Belgian Presidency conference on European business centres
The Minister for economic affairs and employment for the Brussels-Capital region, Eric Tomas, has announced that a European conference on 'Business centres: actors for economic and social development and urban renewal' will take place in Brussels on 14 and 15 November. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels on 6 November, Mr Tomas said that the event, organised by the Belgian Presidency with the support of the Enterprise and Regional Policy DGs of the European Commission, will examine the role of business centres in regional economic development. He said the first objective of the event will be to provide an expert and academic view of business centres, with contributions from US experts and various international organisations. The second aim will be to provide examples of European 'best practice,' for which purpose 8 enterprise centres have been invited to give a presentation on a key factor they have identified in their success. The third goal will be to review best practice at three levels - the decision-making process behind the creation of business centres, key success factors in managing business centres and an evaluation of them in terms of developing business needs and new trends. Mr Tomas emphasised that the conference was not merely a gesture organised for the sake of the Belgian Presidency, saying the conclusions will 'have a practical impact both for the Brussels region and for Europe.' He said that one of the biggest problems currently facing urban regions is 'the gulf between the included and the excluded in the knowledge-based society' and that business and innovation centres provide a key role in the development of SMEs by 'promoting and extending innovation' and encouraging professionalism. Mr Tomas said that the conference aims to feed into both Commission enterprise policy and urban centre policy. The Commission will also launch a new web site on business incubators at the event. The Internet site will provide information on over 800 business incubators which currently exist in the European union. Deputy director-general of the European Commission's Enterprise DG, Heinz Zourek, said that the new database of information would help networking between European business incubators and help entrepreneurs with new business ideas to find the incubators that can help them. He added that the database would provide a comprehensive information source useful to national, regional and local authorities. Mr Zourek also spoke on a Commission initiative launched in December 2000 to benchmark and evaluate European business incubators. He said the project had come up with some encouraging results. It has found that companies supported by business incubators have a much higher success rate than those which are not supported by incubators. He added that employment opportunities created via business incubators also cost much less than those created through regional support. A job created through business incubators costs only 3,600 euro per post, compared to 15,000 euro for each job created through regional support. Head of the EU Council of industry ministers and Minister for economic affairs, SMEs, research and technology of the Walloon region, Serge Kubla, and EU Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen will speak at the conference.