Foment del Treball, the large Catalan business organization, will today kick off a change in its statutes that will eliminate the current term limitation of its president. The objective of the proponents of the change is to allow the current president, Josep Sánchez Llibre, to run for re-election when his current term expires, in the summer of 2026.
Today the Foment board of directors meets and several members of it want to raise the reform proposal, as several sources involved have informed this newspaper. The intention to formulate the proposal for change is widely shared in the Foment sector, from food, to chemistry, metallurgy or tourism, say people linked to them and with representation on the board of directors.
That doesn’t mean the change will be approved immediately. To do this, a new board of directors must be convened to formalize the proposal. But the same sources have taken it for granted that the change in statutes will be approved and that Sánchez Llibre will be assured of his re-election for a third term.
Article 19 of the current statutes of the Catalan business organization establish a maximum of two consecutive terms for the president: “The president of Foment is elected by the General Assembly from among its members. He may only be re-elected for a second full term consecutively.”
The limitation was approved during the mandate of Juan Rosell, who later promoted the same measure in the statutes of the CEOE, the Spanish employers’ association, when the Catalan became president. Rosell remained at the head of the Catalan union organization for almost sixteen years, between 1995 and 2011, when he left for CEOE.
These reforms unleashed a wave of emulation in the main territorial organizations of CEOE. A trend that was reversed when Garamendi had the term limits repealed in order to continue leading the CEOE. In this case, accompanying this continuity with the remuneration of the position. Something that was not considered in the case of Foment, since the presidency will continue to be unpaid.
Sánchez Llibre assumed the presidency of Foment in November 2018, when he took over from Joaquín Gay de Montellà, and was re-elected in July 2022, meaning that his term will expire in the summer of 2026.
The arrival of Sánchez Llibre to Foment represented a radical change in the functioning of the employers’ association. Coming from politics, Sánchez Llibre was between 1988 and 2016 and continuously a deputy in the Parliament, senator and congressman, representing Convergència i Unió, the coalition between Jordi Pujol’s party, CDC and his party, Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC). The Christian Democrat ended up being spokesperson for economic affairs for CiU in Congress and from that responsibility he became a direct defender of the interests of businessmen. In that capacity he participated in the negotiation of numerous legal measures and amendments, especially through the now defunct Budget Accompanying Law.
This political background largely explains his frenetic activity at the head of Foment. Above all through his direct dialogue with the different parliamentary groups of Congress, he was not in vain director of relations with the courts of the CEOE during Rosell’s last term and the first of the current president, Antonio Garamendi.
And culminating with his intervention in favor of an amnesty agreement between the PSOE and Junts, with meetings in Brussels with former president Carles Puigdemont, even before the elections of July 23. Despite this, Sánchez Llibre has managed not to explain in public his position on the amnesty, which he affirms is a matter that exclusively concerns politics.
In Catalonia, Foment has been lavish on countless fronts, from the drought, to the expansion of the El Prat airport, through taxation, support for increases in the minimum wage or the modernization of the employers’ thinking through the Institute of strategic studies (IEE), coordinated by Jordi Alberich.
During his mandates, Sánchez Llibre has also staged disagreements with the CEOE, such as in his opposition to the Government’s latest labor reform. Failed was also his support for Virginia Guinda’s candidacy to confront Antonio Garamendi when he aspired to a second term in the Spanish employers’ association.
