Investors' Summit 2014: transatlantic trade and investment partnership - Oct 31, 2014
On Friday, October 31st 9:00-12:00, members of 6 foreign chambers in Estonia (American, British, Danish, German, Finnish, and Swedish) gathered at Nordic Hotel Forum for the Annual Investors Summit 2014 that was devoted to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – the trade agreement that is currently negotiated between the EU and USA – and its impact on the businesses in the EU and Estonia, in particular.
The value of the goods and services that cross the Atlantic between the EU and the US amounts to €2 billion everyday. European and American firms hold nearly €2 trillion in investment stock in each other’s jurisdictions. The transatlantic economy is the biggest commercial relationship in the world. But if trade already flows so abundantly, why negotiate a new EU-US trade agreement? What impact would it have on the companies in EU and Estonia? And would companies in Estonia benefit from it and how? These were the questions that the 14 speakers and panelists tried to tackle at the summit covering various industries and business sectors.
The conference was opened with the keynote address by the U.S. Ambassador to Estonia Jeff Levine on the Impact of the Agreement in Today’s Economy. Martti Kalaus from the Secretariat of the Committee on International Trade (INTA), European Parliament, shared the Updates from Brussels and the Status of the Current Negotiations. Later the conference focused on the impact of the agreement on various industries and business sectors and featured the following panels: IT& Service Industries, Healthcare & Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics, SME’s. The discussion was moderated by Søren Hejnfelt, CEO & Founder of Cloutex.
The possible benefits of TTIP that were discussed at the event were:
Less red tape
Opportunities for SMEs
More competitive prices
Job creation
High global standards
Investment boost
We sincerely thank all our event participants for their active participation in the discussion, our speakers and panelists for their thoughts and input, our event sponsors – law firm TRINITI and Danske Bank for their support of the event and our event host - Nordic Hotel Forum for their cooperation and assistance!
See you all next autumn at the Investors' Summit 2015!
Merli Lindberg
