Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, has presented a plan to promote employment in the CAV and is committed to creating 44,000 jobs by 2016, 12,711 of them this year. The current unemployment rate stands at 15.93% of the working population and in 2013 the economic crisis will leave 19,000 people unemployed. Urkullu has acknowledged that this plan "is not curable", but will serve to "alleviate" the lack of employment that is taking place in the Basque Country. To implement the plan, EUR 281 million has been allocated from public coffers in 2013 and another EUR 733 million from the private sector. All this, however, depends on the approval of the CAV budgets. These are budgets which have shown a great deal of submission to Madrid and Brussels.

Firstly, as a strategic plan against unemployment, it is surprising that it has been announced without being worked with social agents, employers, trade unions, deputies and political parties. What is even more surprising is that this is a plan submitted to budget approval. Those who think that this plan seems like a marketing operation are right, because the Vitoria-Gasteiz Executive does not have a real and concrete project. If it does not go ahead, the PNV has already prepared a shotgun to shoot the presumed leaders: politicians and unions in the opposition.

Secondly, both the PNV and its government know that unemployment is structural in the CAV and that palliative blankets will be of no use at all. We need a strategic plan, a plan that offers greater economic resources and other measures, such as the division of labour. The PNV supports Pharaonic works such as the TAV, which will cost EUR 4.2 billion, and the Jeltzales are prepared to advance their funding. It is clear that for Urkullu and his party the TAV is a priority over unemployment. Against unemployment, marketing operations!