Brussels, 06/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - The 4th European Business Summit, organised on the initiative of the Fédération des Entreprises de Belgique (FEB) supported by UNICE, the European employers' organisation, the European Commission and the Austrian Presidency will be held in Brussels on 16 and 17 March on the theme “Building a Europe of Excellence: turning knowledge into growth”. The Summit will allow discussion of the revised Lisbon Strategy and taking stock of national reforms within the Lisbon framework, said FEB Chief Executive Officer Rudi Thomaes at a joint press conference with Philippe de Buck, UNICE Secretary General, Austrian Permanent Representative to the EU Gregor Woschnagg and Summit founder, Didier Malherbe.
“The aim of the Austrian Presidency is to revive the Lisbon Strategy,” said Ambassador Woschnagg, stressing the importance of the role of SMEs and of encouraging research. The Commission has made a fine job of assessing national reform programmes, he said, going on, “From this summit, we expect a clear message on the creation of a Europe of Excellence”. For Philippe de Buck, the Commission progress report of 25 January was “a step forward (…) It is now time to move from diagnosis to therapy”. Rudi Thomaes regretted that the Belgian reform programme, while containing a lot of good intentions (inter-generational pact, investment in infrastructure etc.) lacked information on how initiatives were to be financed and what their time-frames were.
Didier Malherbe pointed out that the Summit would have thematic workshops in which European Commissioners, Ministers and representatives of the social partners (notably José Manuel Barroso, Günter Verheugen, Guy Verhofstadt and Martin Bartenstein) would take part. The conclusions of the Summit would form the official business message to the annual Spring Summit in March 2006, said Mr Maljherbe. (for further information: http://www.ebsummit.org )