CEIR President's Editorial
Light at the end of the tunnel
At CEIR, we faced the COVID-19 impact all together from minute one. Together we discussed and decided how to continuously be in touch, sharing information on the pandemic, benchmarking and bringing solutions for the benefit of all members of the Organisation.
We all held tight during this terrible months, and succeeded:
- We learnt quick, we adapted, we protected our people with safety measures at the work place - in the case of physical presence in our sites - and provided with the necessary digital tools to work from home -in the case of remote work, when possible.
- Also we protected our organisations, deploying contention measures and reaction plans that were followed with strong discipline and with the formidable commitment of our teams!
Today we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We see how the vaccine programmes are opening the social life… and the economies all around and we start to hear about an economic rebound for the rest of 2021 and 2022, that hopefully will be a fact if…
- no new variants of the COVID ruin the vaccination programs
- the geo-strategical USA/China conflict does not impact negatively on the global economy
- the US economy does not over-heat, bringing interest rates up again, thus holding the global recovery.
Let us have a positive approach to the future and let us get ready for the recovery, all at once.
We entered this period together and we will be coming out from it also together… but stronger and with newly created alliances… and one example of it was the joint organisation of a "Get-To-Know-Each-Others" meeting between CEIR, Europump and Pneurop, where we started a path together with our two sister industry associations to walk together a common journey for the benefit of all of us and the European Industry!
We indeed had a very good panel discussion of the three Presidents in the afternoon of 25 May, excellently moderated by our friend Yvonne Orgill of UWLA, and widely attended by members of our three organisations (close to 100 participants!). While highlighting our respective priorities, notably in the EU policy domain, we exchanged views on how to better use our common networks and experience, gained over so many years, to promote our common interests, notably as regards the EU and national economic recovery plans, energy efficiency, the circular economy or the rapid digitisation of our industries, affecting both our production processes and our end products. We will further build on this first gathering at our Joint Conference scheduled in Brussels on 10 May 2022, while, in the meantime, continuing to explore opportunities for common actions.
