economic destiny ” 5. now, austria has not become a bigger country than it was in those unhappy days, but something else has changed in our favor since then : we are now members of the european union and part of the euro area. in contrast to previous crises, this time our efforts to fight the recession are part of a coordinated european macroeconomic recovery plan upon which the european commission and the eu member states already agreed in november 2008. if we compare the situation with our last recession before entering the eu, which took place in the early 1990s, monetary union with our key trading partners is very helpful as it prevents competitive devaluations by some neighboring countries that harmed our economy back then. in that sense, the euro has worked as a shield for small open economies all over europe. what needs to be done now? policy makers are confronted with two main tasks at the moment. on the one hand they must restore stability in financial markets by bringing back liquidity, recapitalizing banks and getting toxic assets off banks ’ balance sheets. in europe, we have some examples that can serve as guidance for how to deal with a banking crisis, for instance the swedish and the finnish experience of the early 1990s. ( if anything, our own austrian experience from the 1930s would rather qualify as an example of how not to save banks. ) in austria we have already taken measures to establish confidence among savers, and our government has also presented a stabilization package for banks, to which it has allotted 100 billion euro, which is roughly 1 / 3 of the austrian gdp ; 15 billion euro are reserved for recapitalizing banks, 75 billion for bank guarantees and an additional 10 billion for insuring the domestic deposit protection. in terms of gdp, the austrian banks ’ stabilization package is among the biggest in the eu. paul krugman ( 2009 ) “ the return of depression economics and the crisis of 2008 “, norton, page 4. the second task we now face is to fight the global recession and prevent it from turning into a lasting depression. this is a challenge for both monetary and fiscal policy. the main objective of monetary policy in the euro area has always been to preserve price stability, in the current state of affairs means to prevent deflation. i can assure you that, at the governing council of the ecb we will take all available measures to stabilize the inflationary expectations in the euro area and keep them anchored in positive terrain. we will keep the interest rate very low for as long

contracts increased most among permanent seasonal workers and permanent part - time workers. it is obvious that it´s still too early to assess properly the impact of this labour market reform, and any such evaluation will have to consider multiple issues, including employment, labour turnover, human capital accumulation, among others. in the meantime, learning from the experience in other countries about the impact of similar regulatory changes on temporary employment could prove to be useful for the design of a rigorous evaluation of this reform in the case of spain. these issues are covered in the first session. second, another major challenge for the spanish economy is the dismal performance of aggregate productivity, the ultimate and most important engine of economic growth and prosperity. average annual total factor productivity growth over the 2000 - 2019 period was 0. 2 % in spain, as against 0. 5 % in the euro area ( and 0. 9 % in the united states ). among the various determinants of this gap, recent literature has been highlighting the role of the misallocation of resources across firms and the small size of businesses, which has a bearing on the country ’ s low aggregate productivity. in particular, 35. 7 % of total employment is in firms with less than 10 employees, compared with 28. 5 % in the european union. to tackle this challenge, it is essential to explore the various reasons why our business sector is so skewed towards small, low - productivity firms and to mitigate the effects. for example, as part of a strategy to stimulate business growth, smaller firms with high productivity potential should be helped to access a wider range of external sources of funding on more advantageous conditions, while the policies supporting business innovation should be strengthened. this is the topic of the second session. third, the fight against climate change and the transition towards a more sustainable economy are also important challenges facing the world economy in general and spain in particular. there is for example consensus among the scientific community that the iberian peninsula could be significantly affected by the physical risks associated with climate change and that this impact would be highly uneven across regions. resolutely addressing this challenge will entail a profound structural change in our growth model that will have far - reaching implications for all areas of activity. this transformational process will also, foreseeably, have a very unequal impact across the different regions, industries, firms and households. in this green transition, governments have a leading role to play through, for instance, green taxation, compensatory