very sorry, I'm really looking forward to the day we can meet again in person. But nevertheless, I think it is a great opportunity to have this exchange in this format as we're all used to do on a daily basis now. And happy to share some thoughts on what has been going on, what's going on and the outlook in Europe in general and happy to take your questions afterwards. As you were saying, and I fully agree, after this very tough year, very tough months, and I think that Ireland and Spain have been suffering the different waves of the pandemic with a different intensity, but we have both our countries have suffered enormously from a human, from an economic perspective, etc. We are entering a new phase, a recovery phase. All the economic indicators are signaling that that is the case. There is still a high uncertainty, we are now focusing very much on this Delta variant and what's going to happen in terms of the coming weeks. But nevertheless, I think that thanks to vaccination, we all see the light at the end of the tunnel and we have entered a phase where fortunately, discussions are not only about crisis management, but more about how to build back better. Now, what kind of recovery do we want and how to get out of this crisis stronger, more resilient. So I'd like to share three thoughts on the issues that you have put on the table. The first one is that the work to shape the recovery doesn't start now. If we were to begin our job to try to build back better now, we would be already much too late. So fortunately, since March last year, we have taken I think the right decisions. The response to this crisis has been very different to the response to the previous financial crisis. Some of the institutions we put in place at that time have proven to be extremely useful to respond to this one. I'll come to this in a second. And so the decisions we have taken have come already a long way to avoid the structural scarring and therefore to prevent more structural damage, to protect the basis for the recovery. The short-term response that we crafted in the Eurogroup I think has proven to be extremely effective, not to speak about the response of the European Central Bank, obviously, but beyond this short-term financial support. As you rightly said, the agreement reached last July between the European leaders for this next generation EU long-term recovery plan is really groundbreaking. It's a milestone in terms of the building of the European Union. For the first time, we have agreed to borrow together in order to invest together in our common future. And that is shaping the union in a very different fashion going forward. So this very different response I think is showing through all the different macroeconomic indicators. In the case of Spain, we estimate that the drop in GDP in 2020 would have exceeded 25%. More than 3 million jobs would have been destroyed if we had not taken the right measures in March. What we have seen is that very differently from previous economic crisis where a small drop in GDP immediately causes a massive job destruction in the country and therefore starts a very deadly kind of spiral that magnifies the impact of economic cyclical variations. Conversely, to this situation that we have seen in all previous crises, what we have seen this time is that the measures we have taken to protect jobs, to protect the economic tissue, to protect household income has dampened. This impact has minimized the negative impact on the job market and more than 90% of the jobs destroyed have already been recovered. The numbers of people covered by short-term work schemes which in Spain are called are known by the acronym ERTEZ. The numbers are going down and the trend is continuing and therefore that has allowed to protect not only job, not only dependent employees but also self-employed workers and the economic tissue and we see that there's an ability to bounce back much stronger than if we hadn't taken those measures and we would have had a structural scarring. My second reflection is on the outlook and here again I think the economic outlook is positive. I mean yesterday we got the updated forecasts by the European Commission which have for the most part been revised upwards. They signal Spain as one of the fastest growing economies, Ireland too in 2020 and 2021 and that is good but I think the most important challenge ahead is to ensure that this is not just a temporary bouncing back but a solid sustained sustainable in the mid-run recovery. And here again an interesting feature of this crisis which is different to previous crisis is the alignment of narratives throughout the EU and also globally and this is extremely important. We're at a time that economic policy is important but just as important is political economy and the facts that throughout the world everybody's talking about sustainable and inclusive growth is extremely important and 10 years ago you wouldn't expect the IMF to be talking you know using these words and looking for these targets not to speak about the G20 statements which despite the heterogeneity of the G20 members are continuously talking about inclusive and sustainable growth and that I think is due to the increased awareness that we cannot go back to or we have to heal some of the scars that we're still suffering from the previous financial crisis in terms of the increase and then Spain is again a very good example. Since 2008 what we saw was a dramatic drop in investment. Public investment dropped from around four or five percent of GDP to two percent and it did not recover since. Even in those years where there was very strong growth there were some years where investment was scarcely enough to maintain the capital in the country and this is roads and highways this is airports and train stations but this is