Emerging Europe is GREAT!

Just wanted to catch up at the end of a very busy week. The Emerging Europe message really is great. Everybody is talking emerging market opportunity. For many businesses however they are just too far away – we offer a similar opportunity right on the UK’s doorstep – you can get here and back in a day and there’s lots of good business to be done. We’ve actively been showing that this week.

The week started early with a World Nuclear Forum in Warsaw – attracting political and industry leaders from across the region with a strategic interest in civil nuclear. Emerging Europe is already using nuclear power to generate electricity. Over the next 20 years this is a 50 billion opportunity. There are huge opportunities for the UK in delivering that opportunity.

UKTI held its annual Emerging Europe Conference in Warsaw this week. This provided an opportunity to really focus on big ticket projects – rail, water, retail, health and energy. What were the main messages coming out of the conference? We need to double the number of companies exporting to Poland. We’re doing ok but there is much more scope for growth.

Emphasizing the importance of this region for the UK we also hosted the new CEO of UK Trade and Investment this week for a couple of days on the first leg of a regional tour. He had lots of great things to say about the region. This was a great opportunity to expand and strengthen British Polish links in key sector. Another really good meeting was a lunch to promote the UK as a great investment destination for Polish business. Do get in touch on that – some very interesting opportunities.

Next year we have set ourselves a target of doubling our activity to get our GREAT Emerging Europe message out to more businesses. I am personally very pleased to say we’ll be working much more closely with the BPCC in delivering a new events programme and also powering forward with our digital networking.

If you are a business or an NGO and really want to engage with us in getting the GREAT message of Emerging Europe out there do get in touch. Remember last year trade grew by over 2 billion GBP to this region, on a par with leading global Emerging Markets. That’s just the start though. There’s much more great business to be done as we all learned this week.

To join our EMERGING EUROPE IS GREAT campaign get in touch with martin.oxley@fco.gov.uk and malgorzata.smierzycka@fco.gov.uk.