However, the use of indexation clauses and the pass-through of higher costs to final prices have increased.16 Consequently, the signing of an incomes agreement, under the framework of social dialogue, would be desirable, to share the burden between firms (which would have to accept a reduction in their unit margins) and workers (who would lose some purchasing power). Such an agreement should take into account that the current shocks are having an uneven impact across different groups of workers, firms and sectors. For this reason, the agreement should avoid overly sweeping measures that might prove unsuitable for different groups of agents. Moreover, it would also be desirable to avoid arrangements that automatically link wages to past inflation or indexation clauses, to reduce the risk of triggering a wage-price feedback loop. Any potential incomes agreement should envisage multi-year commitments regarding wage increases and profit margin developments. This would offer households and businesses some certainty in their spending and investment decisions. As regards government spending, the widespread use of automatic indexation clauses should be avoided, against a background, moreover, in which fiscal space is highly constrained by burgeoning public debt. Other economic policies should concentrate on support for the most vulnerable, resolute supply-side reforms, a firm commitment to fiscal sustainability and the reinforcement of the European project. Fiscal policy should play a key role, avoiding an across-the-board fiscal impulse, which would exacerbate the inflationary pressures.
According to Banco de España estimates,10 a hypothetical interruption of energy imports from Russia would have an impact of between 2.5% and 4.2% on EU GDP in the first year, depending on the assumption considered regarding the European economies’ ability to replace Russian energy sources. The impact would range between 1.9% and 3.4% for Germany, 1.2% and 2% for France and 2.3% and 3.9% for Italy. Such a scenario would also foreseeably lead to a greater surge in inflation in the short term. The impact on the Spanish economy would be substantially lower, given that Spain is less energy dependent on Russia and has greater supplier diversification. Based on these simulations, it would range from 0.8% to 1.4% of GDP. Practically one-half of these effects would be attributable to the impact on the other European countries. At any rate, these values should be regarded as short-term impacts which would gradually decrease as the ability to replace Russian energy imports increases. The outlook for the global economy has also worsened significantly The combination of high inflation, tightening of financing conditions associated with the monetary policy response in many countries and the persistence of bottlenecks, among other aspects, is adversely affecting the global economy, resulting in macroeconomic projections being revised down across the board. Thus, in the United States, real GDP declined in the first two quarters and in China activity plummeted in Q2 as a result of the measures adopted by the authorities under the zeroCOVID strategy. This fall was particularly steep in the residential sector.