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Del Financial Times sobre el ministro sr. Rato (inglés)

The man who has taken on the toughest job within Spain's EU presidency has few illusions about just how difficult it will be to push ahead with Europe's calendar of economic reforms.

Over the next six months, Rodrigo Rato, Spain's 52-year-old economy minister, will have to use all his powers of persuasion to convince fellow finance ministers that a stagnant Europe needs a strong dose of liberal economics. The bottom line, he says, is that "governments are going to have to explain to their own people how they intend to revive economic growth. We cannot rely on the US engine any longer".

Mr Rato acquired a taste for free markets, for the Rolling Stones, and an impeccable American accent as a student at Berkeley in California. And after seven years at the helm of Spanish economic policy, he believes he is preaching what he practises at home. Under his stewardship, Spain has moved further and faster than its neighbours in privatising telecommunications, oil, gas and electricity companies, although real competition has proved more difficult to instill. Tariffs have been forced down by government diktat, rather than market forces, and strong groups such as Telefónica continue to run circles around weak regulators.

But such a rapid transformation of the Spanish economy has often placed Mr Rato at the centre of fierce political disputes. The most common accusation levied against the most influential member of José María Aznar's cabinet is that, while the government has privatised, it has not given up political control.

The chairmen of Spain's leading companies are collectively known as "Rato's friends". The circle includes Francisco González, the new chairman of BBVA, Spain's second largest bank, and César Alierta, president of Telefónica, both former stockbrokers. Alfonso Cortina, one of Spain's richest businessmen, was Mr Rato's choice to head Repsol, a privatised oil group. For good measure, the government retains golden shares in Spain's biggest privatised groups that carry veto powers over mergers or big acquisitions.

Mr Rato says he has done these companies "no favours". He has ordered Repsol to relinquish its monopoly of the gas market in Spain, and has blocked the merger of electricity companies to safeguard competition. Nevertheless, the economy minister is often the butt of savage political jokes in Los Guiñoles del Canal +, a Spanish version of the UK's satirical Spitting Image television puppet show, for his close ties with Spain's business elite.

Los Guiñoles recently pictured him as a petrol pump attendant at a Repsol filling station, after El País, Spain's leading newspaper, revealed that radio stations belonging to Mr Rato's family had received an unusually generous amount of advertising from the Repsol oil group.

Although politics and business continue to mix more than the government would care to admit, Mr Rato can justifiably point to Spain's track record as an example for other EU members to follow. The problem is that he has few obvious allies within the EU committee of finance ministers. France, Germany and Portugal are preoccupied with their own electoral calendars this year, while Silvio Berlusconi's Italy appears to be adopting a more euro-sceptical stance.

Mr Rato's expectations for the EU's economic summit in Barcelona in March are therefore tinged with realism. "I think there is a broad consensus about the need to tackle supply-side reforms," he says. "The challenge will be to translate that consensus into real political commitment."

Success at Barcelona, he says, hinges on whether the 15-member bloc can agree on practical steps to link its energy and transport markets, and on making labour markets more efficient. There will also be complex negotiations on how to harmonise different countries' tax treatment of savings and investments and how to integrate the financial markets of the eurozone.

The economy minister's supporters believe that a successful EU presidency would make Mr Rato a strong candidate to succeed Mr Aznar, who has said he will not seek a third term as prime minister. Mr Rato says he is not a candidate. He says: "Nothing has happened to make me change my mind yet." But there is a twinkle in his eye, and the emphasis is on the last word, yet.