important thing to ensure a city’s progress is
that it must generate trust within and outside
its territory”. She described the characteris-
tics of the model implemented in Bilbao, the
fact that the city’s transformation was driven
by the public sector with the support of the
private sector and that the transformation
was made throughout the entire city”.
Bengoetxea also stressed the importance of
“wagering on human resources in the public
sector, financial and economic strictness, effi-
ciency and transparency: transparency that
must be put into practice and which requires
organisation, communication, and of repor-
ting political decisions and of explaining why
something that was promised was not actua-
lly carried out”.
Strong administration
Lluís Cases, an expert on administrative law
who, from his law firm, Garrigues, collabora-
tes with RECI, argued that “in order to ensure
the efficiency of public-private collaboration, it
is necessary to have a potent public adminis-
tration” adding that “collaboration should be
not just in specific cases since, good projects
are not usually considered in such cases and,
therefore, these projects will not go very far”.
At the end of his presentation, he stressed
the need of having a predictable and reliable
legal framework to facilitate this collaboration:
“extended legal safety that ensure that com-
panies may be able to rescind a contract and
that service provision is governed by indica-
tors and innovation are issues that must be
taken into account as soon as possible”.
In his presentation, Félix Parra, CEO of FCC
Aqualia, mentioned the high level of services
offered by Spanish companies as shown
when these companies compete in interna-
tional markets. He also mentioned the need
of having a law for the sector that enables the
standardisation of tariffs, one of the main pro-
blems affecting the water sector. He stressed
the need of reinforcing legal security to ensure
that the collaboration of both sectors is deve-
loped as best as possible.
Asked about the social consideration of water
as essential for the development of the most
disadvantaged societies, Parra confirmed
that FCC Aqualia is firmly committed to the
Millennium objectives of the United Nations.
On this subject, he mentioned that “after the
unanimous recognition of water as a human
right, the difficulty lies in having specific de-
finition since the challenges differ depending
on the place in this planet where one lives”. In
this respect, and summing it up, he mentio-
ned that the discussion between the public
and the private is a false debate. “The deba-
te”, he said, “should focus on the cost and
the quality of the service rather than whether
or not the service is provided by a public or a
private operator”.
