The president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), Antonio Garamendi, yesterday used a well-known poem about the resistance against the Nazis to argue his outright opposition to a rise in corporate tax on electricity companies proposed by the second vice president and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz.
"Be careful that it does not seem to us that one sector pays and another does not pay. Remember what was said in its day: first the Jews, then they went for the communists and then it was my turn," argued Garamendi, erroneously attributing the maxim to the German playwright Bertol Brecht, when the verses belong to the Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller.
The business leader expressed himself in this way during the General Assembly of CEIM 2022, whose closing also included the participation of the presidents of the CEIM itself, Miguel Garrido; from Cepyme, Gerardo Cuerva; and from the Chamber of Madrid, Ángel Asensio.
Garamendi, who did not explicitly mention the electric companies, did say that “there is talk of some sector raising the corporate tax by 10 points”, after the proposal made yesterday by Díaz. In his opinion, first "one sector comes, then others" and "then the others will come."
"This is not fixed by saying I'm taking the money from the rich, that I don't know where they end up," said Garamendi, who argued that "companies have to earn money to invest and create quality jobs and, of course, with measures Of these that have been announced, we are not going to reach a very good port.”
