Board of Directors Meeting

On May 28th the Board of Directors of the Chamber held a telematic meeting.
During the meeting, a review of the actions developed by the Delegation of Luxembourg was made, the activities carried out within the framework of the Competition Commission, the Spanish Financial Forum and the Forums Commission were discussed and the next scheduled events were detailed.

The Board of Directors also approved the annual accounts for the 2020 financial year for presentation at the General Assembly Meeting to be held on June 24.

Webinar on “Teleworking from Spain” 

On May 19th, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg organized a webinar on “Teleworking from Spain” in collaboration with its member companies BakerTilly, Pro-Pay and Racine, with the participation of Bert Dehandschutter, partner of the law firm Racine, An De Wever, legal advisor and Inge Janssens, legal and immigration director, both from Pro-Pay N.V. and Dany De Decker, Tax Partner of Bakertilly Belgium.

Due to COVID-19 health crisis that forces employees to telework from home, as well as the context of digitalization in which we find ourselves and which makes it possible to work from anywhere with a simple internet connection, many employees choose to move their office abroad either for a short or long period of time. Spain continues to be one of the preferred destinations in this regard.

During the webinar, the main administrative issues that may arise when employees who normally work in Belgium decide to go temporarily to Spain to work from there were addressed, focusing on issues related to social security, labor law and tax consequences.

Among the doubts clarified in the webinar, there are issues related to tax legislation in the case of teleworking from Spain with a Belgian labor contract or issues affecting self-employers working for companies present in a country other than their own.

From the Chamber, we would like to thank the speakers for their interventions and all the attendees for their presence.

In collaboration with:  

                

The Chamber presented Young Entrepreneurs’ fuck up stories: Partners and partnerships at StartIt KBC 

On May 12th, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg organised the online presentation “Young Entrepreneurs’ fuck up stories: Partners and partnerships” together with the start-ups’ incubator Start it @KBC, in the framework of the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs (EYE), in collaboration with the member company Vision Communication Consultancy. 

The “Young Entrepreneurs’ fuck up stories” presentation focused on the fact that starting as an entrepreneur is not always easy, highlighting that the most important thing is to learn from failure. In this case, in “Partners & Partnerships: love me or leave me”, the speaker was Ramon Villa, founder of the member company Vision Communication Consultancy. Villa shared his experience and the lessons learned from his mistakes as a starting entrepreneur as well as advising the participants on how to build their first business partnerships. 

Addionally, during this presentation, the participants discovered more information about the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme, which aims to connect entrepreneurs from all over Europe and promote the exchange of experiences between them. The participants not only had the opportunity to know more about the requirements to participate in the programme as New Entrepreneur (NE) and Host Entrepreneur (HE) but also about the support offered by the Chamber to take part in the programme and carry out an exchange. 

The Chamber thanks Ramon Villa and Start It KBC for their collaboration and hopes that many start-ups can benefit from this initiative.  

Online Breakfast-Debate with Javier Moreno Sánchez, MEP of the Group Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats of the European Parliament.

On Tuesday the 11th of May, 2021 the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg organized another virtual debate in the scope of its platform “Desayunos con la Eurocámara”(Breakfast with the Eurochamber), created with the objective to bring the EU Parliament debates closer to Spanish companies. As part of this debates MEP Javier Moreno Sánchez was invited  from the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.

The topic of this debate was “Priorities of European Socialist parties for this political term”.

Pablo López Álvarez, Vice-President of the Chamber and moderator of the event, welcomed the participants and briefly presented the speaker, whose presence, together with the participants’, he acknowledged.

Javier Moreno briefly discussed in the first place the fast and agile pandemic’ management by the European Union, remarking the important task undertaken by the Parliament and the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the health emergency funds’ unblocking in March of 2020 and during the pandemic.

MEP Moreno also highlighted the good response provided against the challenged occurred during this historical year, such as the Brexit negotiation and the health situation, together with preserving democracy and rule of law in the different member states.

Thereupon the speaker explained the different priorities of his group. As top priority, he highlighted the recovery of social life through the European vaccination campaign, together with the facilitation of European mobility through the so-called Covid Certificate. He also underlined the vital importance of implementing the economic recovery plans with an economic and digital transformation scope, while taking into account gender equality and creating job opportunities for the younger generations.

The speaker also established immigration policy management as one of his Group’s main challenge, which will rely on the Blue Card initiative, with the objective of facilitating the arrival of highly qualified workers. MEP Moreno also defined CAP reform as a main challenge in which the group is actively involved.

During the Q&A session, the participants were able to express their doubts and to make comments about numerous matters of interest. Thus, different topics were discussed such as the European card for disabled people, the challenges and opportunities derived from MERCOSUR changes or the Conference on the Future of Europe.

From the speaker’s point of view, it is critical to take advantage of the opportunities from the pandemic to reinforce the EU commercial position in South America, as well as transmitting to the EU citizens the successful implementation of initiatives such as the Conference on the Future of Europe in order to encourage a higher participation in the upcoming EU election. Regarding the European card for disabled people, the speaker remarked that the delegation is hearing societies’ needs through amendments to facilitate the Covid Certificate to disabled people, as well as streamline the implementation of the European card for this group of people.

The Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg would like to wholeheartedly express its gratitude to MEP Javier Moreno for his participation in the debate and to all participants for their presence.