Economía

Spain will have to make a “final effort” in the next four months to be able to make the most of the transfers from the Recovery Plan. This was the term used this Thursday by the First Vice-President and Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, to refer to the challenge for administrations to deploy all direct and non-reimbursable aid from the European Commission before the end of August. At this moment, there are 13 billion euros at stake, although some items are already earmarked.

The shareholder meeting of entertainment giant Warner Bros Discovery approved on Thursday the acquisition by fellow US company Paramount Skydance for 110 billion dollars. Despite strong opposition to the deal in Hollywood, it went ahead with overwhelming support from its owners.

Criteria Caixa has constituted the new management company through which it will invest in third-party funds, as contemplated in the holding’s new strategic plan for the coming years. The objective is to build a portfolio of diversified long-term funds. These investments include the new vehicle that the European Union is going to launch to invest in technology companies called Scaleup Europe. In addition, Criteria already has about 750 million committed to investments.

Delivery drivers, on motorcycles or bicycles, are already part of the urban landscape in large European cities. In Paris, they are especially visible at night, adding more chaos and danger to traffic. Their working conditions are controversial, to the point that on Wednesday four associations filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office of the French capital against the Uber Eats and Deliveroo platforms for human trafficking, an accusation of unprecedented seriousness, and for labor exploitation.

EU countries already have their box of recommendations from the European Commission to mitigate the energy crisis stemming from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. And it does not include the suggestion of teleworking, as an earlier draft stated, but it does include reinforced coordination of energy reserve storage among Member States, one of the few competencies the Community Executive has in this area. Brussels, however, is for the moment shelving the idea of approving a European mechanism to tax the extraordinary profits of energy companies, despite the request from large EU countries such as Spain, Italy, and Germany.

Deutsche Telekom AG is considering a full combination with its US subsidiary T-Mobile US Inc., a deal that would create a multinational telecommunications group and become the largest public merger and acquisition operation in history, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Food manufacturers and supermarkets are starting to assume they won’t be able to keep containing prices much longer. After weeks of cushioning the impact of rising energy costs, companies warn that the effort has limits and that, if current tensions persist, the transfer to the shopping basket will be inevitable.

The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday the royal decree regulating the new State Housing Plan 2026-2030, a plan that mobilizes 7.000 million euros, triple the previous one, to promote a public housing stock that is permanently protected and cannot be privatized.

Today’s Council of Ministers has approved the State Housing Plan 2026-2030, which triples the investment allocated to what is the main problem for Spaniards. The 7 billion euros of planned expenditure seek to boost the public housing stock with different blocks of aid: some aimed at owners, others at tenants in the rental market, and others at housing developers. One of the keys to the project is that the State and the autonomous communities must collaborate in promoting the construction and adaptation of properties to start moving towards a solution to the housing problem. These are the keys to the plan.

Although the European Commissioner for Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, denies that there is any sign of an imminent shortage of jet fuel today, the EU is already preparing to face this emergency and ensure that commercial flights can operate if supply problems arise. Brussels will present its plan tomorrow to mitigate the energy crisis derived from the Iran war, which will include, according to the Greek Commissioner, the creation of an observatory to closely monitor the situation of reserves, the refining capacity of petroleum products, and also the search for alternative supplies in other parts of the world —such as the US— if necessary.