We signed the declaration on the event, the Industrial Technologies Conference, and that's a very good opportunity first of all to show the commitment from the European industry to work in public-private partnerships.

And I think that notion deserves a few more comments because it's really important if we want to improve the competitiveness of Europe that all the players work together well. And we have some challenges in terms of jobs, we have them in terms of technology development and growth, and this is a great framework, the PPPs, the public-private partnerships,

in which we can develop our competitiveness in Europe. In particular, obviously, we are here to represent SUSCIM and to represent the SPIRE PPP, which is the sustainable process industry through resource and energy efficiency public-private partnership proposal.

And over the last two years, we've been working very hard to put that together. Now, the idea behind this is that industries, process industries, have common challenges and these challenges are being reflected in the proposal that we have made.

These circle around topics like resource efficiency, energy efficiency, but also the inclusion of the full value chain. So it's not just about the process, but it's about raw materials, be they traditional raw materials or bio-based, renewable raw materials,

the actual conversion processes, the materials, the products, the recycling, and the reuse, and the horizontal issues, as we call them, like dissemination and education. And in this proposal, we have collected a number of very relevant topics

that would help to combine ecology, resource efficiency, and economy competitiveness in what we are trying to do. So overall, we're very happy to have the opportunity to say that public-private partnerships, that's public funding projects,

are an important element of the research and innovation value chain. And what I mean by that is fundamental research is the basis, but then innovation, that means taking the good research results to successful industrial, commercial application, is important.

And the way Horizon 2020 is structured right now and the proposals are written, we would focus more on bridging that gap between research and innovation to come up with industrially and commercially relevant activities. And we hope that the Commission is happy about what we could deliver today.

And we're looking forward to having that cooperation and ultimately an Horizon 2020 program that's strong, that includes an adequate budget of 80 billion euros, and then a space for these PPPs,

and in particular SPIRE, to do good work for the competitiveness of Europe.