The continuity of reform momentum – especially that geared to product and  6/7  factor markets and to improving the business environment – is a key element for promoting growth. In Spain, the recovery is providing for significant headway in restoring the main macroeconomic equilibria. But we cannot maintain our growth if we abandon, or step back from, the agenda of reforms aimed at improving our productivity, our competitiveness and the flexibility of our productive system; these are the pillars of economic growth, of lower unemployment and of the re-balancing of public finances that ensures their sustainability and provides for fiscal policy headroom to boost investment and growth. Last but by no means least, the demographic developments our country will foreseeably face in the coming decades, like other EU members, place greater and more pressing demands on the economic policy responses to the foregoing challenges. This is because a progressively older population makes it more difficult to entrench budgetary sustainability and to ensure long-term economic growth. Conclusion As we all know, the economic and political context in which we must face these challenges is not exactly going to be an easy one. The plans for European unity, in their various configurations prior to those we have today, have over the almost 60 years since the project was launched overcome highly diverse difficulties.
Although the economic recovery has provided for an appreciable reduction in this rate, it still stands at around 19%. Foreseeably, several years must go by before unemployment in Spain falls to levels comparable with those of other developed economies. Of note in Spain’s case is the heterogeneity of the unemployment rates in different regions, from levels slightly over 12% 4/7  in Navarre to close to 29% in Andalusia, with Catalonia in the lower part of the table at around 15%. Monetary and financial policy in the face of the crisis The recovery in the developed economies, and in particular in the euro area and of course in Spain, has necessitated far-reaching actions in all economic policy areas. Early efforts by the central banks focused on alleviating the liquidity problems affecting the financial system. But the serious worsening of the situation opened the way for more powerful plans, both in the financial and monetary realms and in terms of fiscal initiatives to boost aggregate demand. Regarding monetary policy, the depth and persistence of the crisis has required an ongoing effort by central banks. Over these years, the monetary authorities have broadened their range of instruments, resorting to non-conventional tools that have enabled monetary stimuli to be deepened and that have been conducive to their pass-through to lower borrowing costs, thereby encouraging household and business consumption and investment decisions.