Baden-Württemberg expands economic relations with countries in South Eastern and Eastern Europe
State Secretary Hassler: “Cooperation in the Danube region opens up opportunity to jointly strengthen Europe’s resilience /Cooperation more important than ever.”
State Secretary Rapp: “We must rethink Europe and include South Eastern and Eastern Europe more strongly in our strategic economic orientation.”
Florian Hassler, State Secretary for Political Coordination and Europe at the Baden-Württemberg State Ministry, and Dr Patrick Rapp, State Secretary at the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economy, Labour and Tourism, met on July 10th 2023 at the event “The Danube Region at the Turn of the Times – Actively Shaping the Transformation. Approaches for politics and economy” with state secretaries from the Republic of Moldova, Croatia and Slovenia as well as with a representative of the federal German government about current economic and civil challenges in the Danube region. The event took place at the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart.
“We need to rethink Europe to preserve our prosperity and economic strength in the face of huge upheavals from the Corona pandemic, Russian war of aggression, climate change and disrupted supply chains. A key to this is working with our partners in the Danube region,” said Dr Patrick Rapp. He said he would like to deepen existing contacts and build new bridges to the countries in the Danube region.
In addition to representatives of politics, Dr Klaus Friesenbichler from the newly founded Supply Chain Intelligence Institute (ASCII) in Vienna gave a keynote speech. In the afternoon, various expert forums were offered on the topics of “The Green Deal – as Financing and Business Opportunity”, “Capacity Building in the framework of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region” with a focus on Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, as well as a Foreign Trade forum with experts on the countries of Slovenia and Croatia.
The event was the third in the series “The Danube Region at the turn of times”. The framework of the event series is the EU Strategy for the Danube Region. Here, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism Baden-Württemberg coordinates together with Croatia the Priority Area 8 Competitiveness of enterprises (EUSDR PA 8).
The full program of the event
10-07-23_Event_The_Danube_Region_at_the_turn_of_times_Program.pdf (baden-wuerttemberg.de)
