- CEOSA CEO Enrique Servando Sánchez will be one of the programme’s tutors.


ONCE and the ONCE Foundation, alongside their company groups CEOSA and Fundosa, are joining one of the most important activities carried out by Círculo de Empresarios (www.circulodeempresarios.org): the “Companies-Members of Parliament” programme (or PEP, after its acronym in Spanish). Enrique Servando Sánchez, CEO of Corporación Empresarial ONCE (CEOSA) and the delegate at the Círculo, will be a tutor in the programme.
Since its inception, PEP has served a twofold goal. On the one hand, it is aimed at giving MPs a real knowledge of companies –their principles and goals, their organisation, their strategies and behaviour patterns, their technological and human approaches. On the other, it is intended to offer company executives and their teams a general picture of parliamentary activities in Spain –the law-making process and the challenges MPs face at the local, regional, national, and European levels when they discuss matters relevant to the business sphere.
Since 1987, Círculo de Empresarios has been organising study trips and visits to companies for deputies, senators, and members of the European Parliament; seminars with regional MPs; traditional workshops like “Inside Companies;” and discussions aimed at bringing different members of the social structure, like Parliament and companies, into contact. Círculo de Empresarios is a national non-profit organisation made up of people holding leading executive positions in companies and sharing an interest in the socio-economic environment. A fully independent organisation, it funds its activities only with membership fees. Although its members are some of the most important businessmen in Spain, Círculo de Empresarios is not a management association: it does not defend particular interests (a task performed by other types of organisations) but focuses on the protection and dissemination of ideas contributing to the best economic development. Its goal is to play an active role in the building and improvement of a modern, free, and pluralistic society, in line with the model adopted by Spain and, in a wider context, the EU. At the continental level, it shares with more developed countries the concept of an economy based on business freedom as the best way to boost growth, create stable jobs, and attain the highest levels of social welfare. At present, Círculo has over 230 members –businessmen from a wide array of industries, including strategic sectors, whose companies employ 700,000 workers and account for 15% of the Spanish GDP.