The UfM joins the regional efforts to promote youth entrepreneurship

• The Legacy event: ‘EU Med means Business – Shaping the future of entrepreneurship in the South’ focused on unleashing entrepreneurial potential, as well as growing and retaining talent in the Euro-Mediterranean Region, in the presence and with the active participation of young entrepreneurs and relative stakeholders.
• UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel stressed the importance of entrepreneurship to unlocking the creative potential of younger people and encouraging smart and creative solutions and business models that are functional, sustainable and resilient

Brussels, 21-22 May 2019. The UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel has participated in the Legacy event: ‘EU Med means Business – Shaping the future of entrepreneurship in the South’ that took place on 21-22 May in Brussels, bringing together 100 participants that included young entrepreneurs, journalists, international financial Institutions, local commercial banks, venture capital/business angles, commercial banks, investors, business support organizations, among other stakeholders.

The event saw parallel sessions and workshops addressing barriers to investment and SME growth, investment and job creation, unleashing entrepreneurial potential, as well as growing and retaining talent, and ended with the handover of recommendations made by the young entrepreneurs, followed by the closing statement by Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, in the presence of the UfM Secretary General and Christian Danielsson, Director-General of DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations of the EC.

Over 1.5 days, the event aimed at showcasing the impact of the partnership between the EU and the Neighbourhood South countries on job creation for young people through promoting investment, entrepreneurship, innovation and inclusive growth to a wider audience composed of young entrepreneurs, IFIS, investors, private sector representatives and policy makers in the region and in the EU. Moreover, the event offered to a pre-selected representative group of young entrepreneurs the opportunity to discuss remaining barriers to investment and latest trends in private sector development in the region, identify needs for change and formulate 10-15 recommendations on measures to be taken at policy level.

The sessions and the workshops initiated a necessary dialogue with a network of carefully selected businessmen and women, financiers and economic journalists from the Neighbourhood South and the EU, yielding important recommendations emanating from the region’s youth.

During his speech, Secretary General Kamel recalled the weight that the UfM Secretariat assigns to entrepreneurship as one of its priority areas of action under Business Development and Employment. He stressed that “entrepreneurship is of particular importance to unlocking the creative potential of younger people and encouraging smart and creative solutions and business models that are functional, sustainable and resilient.”