Pedro Sánchez, with the IBEX 35 in Davos, without Galán, and after the harassment and demolition in Spain
For the PSOE-Unidas Podemos government, led by Pedro Sánchez, employers are ‘getting richer at the expense of workers’ with the current inflation crisis. They are to blame for high commodity prices, for refusing to raise the minimum wage and that of their workers, but that, ‘those who have the most have to help the society to which they owe so much’. In Davos, the capitalist forum of globalisation par excellence, things are different. Surely, although they do not say so, for many of the businessmen and bankers who have been with Sánchez today in the Swiss city, it has not been a dish of good taste to meet with him. In fact, Ignacio Galán, president of Iberdrola, Europe’s largest electricity company, did not even attend, and Ana Botín, president of Banco Santander, also one of Europe’s largest, arrived late. For Sánchez, however, the meeting was a success.
Pedro Sánchez is concentrating this day on his fourth participation in the World Economic Forum being held in this Swiss city, and after a first meeting with CEOs of various multinationals, he arranged another with those of Spanish companies.
According to government sources, the meeting analysed, among other issues, the negative repercussions for the European Union of the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act, a law that provides for millions of dollars in investments in green energy.
The EU-27 argue that the subsidies it includes for electric vehicles and US components would exclude European companies from the US market.
The meeting with Sánchez was attended by the presidents or CEOs of IBEX firms such as Banco Santander, Ana Botín, who arrived late to the meeting; BBVA, Carlos Torres; Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete; Repsol, Josu Jon Imaz, and Naturgy, Francisco Reynés.
Also the heads of other companies such as Cepsa, Maarten Wetselaar, and Siemens Gamesa, Jochen Eickholt.
Sánchez Galán was also expected to be present, but Iberdrola was represented in the end by Agustín Delgado, the company’s Director of Innovation and Sustainability, an important position, but not at the level of meeting with the President of the Government.
Company sources explained to Efe that Galán, who is in Davos, was meeting at the same time as the meeting with Sánchez with the CEO of Norges to stage the agreement that has been communicated this Tuesday to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).
Government sources have played down the importance of the Iberdrola chairman’s absence from the meeting, stressing that the company was represented.
Therefore, the President of the Government and the head of this company, who has been very critical of the tax on electricity approved last year by the Executive, did not meet face to face.
This tax was not discussed at the meeting, nor was the special tax on financial institutions, according to Sánchez himself in an informal conversation with journalists. In other words, businessmen and bankers should not even waste any more time with Sánchez on this type of issue, which they will take to the courts to decide on its legality.
The head of the Government explained that the meeting “went very well” – nothing is known, however, about the opinion of businessmen and bankers – and they discussed, among other issues, the repercussions in Europe of the US inflation reduction law, the reaction that the EU should have to it and the need to reduce bureaucracy, a curious subject at least in a Government that has 22 ministries and a Presidency and that every time it tackles a new issue it creates a commission of experts to study it.
The commitment to renewable energies and various aspects of the Spanish presidency of the European Union during the second half of the year were other issues discussed at the meeting.
Energy security, uncertainty in this area for the coming winter, progress in renewables and expectations for the extraordinary European Council in Brussels on 9 and 10 February were also discussed.
Many of these issues have also been the subject of a previous meeting between Sánchez and almost fifty CEOs of multinationals present in Davos, although little or nothing is known about this meeting.
At the meeting, he explained the good position he considers the Spanish economy to have as an investment destination, explained the reforms promoted by his government and responded to a number of questions they had asked him.
All of them, according to Sánchez, have dealt with economic issues and there has been no reference to the political situation in Spain, where politics is set by the extreme left of Unidas Podemos, the Catalan separatists of ERC and the pro-ETA party of EH Bildu, as is happening now in the negotiation of the Housing Law that affects so many investors or in the General Budgets for 2023.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, was present at the subsequent meeting with the heads of Spanish companies.