Bilateral Trade in Water Management Sector as an Engine for Cooperation on Third Markets

Traditional sector networking seminar, this time dealing with the topic of Water Supply and Wastewater Treatment in EU External Aid Programmes, took place on 21 November in Brussels. External aid programmes in the water sector offer many opportunities for European companies to implement projects in third countries and thus this seminar was a great chance for them to establish new contacts with potential partners. Sector seminars have been organized by Permanent Representations of the Member States in the EU on different topics (water, energy, agriculture, etc.) changing every six months since the nineties.

This year the organizers were the Czech and the UK Representations to the EU, CEBRE – Czech Business Representation to the EU and the Czech Ministry of Trade and Industry Representation office in Brussels. The seminar was divided into two parts: the morning session was devoted to presentations of the representatives of the European Commission, European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in order to inform about new opportunities of EU external assistance in the water sector in the period 2014-2020 and the afternoon part of the programme was dedicated to matchmaking workshops, so the companies, whether in a role of consultants, suppliers or contractors, had the opportunity to establish new contacts within the B2B meetings. Companies particularly focused on establishing contacts in order to set up consortia and start cooperation in EU external aid programmes.

The seminar was attended by 125 companies from the whole EU, nine of them being from the Czech Republic. The evening before the seminar had been dedicated to networking between Czech and Belgian companies active in the water sector.