Foment del Treball, the large Catalan business organization, will today give the go-ahead to a change in the statutes that will eliminate the current limitation of terms for its president. The aim of those proposing 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 board of directors of Foment is meeting and several members want to raise the reform proposal, as several sources involved have informed this newspaper. The intention to formulate the change proposal is widely shared in the Development sectors, from food to chemistry, metallurgy or tourism, assure people connected and with representation on the board of directors.
This does not mean that the change is approved immediately. For this, a new board of directors will have to be convened to formalize the proposal. But the same sources have assumed that the change of statutes will be approved and that Sánchez Llibre will be guaranteed 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 the members. He can only be re-elected for a second consecutive full term”.
The limitation was approved during the mandate of Juan Rosell, who then promoted the same measure in the statutes of the CEOE, the Spanish employers’ association, when the Catalan came to the presidency. Rosell remained at the head of the Catalan trade union organization for almost sixteen years, between 1995 and 2011, when he left for the CEOE.
Those reforms unleashed a wave of emulation in the main territorial organizations of the CEOE, a trend that was reversed when Garamendi repealed the mandate limitation in order to continue at the head of the CEOE. In this case, accompanying the 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 Joaquim Gay de Montellà, and was re-elected in July 2022, that is, his mandate will expire in the summer of 2026.
The arrival of Sánchez Llibre at Foment meant a radical change in the way the employers’ organization works. Coming from politics, Sánchez Llibre was between 1988 and 2016 and uninterruptedly a member of Parliament, senator and congressman, representing Convergència i Unió, the coalition between Jordi Pujol’s party, CDC, and his party, (UDC). The Democrat was spokesman for CiU’s economic affairs in Congress and from this responsibility he became a direct defender of the interests of employers. In this capacity, he participated in the negotiation of numerous legal measures and amendments, especially through the now-defunct law accompanying the budgets.
The political origin largely explains the frantic activity at the head of Foment. Above all through its direct dialogue with the different parliamentary groups of the Congress; not surprisingly, he was director of relations with the courts of the CEOE during the last term of Rosell 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 publicly explain his position on the amnesty, which he claims is a matter that concerns politics exclusively.
In Catalonia, Foment has been lavished on countless fronts, from the drought to the expansion of El Prat airport, through taxation, support for increases in the minimum wage or the modernization of employers’ thinking in through the Institute of Strategic Studies (IEE), coordinated by Jordi Alberich.
During his mandate, Sánchez Llibre has also staged disagreements with the CEOE, such as regarding his opposition to the Government’s latest labor reform. He also failed to support the candidacy of Virginia Guinda to face Antonio Garamendi when he aspired to a second term in the Spanish employers’ association.
