Ekaterina Zaharieva: Without the Support of Businesses, Politicians Cannot Overcome Global Challenges
11 June 2018 News
‘If we want Europe to go beyond the 1.5% mark when it comes to GDP growth in the coming decade, our only option is to create a Digital Single Market. Sadly, Europe has been a bit more self-sufficient over the past years, and now it has to catch up.’ Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ekaterina Zaharieva said this at the European Parliament of Enterprises forum held in the National Palace of Culture under the auspices of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The initiative is a simulation of an EP session, but the participants there are businesses from all European countries gathered to discuss key issues that have to do with the development of business.
‘Against the background of Brexit negotiations and our analyses, perhaps it is just now that we have come to realise what the Single Market has to offer, and the multitude of challenges that would stand before citizens, not to mention SMEs, were it to disappear,’ Minister Zaharieva stated. She congratulated the organisers of the forum for their choice of topics, and pointed out that if businesses did not provide support and ideas, politicians would not be able to overcome global challenges.
The Deputy Prime Minister reminded everyone that earlier this year the European Commission presented an initiative for establishing a Digital Single Market with three main strands: facilitating consumer and enterprise access to digital goods and services across Europe, creating a favourable climate for equality to ensure the development of digital networks and innovative services, and maximising the growth potential of the digital economy. She also welcomed the draft for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), which features the digital agenda for the first time, allocating 28 billion euro to it, which is a twofold increase for the sphere.
‘This is indeed a good start but we have to see how debates will unfold. Each Member State, of course, has its specific circumstances but we need to wake up and realise that Europe is not the same as the world. The world is developing rapidly, and if we want to continue to be a leading economy, we have to take urgent measures towards establishing a Digital Single Market,’ Ekaterina Zaharieva highlighted.
She used the ICT sector as an example, it being the fastest growing sector in Bulgaria over the past years, and highlighted the key role of the ties between businesses and education. ‘We have to ask ourselves what all of us can do together to ensure that the labour market matches the type of professionals our educational systems produce. We have to foster an entrepreneurial spirit and transferrable skills in education while at the same time establishing systems to ensure quick retraining and lifelong learning,’ Minister Zaharieva concluded.
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