On May 24, the annual conference of Trade Promotion Europe was held in Brussels under the title – “European small and medium sized exporters: Challenges and opportunities”. This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the European Single Market, providing an opportunity to review f the successes and takeaways from internal trade for European SMEs.
An open international economy is one of the pillars of the European Union’s approach to trade and has contributed to the growth of European exports. However, there is growing concern that the EU has exposed itself to dependencies and needs to address them, especially in times of geopolitical turmoil and increased competition for technology and raw materials.
Trade Promotion Europe’s mission is to strengthen European trade promotion organizations to optimize support and contribute to the development of business ecosystems for their export-oriented companies.
The conference was filled with many interesting and meaningful participants and was accompanied by many networking opportunities with over 80 representatives from different countries and institutions.
Among the conference panelists were Jakub Boratynski, Director, Networks and Management, Directorate General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the European Commission; Milena Angelova, general secretary of the Association of Industrial Capital in Bulgaria (BICA), vice-chairman of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), European Economic and Social Committee; Anne Lanigan, Regional Director for Eurozone, Central and Eastern Europe at Enterprise Ireland; Elena Santiago, Director General, CEN-CENELEC; Rok Capl, Spirit Slovenia; Charlotte Sammelin, Deputy Director General, Head of International Trade and EU Single Market, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Matthias Bauer, Director at the European Center for International Political Economy; Annette Wijering, Director of the International Trade Department at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency; Denis Redonnet, Deputy Director-General, Chief Trade Officer, Directorate-General for Trade, European Commission; Leopoldo Rubinacci, Deputy Director-General, Directorate-General for Trade, European Commission; Ben Butters, CEO, Eurochambres and many more.
The Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency was represented by Dr. Boyko Takov, executive director, who during the conference held meetings with various participants and agreed on future initiatives and events of BSMEPA for the benefit of Bulgarian SMEs, as an information event related to standardizations concerning all exporters, a business forum in Sofia with colleagues from Ukraine – “Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office – Ukraine” and others – on which we will inform you in the future.