Garamendi will not need elections to continue presiding over the CEOE

MadridAntonio Garamendi will be proclaimed president of the Spanish employers' association CEOE for four more years, thus beginning his third term. And he will not need elections. On October 1, when the business organization's assembly is convened to decide who will continue at the helm, Garamendi will be automatically appointed president. The reason is that no rival has emerged for him – there was time to submit a candidacy until this Monday at 11:59 p.m. – and, as stipulated in article 41 of the employers' statutes, this allows him to be president without the need for a vote. "There is only one candidate [Antonio Garamendi]," confirm from the CEOE.

When he announced in June that he was anticipating the employers' association elections – following the example of Florentino Pérez at Real Madrid – the feeling within the CEOE was that Garamendi could breathe easy. "The major employers' associations are aligned with him," summarized sources close to the employers' association to ARA. They were referring to the Catalan and Madrid regional employers' associations – Foment del Treball and CEIM – but also to the sectoral employers' associations representing the large Ibex-35 companies.

From the CEOE they state that the support he has goes "beyond the endorsements necessary to submit a candidacy." To run, one must obtain at least the endorsements of 10% of the voters, and these must come from six different organizations. Garamendi has been working on this all this time: "He has the support of a very broad majority of both regional and sectoral organizations, and even though he has formalized his candidacy, endorsements have continued to arrive in recent days," indicates a CEOE spokesperson.

With this re-election, Antonio Garamendi will become the second longest-serving president of the Spanish employers' association – he will begin his third term, with 2030 as the horizon – behind the historic José María Cuevas Salvador (1984-2007), and will surpass the Catalan Joan Rosell i Lastortras (2010-2018), who introduced the limit of two terms in the presidency of the CEOE that Garamendi himself abolished three years ago.

Fleeing the noise

From the CEOE they explained that they decided to advance the elections due to the November agenda. The first weekend, the Ibero-American business meeting organized by the same employers' association is held. They also pointed out that by calling them earlier, "the entire month of July" was given to the different business organizations to prepare, taking into account that in August, during the summer period, it is even "more difficult", they argued.

In any case, it did not go unnoticed that the early election occurred at the same time as the Independent Authority for the Protection of Informants (AIPI), an organization dependent on the Ministry of Justice, granted the category of "protected informant" to the former member of the board of directors of the CEOE and former vice-president of Cepyme, José Manuel de Riva Zorrilla, who filed a complaint against Garamendi for the development, precisely, of the Cepyme elections in May 2025.