Brussels, Feb 7 (EFE) the “photo” of the region in 2030 if opportunities are seized.
“We are going to need between 20,000 and 30,000 people in the coming years, between now and 2030 in jobs in the green industrial sector. You have to invest a lot in very specific training and we have European funds to be able to do it,” Fernández Vara told the press after meeting in Brussels with the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for the Green Pact, Frans Timmermans.
The Extremaduran president believes that the transformation of the industrial and energy system under way “is going to mean a convergence of Extremadura with the European Union”, so that “the picture of 2030 will probably be that of a region that no longer needs to be a target region of convergence”.
“That will be possible if we are able to take advantage of all the opportunities that are presented to us now,” said Fernández Vara, who pointed out that Extremadura could become “one of the regions that had the most unemployment, it will be one of the regions with the most employment to have in this new reality”.
The “important thing”, he added, is not only to achieve “a lot of renewable electricity production, but in parallel there is the manufacture of components and industry that use that energy to be able to manufacture things at more competitive prices”, taking advantage of the potential of production, among other areas. green hydrogen.
This also applies to the field of minerals and rare earths in a region that has gold, iron and copper, but also tungsten, coltan and lithium.
Timmermans “is very clear, and I thank you for being clear, that we are not going to allow natural resources to be extracted there to be transformed elsewhere. The times of those things are over,” said Fernández Vara.
“Whoever wants the resources of our land to be used will have to be transformed there with quality employment from there and with the value chain there,” he stressed.
Hence, the regional president has invited Timmermans to visit Extremadura during the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of the year to see the Iberian Energy Storage Research Center that is being built in Extremadura.
“What is happening there is very atypical. We are going to be the first region in Spain to have a gigabattery factory, the first to have a semiconductor factory and the first to have a lithium-based capacitor factory. And this three years ago, if I tell it, no one believes it, “he summed up.
For this reason, he insisted, it is necessary “to develop this entire immense training plan in the coming years that will allow that demand, which will exist because the factories are going to begin to be built now” can count on “workers with excellent training, many of them from the field of professional training but with good salaries, with better incomes”.
SILVER ROUTE
The President of Extremadura also met with the European Transport Commissioner, Adina Valean, with whom he analyzed the Lisbon-Madrid railway connection through Extremadura and with whom he asked for support to promote the “silver route” to link Cáceres and Salamanca by train and, in a broader sense, connecting Asturias with Andalusia through Extremadura.
“For us, in addition to this important Lisbon-Extremadura-Madrid axis, there is everything that is the ‘silver route’ that is to unite the north and south of Spain so that not everything necessarily has to go through Madrid,” he commented. .
Fernández Vara was also scheduled to meet this Tuesday with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.