EU commission president throws weight behind business summit

Jose Manuel Barroso says the business community can play a “vital” role in combating climate change.

Speaking exclusively to this website, the commission president said the EU’s recently-announced plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions presented a “new opportunity” for industry and business.

The EU wants to cut CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 although this had led to some fears that industry may end up footing the bill.

“I am confident the business world will play its part in helping to create a better environment for us all,” said Barroso.

He said he hopes both the EU and industry can turn what some have called the ‘carbon challenge’ into business opportunities and economic growth.

He was speaking as he arrived to deliver a keynote address to the European Business Summit which opened on Thursday in Brussels.

The two-day event, which has attracted a range of top-level speakers from the political and business word, this year focuses on climate change and energy issues.

Barosso said the fact that he had attended the previous five business summits was indicative of his support for its overall objectives.

Another keynote speaker, Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, told this website that his company was playing its "full" part in helping to tackle global warming.

He also said that while Microsoft “fully supports” the EU’s climate change goals, “it is time to start translating words into actions”.

Earlier, Friends of the Earth Europe mounted a protest at the opening of the summit, the sixth to be staged.

The group says the demonstration was aimed at highlighting the “contradiction” between the tile of the event – ‘Greening the Economy’ – and the 'environmentally-detrimental' practices of many of the companies attending or sponsoring it.

The event, which concludes on Friday, is organised by BUSINESSEUROPE and the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium.

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