More than 40 representatives of Czech companies, entrepreneurs associations, schools, universities and NGOs participated on a mid July in a panel discussion on European Commission‘s call for proposal “EURASMUS for young entrepreneurs”. They agreed the pilot project is an initiative worth full support; nonetheless doubts were expressed if there will be a sufficient response rate to the call taking into consideration the time left and the complexity of the call.
The ERASMUS for young entrepreneurs call was published by DG ENTR in June. This pilot project is targeted at the nascent entrepreneurs and aims to equip them with information, experience and know how from successful entrepreneurs in another Member State. This experience shall enhance entrepreneurship, internationalisation and competitiveness of SMEs started by young entrepreneurs. This initiative is yet another tool introduced by the European Commission to enhance entrepreneurship, cooperation of businesses and educational sector and entrepreneurship education in general.
Mrs Marie Pavlů (Enterprise Europe Network Prague) introduced the call of DG ENTR and responded a number of questions regarding the possible length of the work placement, role if the intermediary bodies, possibility of enhancing existing partnership between companies by this initiative and many other.
The selected panel speakers to discuss the call were Mr Zdeněk Somr, vice-president of Czech Chamber of Commerce, Mr Tomáš Řehák, president of NGO IMAPCT (only Czech member of JADE Network), Rudolf Šindelář from National Agency for European Educational Programmes and Jaromír Coufalík from NGO National Training Fund. Taking the call’s deadline into account, none of the abovementioned organisations is planning to apply as an intermediary body. Nonetheless they volunteered to offer all possible help in what regards use of networks, best practice and know how sharing to any possible Czech applicant.
The panel discussion was organized by CEBRE – Czech Business Representation to the EU in cooperation with Enterprise Europe Network Czech Republic and took place in the European House, premises of the Delegation of the European Commission to the Czech Republic on 9 July 2008. Partners of the panel debate were Delegation of the European Commission to the Czech Republic and National Agency for European Educational Programmes. Media partners were servers BusinessInfo.cz and EurActive.cz.
PRESS RELEASE: ERASMUS for young entrepreneurs is a good idea that may be difficult to put in praxis
