Good practice:

Pact for the Economic Recovery of Castilla-La Mancha 2015-2020

The Pact for the Economic Recovery of Castilla-La Mancha 2015-2020 aims to promote and strengthen the regional economic activity as a whole. The economic situation left by the financial crisis was a truly deteriorated one. A participatory approach was used for the adoption of a wide scope of measures.
The programme addressed its objectives as the budget allocated to each axis was implemented over the 4 years of implementation. Not only measures of a purely economic nature were implemented. There were others involving regulatory or administrative actions that seeked to improve the business and working climate in the region. To monitor the implementation of the Pact, a Monitoring Committee was set up, in which trade unions and employers participated. It issued reports every six months which were made public on the progress of the implementation of the Pact.
The partners involved were mainly the actors who have signed the Pact. The more than 120 entities, associations and groups as well as 300 professionals and 100 civil servants who contributed to the work related to the Pact were also stakeholders. From the point of view of implementation, the vast majority of the commitments and actions to be undertaken fall to the government and administration of the region, although the social and economic agents also had their share of co-responsibility. From the point of view of the beneficiaries, those most directly affected were companies, workers and civil society.

The estimated financial resources made available to the Pact came from the budget of the region over a 4-year period. It reached 3.43 billion euros distributed among 6 axis comprising actions and investments in areas such as business, agriculture, employment, innovation and infrastructures.

The execution rate as of 31 December 2019 in budgetary terms already reached 112% to EUR 3.95 billion euros. The region closed 2019 with the second lowest unemployment figure since 2008 despite the year-on-year increase compared to the previous year, and achieved the highest Social Security enrolment figure since 2009. In the region, 2,738 new businesses were created in 2019, and Castilla-La Mancha closed the year with more than 128,000 active companies for the first time since 2011.

Some of the lessons learned were of internal use to the government of Castilla-La Mancha. The need and demand from social partners for greater internal coordination at the administrative level was one of them. The simplification of administrative procedures could also be mentioned.

It is true that the situation in which the Castilla-La Mancha Recovery Pact was born had an exceptional component marked by the region's political and economic situation. The political cycle ending in May 2105 had imposed great sacrifices on the region and was basically marked by a policy of large cuts to rebalance public accounts. As we commented earlier, in 2105 the economic recovery and the business panorama and the level of unemployment invited (or perhaps demanded) a reinforced level of collaboration between all the social agents.
The experience was ambitious but manageable. Consensus and dialogue can be extended to a larger number of areas in order to achieve a multi-sectoral approach and provide the project with greater coherence. It can be exported to the regional and even national level. Also at the local level, within its level of competence, this example can serve as a reference for designing and generating public policies.