On Thursday 11 April, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg held a new luncheon-debate in the framework of its “Business Circle” forum, in which Michael Hager, Head of Cabinet of Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for “An economy that works for people”. The speaker talked about the “Expectations in transatlantic relations for the new institutional cycle” following the meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council held in Leuven on 4-5 April.

The President of the Chamber, Pablo López-Álvarez, opened the event by introducing the speaker as one of the most influential German civil servants in the European institutions and introducing the topic under discussion: the current state of transatlantic international relations and the prospects for the new mandate.

After a brief introduction by Wassim Chourbaji, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Qualcomm, the event’s sponsor, Hager began his speech by contextualising that Europe’s economic potential has not been fully taped in recent decades. “We need to rethink how seriously we take our development,” he said.

Transatlantic alliance

In this geopolitical situation in which Europe has not grown as much as it could have, he said that “we need allies, Europe alone will not succeed”. He therefore stressed the importance of creating a better environment for cooperation with the United States, which was one of the objectives of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A session in which topics such as the international relations between China and the European Union or the competition concerns of the telecommunications sector were raised. The Chamber would like to thank all the participants for making the event a new success, as well as Bodegas El Lomo for having collaborated with the sponsorship of the wine.