For more than a decade, the Catalan chambers law has been pending. The Consell General de Cambres has worked on a bill, unanimously approved this week by the 13 Catalan chambers of commerce. After the Christmas holidays, the corporations plan to start meeting with the different parliamentary groups to explain their proposal and get the new law's processing on track in the Parliament. "We want to achieve maximum support," says the president of the Barcelona Chamber, Josep Santacreu, who thanked the main employers' associations, Foment and Pimec, for their support of the text.
Although there is still no timetable for the approval of the new regulation, things are starting to be put in black and white regarding the content of the proposal endorsed by the Consell General de Cambres. The Catalan chambers want the Generalitat to contribute to the financing of their public function of supporting companies. They place the amount to be received at 10 euros for each registered company, which would imply an annual contribution of 6.7 million euros. This figure represents 10% of the budget of all Catalan chambers. "The new law will provide us with the resources to be able to fulfill our functions with the Catalan business fabric with more guarantees," adds Santacreu.
This is an unresolved issue that has been dragging on for years. With the 2008 economic crisis, the chamber resource, the main means of financing the chambers of commerce, was eliminated. "We want to recover part of the financing we lost," defends Santacreu, who points out that during these years they have only received a public contribution of around one million euros.