"Globalization has dramatically reduced poverty in underdeveloped countries, but has made wages more precarious in the West", said Rafael Arias-Salgado at the University of Navarra. The president of the Carrefour Foundation and former minister gave a lecture at class to the students of the Leadership and Governance program at School of Economics.

The businessman pointed to globalization and the digitalization of production processes as the coordinates of the current financial crisis. Firstly, he explained that the integration of national markets -for goods and services as well as capital- into a global market implies a change that affects all levels of society.

"Globalization is a factual process, which advances without rules and is asymmetrical, as countries have different liberalization Degrees ", explained Arias-Salgado. He also clarified that it resolves inequality and favors the distribution of wealth: right now 50% of the world's GDP corresponds to states that a decade ago were underdeveloped, such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico or Indonesia.

Regarding the digitalization of productive processes, he indicated that it creates more competitive companies and increases connectivity at the same time that "it requires a more specialized workforce, and in the short term it quickly destroys jobs work". Arias-Salgado warned that, as a consequence, the welfare society could become fragile. A similar situation occurred with the 1929 crisis. However, unlike that crisis, "the current one comes at a time when individual problems have been solved to a greater or lesser extent.

This has not prevented the emergence of populism in the developed societies of the 21st century. Thus, in the colloquium with Governance students, among the possible solutions the expert concluded: "We must recover the momentum that the European Union has built up over 60 years. The Eurozone can take a big step forward with the mutualization of debt, if Germany and the other 'rich' countries think in the interest of all".