As every quarter, the European Commission takes stock of the euro area economies to recalculate and adjust the bloc's economic forecasts. From the examination, Spain is one of the countries that comes out with one of the best grades, seeing its growth expectations revised upwards and positioning itself as one of the economic leaders on the continent, despite continuing to drag weaknesses mainly in its labor market.
The country has consolidated itself as the best-performing economy among the major powers of the European Union. While growth as a whole will grow barely 1.1% in 2026 and 1.4% in 2027, Brussels estimates that Spain will do so at 2.4% and 1.9% for the same period. Among the major economies, it will experience the highest growth, well above its main partners such as Germany, 0.6%, France, 0.8%, and Italy, 0.5%. This would lead the Commission to state that Madrid is part of the group of countries driving convergence within the bloc.
However, the State's usual pending tasks remain. To this day, it remains one of the countries with the "most worrying unemployment figures in the bloc". For this same year, the unemployment rate is projected at 9.9%, a figure that would practically double that of many partners and is well above the EU average (6.0%) and the euro area (6.4%). Of course, the country stands out for being one of the countries with the largest upward revision in employment growth, in contrast to Berlin, where employment seems to be stagnating.
Community sources justify the expansion of the labor force in strong migratory flows, which has led to projecting employment growth of 2.3% in 2026 and 1.4% in 2027. At this point, it is relevant to note that in the community capital it is estimated that the country could achieve lowering the unemployment rate below 10% for the first time since 2008.
...TO BE CONTINUED...