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Please note that the previous website used for the Istanbul Bridge-Building Conference (http://www.eu-turkeyglobalbusinessbridges.eu/) under this initiative is no longer in use by this project and is in no way associated with the partners of the project, the EU Delegation of Turkey, the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Turkey and TOBB.

Invitation for events in May and June 2013

The initiative

The EU Delegation to Turkey has launched an initiative entitled EU-Turkey Global Business Bridges in partnership with the Ministry of Economy of Turkey and the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), also co-operating with EUROCHAMBRES. The initiative aims at facilitating trade and investment partnerships between EU and Turkish companies in third countries. The pilot stage of this trilateral initiative covers Egypt, Tunisia and the Palestinian economy. The initiative was supported by a research study carried out by the Ankara-based think tank organisation TEPAV and the Barcelona-based IEMED Institute. The study helped identifying synergies, value chains and sectors where trilateral co-operation can be successful. The study can be downloaded here).

The partners of the initiative in the third countries are: FEDCOC for Egypt (http://www.fedcoc.org.eg), CONECT (http://www.conect.org.tn/) and APII (http://www.tunisianindustry.nat.tn/en/home.asp) in Tunisia and FPCCIA (www.pal-chambers.org) for the Palestinian economy.

Company interest and participation in recent events

The initiative collected a good level of interest in the initial circulation of the company invitations between November 2012 and January 2013. As of February 2013, a total of 267 companies applied and registered in the company database with some participation from the selected third countries (for Catalogue I, the database of predominantly EU and Turkish companies, please see http://gbbi2013.eu/downloads/gbbi_catalogue.pdf). The breakdown of EU and Turkish companies willing to invest and trade jointly in Egypt, Tunisia and the Palestinian economy, was as follows: 161 Turkish companies and 106 EU companies from 17 Member States. The overwhelming majority of these companies are small and medium-sized enterprises.

The first business networking and matchmaking events under the initiative took place in Turkey: in Mersin on 7-8 February 2013 for the transportation and logistics sector and in Antalya for 6 other sectors on 21-22 February 2013.

The Mersin event on transportation and logistics was attended by 51 companies with the following breakdown: 19 Turkish companies, 25 Egyptian companies and 7 EU-Turkish joint ventures.

About 122 companies participated in the Antalya event encompassing other sectors with the attendance of 139 business people. The company breakdown in terms of country of origin was as follows: 42 EU companies coming from 10 different Member States, 10 EU-Turkish joint ventures representing the investments of 6 different Member States in Turkey, 56 Turkish companies 11 from Egypt, and some companies from Tunisia and Palestine. The attending companies had on average 7 business networking meetings in 1.5 days with some promising matchmakings results. The list of participants is available at this link: http://gbbi2013.eu/antalya. Hence, in total, both events attracted 173 companies.

Upcoming events in Alexandria and Tunis

The tripartite business networking and matchmaking events will continue in Alexandria, Egypt on 26-27 May 2013 and on 11-12 June 2013 in Tunis, Tunisia. The interest for the Palestinian economy and companies will also be covered in the Alexandria event. Please consult Alexandria and Tunis parts of the website for details.