On May 14, 2026, the employers will vote for a duo running unopposed. As has been the case almost every time since 2006. Over twenty years, only one real electoral battle has taken place, in 2018, and it produced the only unfinished mandate of the period, that of Salaheddine Mezouar. Since then, consensus has returned, reflecting an openly acknowledged way of operating in an institution where arbitrations are made upstream as much as in the voting room.
This duo has a name: Mehdi Tazi and Mohamed Bachiri. The first is the outgoing executive vice-president, Chakib Alj’s right-hand man since 2020, former CEO of Saham Assurance who has since moved on to head ASK Capital. The second runs Renault Maroc and was, in 2019, the interim president of the CGEM at the moment Salaheddine Mezouar slammed the door mid-mandate. Their candidacy, the only one submitted before the April 8 deadline, was approved by the Board of Directors. The May 14 vote will be a mere formality. The real debate lies elsewhere.
What has been done, what remains
Chakib Alj presented his record on April 15 at a press conference in Casablanca. The report card is solid: a law on the right to strike promulgated after sixty years of waiting, a law on inter-company payment terms targeting some 400 billion dirhams of receivables blocked in the system, reform of the public procurement decree reserving 30% of contracts for very small, small, and medium-sized enterprises, a direct channel for resolving blockages with the Foreign Exchange Office, among others.
On the institutional front, the statutes revised in 2025 also introduced the integration of two young business leaders under the age of 35 to the Board of Directors, a modest but symbolic signal of an institution seeking to renew itself from within. Several CGEM members contacted say so: the mandate delivered on its major institutional promises, and many see in the continuity embodied by Tazi, who had a front-row seat over these six years, a guarantee that the thread will not be lost.
But there is what the record does not quite say. The Investment Charter, presented as the backbone of the mandate, took considerable time to translate into concrete mechanisms for very small, small and medium-sized enterprises, which represent 95% of Morocco’s economic fabric but whose voice structurally carries less weight in an institution whose vote is weighted by revenue.
The Labor Code, considered by companies themselves to be the main barrier to hiring, is still in force in its 2004 version. Continuing vocational training, according to the assessment document presented yesterday, remains a system in which all companies contribute and only 1% benefit from it. These are the projects, launched but not completed, that the incoming duo inherits.
The Labor Code, an eternal work in progress
This is the most anticipated file of the upcoming mandate, and undoubtedly the most politically sensitive. Morocco’s Labor Code dates from 2004. The job market has since been profoundly transformed by the rise of informal work, digital disruption, and new forms of contracts. Its revision figures among the commitments of the two tripartite social agreements, but negotiations with the unions are stalling on fundamental points: labor market flexibility, termination conditions, the status of subcontractors.
Tazi-Bachiri inherit an open file and union counterparts whose expectations remain high. It is precisely this file that the CGEM members surveyed cite as a priority, with the hope that Tazi’s familiarity with the negotiations will speed things up where his predecessor did not have the time to bring matters to a conclusion.
The reform of vocational training falls into the same category. Morocco suffers from a structural shortage of skilled labor in the sectors where it aims to move upmarket: automotive, aeronautics, renewable energy, digital. The employers’ federation has a direct interest in unblocking this file, but it runs into a complex institutional architecture and budgetary arbitrations that extend beyond the perimeter of the Confederation alone.
2030 World Cup: now or never
There is another timetable that the incoming duo cannot ignore: the 2030 World Cup. The intensive preparation phase, stadiums, transport infrastructure, hotel industry, telecommunications, logistics, corresponds exactly to the three years of the Tazi-Bachiri mandate. The CGEM has in fact anticipated this: joint initiatives have already been launched with the Spanish and Portuguese employers’ organizations.
It is an unprecedented window of opportunity, for industry as well as for services, tourism, and events, but it will raise a concrete question: will the reform of the public procurement decree, obtained under Alj with the reservation of 30% of contracts for very small, small and medium-sized enterprises, actually apply on the ground at the major World Cup projects, or remain a paper commitment in the face of groups that know how to navigate calls for tenders? That is where we will see whether the voice of small businesses has really shifted in weight within the employers’ federation.
Tazi and Bachiri come in with complementary profiles and an intimate knowledge of the files: six years of vice-presidency for one, management of the Renault plant in Tangier and an interim stint at the head of the Confederation for the other. Their technical legitimacy will not be contested. What will be, is their ability to bring to completion what two mandates have launched without finishing. The members surveyed believe in it. See you in three years.
Written in French by Safae Hadri, edited in English by Eric Nielson
