eBSN eBusiness Support Network

EUROCHAMBRES has the pleasure to invite you to participate in its conference on «cross border use of
e-Signature in e-Procurement process». The conference will take place in Brussels on 18 September 2008. A detailed programme is available on the following link:

http://www.eurochambres.eu/content/default.asp?PageID=1&DocID=1148

A number of distinguished speakers have already confirmed their participation, including Commission Vice President Siim Kallas, EUROCHAMBRES Vice President Peter Egardt and MEP Piia-Noora Kauppi.

Please register for the conference by replying to mihoub@eurochambres.eu, confirming your name, organisation and email address and specifying if you will attend the lunch. A confirmation of your registration will follow.

Best regards,
Ben Butters
Director European Affairs
Tel +32 2 282 08 71- Fax +32 2 230 00 38
butters AT eurochambres.eu

 

 
 

Invitation to the Conference on the use of
e-Signature in e-Procurement process
18 September in Brussels
 

 

 

 

Dear eBSN members, I would like to draw your attention to the European SME week, 6-14 May 2009.

The Commission is organising the first European SME week in May 2009 to inform SMEs about available support at EU and national level and to encourage more people to become entrepreneurs. The SME week will be a European umbrella campaign for activities that take place throughout Europe. It will be launched in Brussels on 6 May but the vast majority of events during the week will take place across Europe in the Member States.

The Commission is organising the first European SME week in May 2009 to inform SMEs about available support at EU and national level and to encourage more people to become entrepreneurs. The SME week will be a European umbrella campaign for activities that take place throughout Europe.

The SME week will run from 6 to 14 May 2009. It will be launched in Brussels on 6 May but the vast majority of events during the week will take place across Europe in the Member States. The closing event will be organised together with the Czech Presidency on 13 and 14 May 2009. This event will include the European Enterprise Awards ceremony.

We are calling for business organisations and all interested parties at national, regional and local level to organise events during the SME week. The SME week is an opportunity to promote the support that your organisation can provide to SMEs and potential entrepreneurs.

To organise an event as part of the SME week, please fill in the event form below and send it to the national coordinators for your country.

Aim and Context
The European e-Business Support Network for SMEs (eBSN) is an eBusiness policy coordination platform,
bringing together decision makers and public policy experts in the field of eBusiness, to share information
and to discuss strategic policy direction. Its ultimate goal is to improve the effectiveness of public SME
policies in fostering competitiveness by promoting the innovative use of ICT.
In recent years, several EU Member States have launched initiatives to facilitate ebusiness exchanges within
specific industry supply chains. These policies focus on encouraging market forces to hasten the pace of
ICT-enabled change in specific business sectors. Sector-focused approaches in e-business programmes
can certainly be recommended. Their strength derives from two advantages:
− the facilitated involvement of stakeholders, notably the strong commitment of industry associations to
support such initiatives;
− and the suitability as a framework for addressing advanced e-business goals, such as data exchange
models for specific value chains, as there is inevitably a trade-off between depth and scope.
However, a sectoral focus is not a guarantee per se.
A challenge of the sector-specific eBusiness initiatives is the structural complexity of supply chains,
particularly for companies dealing with different industry sectors. Furthermore, the most advanced initiatives
have pointed out that the cross-sector relationship between industrial sectors is crucial for tier-2
subcontractors since these SMEs are often involved in different sectors. The B2B relationships are also