EU-Turkey Chambers Forum Project launched

The EU-Turkey Chambers Forum Project covering such issues as textile, agriculture, innovation and vocational training with a total budget of €5 million was launched to be completed by the end of year. The project supports cooperation between chambers in Turkey and the EU through 21 twinning projects, bringing together 41 Turkish chambers and commodity exchanges with 34 chambers from the EU member countries. For example, chambers of trade and industry (TSOs) in Batman and Sirnak were twinned with those of Gumulcine, and the TSO of Diyarbakir became a twining partner with the TSO of Prato in Italy, as well as the TSO of Trabzon with the TSO of Caseres in Spain. Speaking on the project, Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB) Chairman Rifat Hisarciklioglu said that they aimed to improve cooperation in such fields as foreign trade, innovation, conglomeration, agricultural support, as well as environmental and vocational training and transfer good practices thanks to those twinning projects. Reiterating that they were in search of chambers and commodity exchanges with a foreign language capacity to carry out the Chamber Development Program in 2001, Hisarciklioglu said that they could hardly find even 10 chambers at that time, but today our chambers and commodity exchanges have become important service headquarters thanks to that program.