also hospitals and schools and that drop in public investment translated into also a drop in private investment particularly in the area of R&D and that obviously is dragging potential growth going forward but more interestingly maybe the inequalities rose as a consequence of the financial crisis and the indexes put our country as one of the laggards in terms of some very significant indicators for example in terms of child poverty and society is not going to accept that these indicators amongst others continue to worsen going forward as a consequence of this pandemic and I think there is a very increased a very clear awareness on the side of all the international institutions and the leaders that we absolutely need to avoid that there is a further social scarring as a consequence of this crisis which is obviously hitting most importantly women and the young as happened with the financial crisis for very different reasons because of the vulnerabilities in the labour market because of the intensity of these kind of these groups of citizens in those sectors that have been more severely hit such as tourism and etc but also beyond the short term challenges there is an increased awareness of the need to tackle the more structural trends that have been going on for a while and that have accelerated as a consequence of the pandemic digitalization is an obvious one but also climate climate change is a challenge that that we're becoming increasingly aware of I mean I don't need to to call attention to what's been going on in in North America in recent weeks and so everybody is aware that we need aware of the fact that we need to tackle climate change that we need to invest now to live a better world for future generations. Intergenerational fairness and I close my second point with these I think is a very important guiding principle we must bear in mind because to respond to this crisis we have been forced to issue massive amount of public debt in the case of Spain it will be around 150 billion euros extra debt issuance as compared to who are for our plans before the pandemic hit us and these can be a burden on future generations if we don't manage to make the right decisions now and make the right investments and tackle these structural challenges with the view to providing them with the life and work opportunities and prospects in the future you know in the coming decades. In this sense the Spanish recovery plan is particularly ambitious we want to invest ambitious in quantitative qualitative and also time-wise perspectives very ambitious on a quantitative basis we want to invest around 70 billion euros that's the transfers foreseen for Spain in the next generation EU instruments between 2021 for the most part between 2021 and 2023 so important front loading of these investments with the view to achieving a structural jump if I may call it this way now and so to put the Spanish economy on the right track as soon as possible very ambitious in terms of the structural reforms and the qualitative nature of this investment focusing on human capital focusing on R&D the green transition the digital transition and quite important significant structural reforms and we're making good progress on these reforms on the basis of social dialogue and ambitious from a time perspective as I was saying because there is a front loading of investments and reforms so that we can have a macroeconomic and material impact right now when we need it you know when we need to support a strong sustainable recovery from the pandemic my third and final point is more of a broader European perspective and it is to say my impression is that we have you know as we start to see the way out of the pandemic I think we have to note the fact that we have survived or overcome rather a stress test which goes much beyond the wildest dreams of the meanest kind of macroeconomic forecast or central banker or you know financial supervisor they know no macroeconomic scenario would have foreseen what we have gone through we have taken very significant measures to avoid a financial crisis such as the one we suffered and to avoid this structural scarring we have seen that this is much wiser even from a fiscal point of view we see that the drop in public revenue has been smaller than we would have anticipated last spring the negative impact in terms of unemployment and firm destruction has also been much smaller than some would have anticipated and therefore to a certain extent this test has shown that some of our institutions were up to the test and that some of our institutions are actually anti-fragile you know and so the pandemic has exposed many of our vulnerabilities but let us also look at our strengths you know in that have been confirmed with the response to to this crisis and likewise my impression is that we have a window of opportunity now to tackle these challenges and to take you know takes them and implement some measures that will definitely shape the coming 20 years in the European Union but there are a number of elements that made me optimistic that this time around we will profit or we will use this window of opportunity to ensure that the shaping you know the future shape of the of the European Union is going to be the one that future generations are expecting from all of us because this alignment of discourse of political economy as I was saying kind of statements and speeches no matter the the kind of government the political orientation of the governments no matter the approach that was taken the Christ alignment of the planets throughout the key jurisdictions in the world is is absolutely indispensable in order to ensure to close with this with this expression that we indeed do build back better so I close my remarks with this positive thought and I'm happy to take your questions