ICPE in European Parliament

ICPE Team has on June 26, 2012 participated in the panel discussion on the topic Can Europe Become a Knowledge Economy by 2020? A Critical View on Proposed Policy Instruments and Partnership organised by KEN in the European Parliament, hosted by Dr Romana Jordan, MEP, and chaired by Dr Jordan and Dr Cizelj, KEN Chairman.

As it was highlighted by Dr Cizelj, knowledge is the strongest tool Europe still has yet additional efforts from all related stakeholder are required to avoid European brain drain to other continents as it is the one of the biggest threat Europe and European Union is facing in creation of knowledge economy. The most time and attention of the panel discussion focused on upcoming the EU market-driven initiative Horizon 2020 which is the financial instrument aimed to secure Europe's global competitiveness, tackle societal challenges by helping to bridge the gap between researches and the market as well as cultural gap between culture of academia and culture of business on the global scale as presented by Mr Christian Ehler, MEP.

While the panel discussion ICPE’s main role was to present ICPE history, its key activities in area of both long-term and short-term training programmes and to attract participants' attention on the ICPE annual meeting on Challenges and Benefits of PPP in Improving Energy Efficiency to be held this October in Ljubljana.

Moreover, the team visited Slovenian Business and Research Association (SBRA) Brussels based office to discuss and exchange experiences on matters of mutual interest.

(From left) Mr Boris Šavle, KEN Coordinator, Ms Giedrė Šadeikaitė, Dr Boris Cizelj, KEN Chairman,