shortcoming also influences key decisions in people ’ s life cycle such as those relating to household formation. for all these reasons, reducing the high duality of our labour market is, in my view, an inescapable objective. thus, employment protection mechanisms should be reviewed under the prism of squaring employee protection with flexibility needs, but, above all, with the aim of achieving a fairer distribution of protection among workers with a different contract status. we should also recall how, before the current crisis, almost 43 % of the unemployed had been seeking a job for more than a year and that around 30 % had been looking for more than two years. the situation will worsen with the current crisis, whereby it is vital to strengthen the role of policies aimed at increasing the employability of the more vulnerable workers and preventing unemployment from becoming structural. it is worth noting here that the sectors potentially most affected by this crisis ( among which transport, hospitality, leisure and retail ) account for almost 20 % of employment in our country. but, moreover, these sectors evidence a greater concentration of less skilled workers who are less exposed to it -, numeracy - and literacy - related tasks. that hampers the employability of these workers in other productive sectors that foreseeably have better growth prospects in the near future. improving active labour market policies is also necessary over the medium - term horizon. undoubtedly, technological advances ( artificial intelligence, automation and robotics ) will create new opportunities and will contribute to much - needed gains in productivity. but some workers will lose their jobs in this transition and will not always be in a position to instantly take advantage of new opportunities. accordingly, active labour market and training policies, duly re - designed to boost their effectiveness and efficiency, and with the appropriate funds behind them, are a natural lever for ensuring lifelong - learning for workers. this will enable them to acquire new skills, to hone them and to recycle themselves professionally in a changing and foreseeably very demanding environment in terms of technological skills. in sum, these and other reforms should contribute to increasing the economy ’ s growth potential. and along with income - sustaining measures ( such as the minimum living income ), they will help reduce inequality in spain. inequality levels, which were higher at the onset of this crisis than at the start of the previous one, will probably rise further in the coming quarters, given that this crisis is affecting groups with relatively low incomes to a greater extent. nor can we

of longer - term refinancing operations ( ltros ). these provided banks with “ bridge financing ” under advantageous conditions until late july, for when a substantial tender i shall now refer to was scheduled. that stabilised funding costs for the banking sector at a juncture, as i stated, of great uncertainty. as to the second risk, namely banks ’ reluctance to extend new loans in such a complex economic environment, the ecb already had an instrument to encourage banks to provide credit : the so - called “ targeted longer - term refinancing operations ” ( tltro - iii ). this programme affords banks financing under particularly advantageous conditions, provided they meet certain lending targets to households and firms ( excluding, in the former case, lending for house purchases ). with the onset of the pandemic, this programme was modified to make it more attractive to banks, enabling them to obtain funding temporarily at an interest rates as low as - 1 %, under the condition of not reducing their eligible volume of credit. to obtain liquidity in the eurosystem ’ s refinancing operations, including tltro - iii, participating banks must nevertheless pledge collateral in order to protect the eurosystem from potential bank failures. hence, and to help banks obtain the biggest amount of financing possible in these operations, the ecb relaxed its collateral framework conditions. for instance, it reduced the average haircut applied to collateral assets and accepted riskier assets and, most especially, loans backed by the national authorities ’ various programmes, such as the ico ( official credit institute ) guarantees in spain ’ s case. as a result, commercial banks could increase the liquidity they obtained from the eurosystem by using their loans to the real economy as collateral. the combination of these measures was successful. the weekly ltro operations provided substantial amounts of liquidity to banks during the most difficult months of the pandemic. in the june tltro - iii operation, participating banks received a total of €1. 31 trillion, a record high in eurosystem refinancing operations. all these operations played a vital role in preserving the supply of bank lending in the euro area. they contributed to the momentum shown by the new refinancing operations particularly in the case of lending targeted on firms and the self - employed - from the outset of the pandemic, and they kept interest rates on loans at record lows. the complementarity of these measures