The Council of Ministers has continued on Tuesday with the dynamics of recent weeks, marked by the elections next Sunday. First, it has given the green light to the announcements made over the weekend such as the €38.5 million that will be dedicated to mental health, the Parity Law project and a game of 580 million for the improvement of infrastructures and endowments of Primary Care centers. In parallel, the economic vice president of the Government Nadia Calviño has announced that hopes to have the endorsement of Brussels next week to launch the €550 million program in aid for the deployment of 5G in rural areas.
This was stated by Calviño during the press conference after the Council of Ministers, in which he stated that he hopes to convene the UNICO 5G Active Networks program, which is financed with European funds Next Generation. Specifically, the objective of this injection of money is to promote the deployment by the operators of the necessary infrastructures (active and passive equipment, antenna…) forto bring this technology closer to municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants and that lack coverage of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps).
Law of Parity
Regarding the future Law of Parity, this has already been sent to the Congress of Deputies, and its objective is to force no sex to have a weight of less than 40% in the management of companies, members of the Government, electoral candidacies and bodies of the Judiciary such as the Constitutional Court. Calviño has affirmed that its application will be made in different deadlines: before July 1, 2024 in the case of listed companies and until July 2026 in non-listed companies with more than 250 employees and an annual turnover of 50 million euros. For their part, public interest entities will have until June 30, 2028.
The also head of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, has highlighted that the sanctioning regime of the future norm “differentiates situations” and, among them, “it is more inflexible in the participation of women in the board of directors with respect to management positions” as well as with the large listed companies compared to the rest. “It is an important step towards effective parity, but without establishing disproportionate demands for large companies or for small ones. The sanctioning regime is proportionate and avoids the negative impact. With this rule, Spain is at the forefront in terms of parity and breaking the glass ceiling,” Calviño pointed out.
Decent job
In parallel, the Ministry of Labor has reported in a press release that the Council of Ministers has also endorsed the decent employment promotion plan prepared together with the autonomous communities and contemplates, for the first time, a portfolio of common services for workers and that contemplates the reality of SMEs. In addition to taking into account the circumstances of groups such as the disabled, people in situations of social exclusion, people with family responsibilities, victims of terrorism and women victims of gender violence. Total, only in active employment policies, up to 6,388 million will be awarded of euros of which 2,572 million have already been distributed among the autonomous. To which another 231.8 million from the Recovery Plan have been added.
It was not the only announcement made today by Calviño that, “in the next few days”, it will launch 18 chairs university-company within what is known as Perte del Chip, to promote talent and academic specialization in the area of semiconductors and which will have an investment of around 80 million allocated to public and private universities. In parallel, “soon” will open the call for the chip missions which with 60 million euros in public investment will promote research centers in the development of cutting-edge microelectronic design and alternative architectures.
