The European Chamber visits Brussels, September 13th- 19th Go back »

2008-09-23 | All chapters

The European Chamber visits Brussels, September 13th- 19th

Last week, European Chamber President Joerg Wuttke led an 18 person strong delegation to Brussels to present the recently launched Position Paper to key stakeholders. At the top of the agenda were meetings with European Commission Vice President and DG Enterprise Commissioner Verheugen,  Trade Commissioner Mandelson, Member of Parliament Wortmal-Kool, and Chinese Ambassador Song.

The key messages included the need for increased market access in a wide range of sectors, increased transparency in approvals, registration and policy formulation, and increased IPR protection. The need for pricing reforms in the energy sector and petrochemical sectors and concerns about the increasing use of standards as a trade barrier also featured highly on the agenda.  The source of these messages comes from the work of the 25 Working Groups and 8 Forums of the Chamber that members and business managers worked together on from February to June earlier this year.

Commission officials were largely supportive of the Chamber’s recommendations and signaled they would take the opportunity to advocate some of these key recommendations in their upcoming meetings with Chinese officials.  Priority meetings for the Commission this fall include on-going bilateral trade dialogues, the EU-China Political Summit in Lyon in December, and this week’s visit to Beijing by Commissioner Mandelson,  for the Joint Committee meetings.

In addition to meetings with Government authorities, the Chamber met with over a dozen industry trade and business associations to share and align priorities for China.  President Joerg Wuttke remarked “The scale and importance of the Chamber’s annual Brussel’s Circuit continues to grow every year. This year’s delegation was the largest in the Chamber’s history and the line-up of 40 some meetings and the ensuing discussions were most comprehensive yet.” 

The Chamber is grateful to the delegate representatives that made the time and financial commitments to lobby in Brussels on behalf of their respective industries.  These people include:

General / Senior Business Manager

Above: EU Chamber meets European Commission Vice President Verheugen.