BUSINESS COMMISSION MET IN LIEPAJA

On April 19-20, 2001 Liepâja was hosting the annual meeting of the UBC Commission on Business Cooperation. Liepâja has taken over the responsibility for leading the Commission in year 2001 from Kolding and will pass it over to Tampere in year 2001.

According to the established pattern the chairmanship of this Commission is changing every year, furthermore it is alternatively a city from the western country and a city from CEE country.

The following topics had been put forward to discussions during the meeting which gathered participants from 14 UBC member cities and even 2 municipalities who are not members of UBC yet were interested to join the event - municipal support to businesses and Special/Free Economic Zones as a tool facilitating entrepreneurship, Public Private Partnership, IT and e-city. Liepâja and Latvia representatives offered the participants keynote speeches on these topics, and then discussions followed - both in the conference room and even outside it before and after the wonderful concert of Liepâja Symphony Orchestra, during bowling session.

As participants agreed, the meetings of the Commission and active participation in the work of the Commission is a good opportunity for people from various cities to get new information on business environment and business opportunities around the Baltic Sea, share experience, build networks and develop new projects. After Liepâja meeting the participants will keep up the contacts and elaborate more the ideas initially outlined during the workshops, hopefully being able to present already concrete project outlines to the participants at the next Commission meeting.