The third edition of the EBS Live Debate was held on 22 September 2020, featuring the views of Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for the Economy, Nick Clegg, Facebook Vice President for Global Affairs and Communications, Daniel Gros, Director, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and Chupi Sweetman, CEO and Founder of Chupi Heirloom Jewellery. Moderated by Maria Tadeo, Europe reporter for Bloomberg Television. EBS is proud to promote the public-private dialogue that is especially necessary in these challenging times. We would like to thank all participants who followed along and shared their thoughts on Twitter and Facebook. A big thank you to the speakers and moderator for their valuable discussion.
This ‘Rebooting the European Economy’ debate focused on the EU recovery plan. During the debate, the Commissioner underlined the current challenge for the EU will be to ensure the quality of financial assistance’s implementation, providing support for public investments and green and digital reforms in order to help the EU Member States come out of the coronavirus crisis stronger. Besides this financial assistance, SME business owner Chupi Sweetman outlined how the EU should support SMEs by providing mentorship and digital guidance. She also reaffirmed how it is necessary for EU entrepreneurs to change attitude towards failures and the financial system needs to allow businesses to bounce back.
When discussing the Digital transformation and competitiveness of the EU, Facebook’s Nick Clegg outlined that social media are part of the digital transformation of the economy contributing to the creation of jobs, generating sales and levelling the playing field for SMEs by enabling them to reach their customers even during the pandemic. Europe needs to ensure the proper implementation of the Digital market and to reduce its fragmentation. This fragmentation, as Daniel Gros explained, is mainly due to the fact that Member States each implement the common regulations in different ways. Therefore, the real challenge for the EU is to monitor the homogeneous implementation of these rules by national administrations and supervisors.
The full live debate is available to re-watch on our website: https://ebsummit.eu/debate
We hope to see you at EBS on November 16 and 17!
