Why do a group of largely private entities devote their efforts to supporting a body like Fedea? The main answer to this question is that, 20 years after our project was first launched, Spain still needs institutions to be part of what has been given the name "civil society". Fedea is, modestly, one such institution.

Fedea arose out of the need to provide society with objective and independent solutions to the problems that constrain our economic growth and social development. It is no coincidence that Fedea became a leading centre for issues relating to the labour market and pensions at a time when the unemployment rate among young people in Spain was 50% and pensions were experiencing difficult times. Clearly, Fedea did not solve those problems –they still remain today- but few will dispute that it influenced the process.

Today, when we listen to public debate on the national health service, on the most appropriate policy to manage the integration of three million immigrants, or on our environmental commitments, it is hard not to realise the need for an institution which uses economic analysis to provide rational arguments for those with public and private responsibilities and for public opinion generally. An institution that voices necessary solutions, even if they are at times unpopular.

This reflection and proposal role is all the more important today, in an age when priority is given to expediency, to short-term results, to brief TV sound-bites. Fedea also performs a pedagogical role, in demonstrating that problems do not have simple or automatic solutions; that nothing comes free; that we cannot indefinitely elude the consequences of our actions.

Fedea is credible because it works with rigour, pursues excellence in research and boasts prestigious researchers in applied economics. Ultimately, this is what gives it its moral authority, its capacity to say how things should be. Fedea should be called on to address the problems of our day, with the utmost rigour required of academic forums.

The majority presence of private bodies in Fedea is designed to ensure the Foundation operates independently. It would be hard for Fedea to carry out its work if it were constrained - albeit in appearance only - by dependence on a single source of funding.

Fedea's Sponsors are persons who are committed to the future of our country and who realise that the maturity of our system of coexistence requires institutions of this type. They represent entities which down the years have implemented their own social responsibility projects, complementing the work they promote in Fedea.

Fedea's Sponsors have demonstrated that they are good administrators because they invest in the long term, in values with a future. With strategic vision they have built a factory of ideas -Fedea- for our emerging information society. They have enabled excellent researchers to devote time to reflection on the major issues affecting our future. In sum, they have put in place the conditions to generate what has the potential to become one of our country’s great projects, the results of which will benefit their own companies. It is a labour well worth continuing.

Pablo Vázquez
Executive Director