Our Constitution acknowledges the pivotal role of employers’ associations. Article 7 of the Preliminary Title recognises their role (along with the trade unions) as organisations key to the defence and promotion of economic and social interests, a point further bolstered in Article 22 and in the freedom of association it advocates. Our Constitution also details specific requirements in respect of the internal structure of employers’ associations, their ends and their functioning. It is emphatically important that employers’ associations should be exemplary institutions, both for society and for their associates. Among their obligations is, of course, to ensure this exemplary role, which includes defending the common good, good corporate governance and, in all instances, strict compliance with the law. Fomento has always been open to collaboration with other employers’ organisations. Notable proof of this, in the none-too-distant past, was its participation and drive, at the onset of the democratic transition some 40 years ago, to reconstruct the Spanish employers’ association framework with the creation of the Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales (CEOE – the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisations) and its participation in and contributions to the pursuit of the attendant activities. The first president of the CEOE, Carlos Ferrer Salat, was from Fomento, as was indeed the current president, Joan Rossel. The international economic and financial crisis The year 2017, which has recently begun, will mark 10 years since the first episodes of the crisis from which the global economy is still recovering.

With interest rates at historically low levels, and some even in negative territory, and after deploying extraordinary credit-support programmes, central banks have set about managing the size and composition of their balance sheet as a monetary policy instrument, through the so-called quantitative easing programmes. Under QE, the Eurosystem purchases outright on the secondary market private and public debt instruments, the former encompassing covered bonds, securitisations and corporate debt, and the latter securities issued by governments, European agencies and, since December 2015, regional and local governments. Cumulative asset purchases over the period of almost two years in which the purchase programme has been in place now stand at around € trillion, with public debt securities accounting for over 80%. The extension of the asset purchase programme until the end of 2017, at least, will mean that the volume of assets acquired by the Eurosystem may exceed € trillion, tantamount to around 20% of euro area GDP. European structural and governance reforms Euro area governments have focused their reform efforts since 2010 on two fronts: i) European Union institutions and euro area governance arrangements; and ii) domestic structural reforms. In the area of governance, the reforms were initially geared to strengthening national budgetary policy surveillance mechanisms, extending the multilateral surveillance perimeter to macroeconomic imbalances and agreeing on the creation of the European Systemic Risk Board, the new European body entrusted with macroprudential supervision.