Turkey joins EU competitiveness programme

The Vice-President of the European Commission, Günther Verheugen and Turkish Ambassador to the EU Volkan Bozkır sealed Turkey's entry to the Union's “competitiveness and Innovation Programme” (CIP).

During the signing of the memorandum of understanding, Verheugen welcomed Turkey's decision. “Business and in particular SMEs will strongly benefit from this participation,” he said. The Vice-President also expressed his hope that "this decision will also have a political effect of bringing Turkey and the EU closer together."

The CIP programme, provided with a budget of 3.6 billion Euro until 2013, mainly aims to promote entrepreneurship and growth of SMEs, which form the "backbone" of the Turkish economy, Ambassador Bozkır pointed out.

The CIP consists of the following three pillars:

An 'Entrepreneurship and Innovation Framework Programme' (EIP), created to foster the competitiveness of enterprises;
An 'Information and Innovation Framework Technologies Policy Support Programme', which aims to speed up the development of a sustainable, competitive, innovative and inclusive information society, and;
An 'Intelligent Energy-Europe Programme' (IEE), which promotes energy efficient and renewable energy sources in all sectors.

Last update: 14.2.2008