Italy-Spain: first Confindustria-CEOE meeting to strengthen bilateral relations and launch annual forum

Bonomi and Garamendi: common front to protect the competitiveness of European industry
 
Madrid, 27 October 2023 - Strengthen the bilateral relations between Italy and Spain and intensify the collaboration between Confindustria and CEOE (Spanish Confederation of Industry) also through the launch of an annual Economic Forum within BusinessEurope. The aim is to define shared industrial policy priorities and protect the competitiveness of European industry. These are the topics at the centre of the meeting that ended today in Madrid between the delegations of Confindustria and CEOE, led respectively by their Presidents Carlo Bonomi and Antonio Garamendi.
 
The Italian and Iberian business organisations have agreed on a joint commitment to the European institutions to put industry and manufacturing back at the centre of EU policies, with a focus on the economic and social sustainability of the green transition and decarbonisation. In addition, Confindustria and CEOE intend to promote a coordination of European Mediterranean industrial associations, to support common priorities and projects in Brussels.
 
The two Presidents expressed concern about the progress of the negotiations in the EU on the proposed packaging regulation and reiterated the need to protect intellectual property in the ongoing debate on the pharmaceutical package.
 
"Relations between Italy and Spain, two of the most important economies in the European Union, are already consolidated, as the increase in trade figures testifies, and with this meeting we intend to further strengthen them," said Confindustria President Carlo Bonomi. "Spain will be President of the Council of the European Union for another two months: this is a crucial period of time in which, on the one hand, it will be called upon to close a number of dossiers that are fundamental for European industry - including the regulation on packaging - and, on the other, it will have to steer Europe towards the next elections scheduled for June 2024. This first meeting, therefore, came at the most opportune time. The economic weight of our two countries must translate into greater political weight in Brussels, through increasingly close cooperation between our associations and our companies,' Bonomi noted. "The bilateral forum, which will take place annually, aims to facilitate relations between our respective economic communities in order to present a common front in bringing the competitiveness of our industrial systems back to the centre of the European debate, to relaunch the importance of the Mediterranean as a strategic geographical area for the whole of Europe, and to contribute to ever greater integration.
 
CEOE's president, Antonio Garamendi, emphasised the need to 'work more united than ever' in the face of the challenges that Italian and Spanish companies face in the European and international scenario, the importance of CEOE's presence in Latin America, and the advantages of the EU-Mercosur Agreement not only for Spanish companies, but also for Italian ones. The trade balance between Italy and Spain reached 59,390 million euros in 2022, twice as much as a decade ago, highlighting the mutual interests of the companies represented by both organisations.
 
Attending the two-day Spanish event, along with the leaders of the two Associations, for the CEOE delegation were: the Vice-President of the Commission for Economy and Taxation, Iñigo Fernández de Mesa, the Secretary General, José Alberto González-Ruiz and the President of CEOE International and the Commission for International Relations, Marta Blanco. The Confindustria delegation consisted of the Vice President with responsibility for Innovation and Development, Francesco De Santis, the President's Delegate for Europe, Stefan Pan, the Director General, Raffaele Langella, and the President of Confindustria Ceramica, Giovanni Savorani, who illustrated the critical issues related to the impact of the energy transition on energy-intensive sectors, with particular reference to the ceramics sector, in which Italy and Spain are world leaders.