A consortium of two EEIA organisations EMECA and UFI as well as Eurochambres and communication partner LOW have won a EUR 1.35m contract to manage the organisation of EU to Third Country B2B events at ten international exhibitions in Europe and outside.
“It is the first time that exhibition organisers were explicitly addressed by the European Commission to be part of the targeted group of tenderers, and that consequently all major organisations supporting European companies in going international joined forces to fully exploit their expertise for the participating companies,” said Barbara Weizsäcker, secretary general of both the European Exhibition Industry Alliance and EMECA.
The offer, submitted by the group under the lead of Eurochambres, achieved an outstanding score at the evaluation. The project, now underway, will run for 30 months.
It will be managed by a project team in Brussels and branded as 'Business Beyond Borders'.
UFI president Sergey Alexeev said: “This is the first time that direct EU funding for our industry has been achieved, so I want to congratulate the EEIA team.”
María Martínez, EMECA president, added: “It is a logical step forward after building reputation, promoting and positioning the exhibition industry in Brussels. Now, the ten selected trade fairs will demonstrate our sectors’ competence in lead generation and management.”
Kai Hattendorf, managing director of UFI commented: “By uniting a comprehensive group of exhibition organisers, venues, and partners, EEIA proved its competence and practical value both for UFI and EMECA members and for the EU institutions. We are pleased to see that this joint approach is leading to results.”
The ten selected trade fairs will gain financial support from their local chambers for matchmaking and policy events.
The European Commission is tasked with encouraging and practically supporting EU businesses that act internationally, in particular SMEs. It is embedded into a variety of programmes, measures and networks financed by the European Commission.
Possible synergies between all programmes will be exploited and the networks will act as multipliers for this project. In addition to the B2B, B2C (business to cluster) and C2C (cluster to cluster) brokerage events, a half day policy conference shall be offered.
