13th Workshop of the European eBusiness Support Network opened in Berlin

Dagmar Wöhrl, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, and Dr. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, Member of the European Parliament, opened the 13th Workshop of the European eBusiness Support Network in Berlin today. It is being jointly organised in the context of the German EU Presidency by the Economics Ministry and the European Commission, and the theme is “eBusiness Solutions and Standards for SMEs – state of play and perspectives”.

State Secretary Wöhrl: “Appropriate standards provide a foundation for a broad application of modern information and communication technologies in commerce. At the same time, efficient standards form the basis for innovations by our companies and for maintaining our economy’s competitiveness. Here, I believe there is an urgent need at European level to establish common solutions which will enable Europe to make its weight felt globally.”

The workshop is aimed at policy-makers, organisations supporting SMEs, and standardisation initiatives, and it is primarily intended to identify possibilities for and barriers to the use of eBusiness standards in SMEs, to elaborate examples of best practice for the use of standards in business processes, and to discuss ways to boost the presence of SMEs in standardisation initiatives.

State Secretary Wöhrl: “Due to the great complexity of the issue, the development of business processes on the basis of standards represents a major challenge for SMEs in particular. The advice and support available to these companies can be co-ordinated even better if the EU member states work closely together. With its many years of intensive exchanges of experience and views on current eBusiness issues, the European eBusiness Support Network provides an outstanding platform for this.”