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The Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, keynote speaker on the GA of the EUEW on June 6th 2008
Thanks to the efforts of ELC, The European Lamp Companies Federation, we will have the honour to welcome Commissioner Piebalgs as keynote speaker during our General assembly in June 2008 in Brussels.
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About Andris Piebalgs
Andris Piebalgs took up the post of Energy Commissioner in November 2004. Since the EU enlargement on the 1st of May 2004, when the Commissioners of the new Member States came into the European Commission, he was heading the Cabinet of Latvian Commissioner Mrs. Sandra Kalniete. Before joining the European Commission he worked for almost a decade in diplomacy. He started his diplomatic career in 1995 when he became the ambassador of Latvia in Estonia. During five years – between 1998 and 2003 – he was the Ambassador of Latvia to the European Union. Later he became the Undersecretary of State for EU affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia.
Six years of his career he has spent being active in Latvian politics. From 1990 till 1993 he was Minister of Education. In 1993 and 1994 he was chairing the Budget and finance committee of the Parliament of Latvia (Saeima). He became Finance minister of Latvia in 1994 and held this post for two years.
He was born in Valmiera (Latvia) on September the 17th 1957. In 1980 he obtained his degree in Physics from the University of Latvia. During a period of eight years after his university studies he worked as a teacher, later Headmaster of the 1st Secondary School of Valmiera. His career in the education system continued when he started to work as Director of the Department in the Ministry of Education of Latvia.
He is married and has three children.
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The importance of Andris Piebalgs as keynote speaker in our programme
The impact of the implementation of the WEEE directive on our business brought us out of the clouds. It also pointed out the influence of European decisions on our business. Today it is clear to everybody that the implementation of the WEEE directive would have been much better for our business if we had been involved earlier in the process. So to enable some proactivity we choose to focus our GA in 2008 on important changes that will affect our business the coming years. These changes can be the result of new directives, reviews of existing directives, new standards, changes in the political views and so on.
A main issue within this is the unprecedented step that the European Union recently made. On March 9th 2007, the European Council – that is the Heads of State and Government of the EU's 27 Member States - agreed on an integrated climate and energy policy, backed up by a detailed action plan. This makes the EU unique across the globe for having binding, regional targets for energy and climate policy.
This new energy policy is very solidly based on the proposals that the European Commission made in January 2007. It reflects a trend which has become increasingly evident in the energy debate in Europe: that an individual Member State cannot tackle today's energy challenges on its own. These choices made by Europe concerning energy will certainly result in a lot of initiatives to save energy and decrease emission of CO². Some of them will influence our business. We are sure that Commissioner Piebalgs will give us a good overview of what lives in the European politics about this topic.
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Thank you ELC
We like to thank ELC for their suggestion and their initiative to invite Mister Andris Piebalgs.
A good cooperation generates added value for the whole sector. Cooperation starts with knowing each other and speaking to each other and exchange ideas about important issues for our business. That is the mean reason that we organize our GA’s and that we really expect you to attend our meeting on June 6th, 2008 in Brussels since also your ideas are important for the sector.
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