Innovation can play key role in Polish-Dutch relations - minister

2019-04-03 20:30 update: 2019-04-07, 18:52
Polish Entrepreneurship and Technology Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz. Photo PAP/Paweł Supernak
Polish Entrepreneurship and Technology Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz. Photo PAP/Paweł Supernak
Innovations, especially those related to green technologies, may play an important role in Polish-Dutch relations, Polish Entrepreneurship and Technology Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz told PAP after a Polish-Dutch Business Forum in The Hague on Wednesday.

During her visit to the Netherlands on Wednesday, Minister Emilewicz met with Dutch government officials and Dutch and Polish businesspeople.

The forum, inaugurated by Emilewicz and Dutch Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Minister Sigrid Kaag, was attended by 200 entrepreneurs, and institutions from both countries.

"We had an opportunity to present a new face of the Polish economy: we talked about green growth, we presented companies that represent new technologies, technologies of the future economy," Emilewicz told PAP after the conclusion of the forum.

The participants of the forum also discussed non-tariff barriers which erode the principles of the single European market, said Emilewicz, who argued that the single market should be strengthened and further developed, particularly in services.

The Polish minister expressed hope that the forum will result in better contacts between Polish and Dutch entrepreneurs. "Poland wants to uphold the good rates of growth in trade with the Netherlands, but we also want to give a new impulse to our cooperation. Innovations, especially those related to green technologies, may play an important role here," the minister stressed.

In 2018, the Netherlands was Poland's sixth biggest trade partner, both in terms of exports and imports, the Entrepreneurship and Technology Ministry data show.

Polish exports to the Netherlands were dominated by electromechanical industry products (37.9 pct), agri-food products (19.8 pct), chemicals (10.2 pct), minerals (8.9 pct) and metallurgical products (7 pct). (PAP)

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