Entrepreneur Envoy Launches

A new online portal to help young entrepreneurs start and grow their own business was launched in November 2011 by the Employers” Group of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The website is a joint initiative of the EESC and the European Commission.

Entrepreneurenvoy.org is an International web-portal that unites and recognises entrepreneurialism in all its forms, across all boundaries, and in all its guises. A single global portal for entrepreneurs, like-minded individuals and organisations that want to turn Ideas into Action, promote sustainability and celebrate success. It addresses policy failings in the promotion of entrepreneurship, especially among young people and women. The Global Entrepreneur Envoy online portal “Entrepreneur Envoy” will offer tools to foster culture change and promote entrepreneur-friendly policies.

The launch took place on 17 November 2011 during the third edition of the “Young European Entrepreneurs” Seminar”, hosted by the president of the Employers” Group of the EESC, Henri Malosse. The event featured contributions from 52 active young entrepreneurs from 18 European countries.

Mr Malosse said: “We want to develop a new vision of the entrepreneurial spirit, allowing Europeans to create wealth and build on a European identity. I truly believe in the power of water droplets accumulating to achieve great things. We can achieve anything if we pool our modest means.”

The participants” recommendations listed the following priorities:

- A European Statute for SMEs (the Statute for a European private company), an EESC initiative

- A unified Europe with a real European government
- Facilitating vocational exchange for young people, in addition to school and university exchange schemes
- A European network of business incubators
- European financing facilities for new initiatives, especially microcredit
- Holding a “Young entrepreneurs” day” to celebrate success

The site is also supposed to create a new vision of the entrepreneurial spirit, its creators said, continuing to claim that it also should allow Europeans to create wealth and build on a European identity.