Economics, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Forum

Under the heading “Growing Together”, this year’s largest Baltic Sea region meeting will explore how cooperation can help strengthen economic growth, contribute to sustainable development, and create a strong and integrated Baltic Sea region. Solutions and strategic policy are always on the minds of decision makers and experts, from ministers to representatives of NGOs. Up to thousand participants are expected across all the events.

In Turku all the major Baltic Sea discussion forums will be gathered together for the first time, with events being held including the 16th Baltic Development Forum Summit and the 5th Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, as well as the XII Baltic Sea NGO Forum. In addition to these large-scale conferences, a number of other seminars and conferences are also being held in Turku, such as the Baltic Sea Health Summit.

Up to 1000 Baltic Sea region experts, high level political decision makers, and political and business leaders are expected to arrive in Turku.

Undoubtedly, Turku will be the main venue in 2014 for pushing forward cooperation and integration in the Baltic Sea region. Many of the key actors and the main organisations are coming together for the events, thereby recognising that we all need to work together cross-border and cross-sector to succeed, share common priorities to make a real impact and avoid overlapping. It is a sign of how a “smart” and ambitious region works, says Baltic Development Forum Director Hans Brask.

Turku has worked persistently for many years to promote cooperation in the Baltic Sea region. It is for this reason that the European Union has assigned Turku a coordinating role in the implementation of its Baltic Sea strategy: the city’s specific role is to involve non-EU countries – such as Russia, Norway and Belarus – in effective cooperation within the Baltic Sea region. In addition, Turku will act as host for European Maritime Day conference in 2016.

In addition to economic growth, other themes will be the sea, bio and health and the Northern Growth Zone.

The driving theme of the 16th Baltic Development Forum Summit and 5th Annual Forum of the EUSBSR in Turku is the economic growth and sustainable development of the Baltic Sea region, communicated under the heading Growing Together. In addition to discussion on a strategic level, concrete economic growth and cooperation will be sought through themes such as the Northern Growth Zone, Blue Growth, innovation, the bio sector and health.

In economically and politically challenging times, it is important that the Baltic Sea region is able to promote, as far as is possible, highly concrete opportunities for cooperation. As the Turku region is home to some of the leading Finnish centres in the maritime industry and bio sectors, for example, it was natural that we assembled our own programmes around these themes, says Mayor of Turku, Aleksi Randell.

One theme for the Turku Baltic Sea Days is the Northern Growth Zone for the promotion of new growth, increasing people’s mobility, and cooperation, which is a major concept for binding together the northern Baltic Sea states and their innovations. The growth zone runs Stockholm-Turku-Helsinki-St Petersburg. The growth zone brings together cities and companies to make use of investments and to realise new innovative, ecological, and smart business ideas.

The City of Turku wants to actively support small and medium sized enterprises, in particular in increasing cross-border operations, and steps taken by companies to increase cooperation and operations will be encouraged as a central part of the Northern Growth Zone in all sectors.