The National Award for 2015 and the Special Award of the European Commission for "Responsible Entrepreneurship" reflect the successful completion of our Chamber’s participations in the NSRF for 2007-2013, and its positioning, with many ambitions at the beginning of the new great effort for the productive use of resources of the NSRF 2014-2020. PCCI’s President, Mr. Vassilis Korkidis, received yesterday two awards as part of the special event of the “European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2015”, held in Luxembourg, and mentioned, inter alia:

“… The Piraeus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, using the resources of the European Social Fund, has carried out two complicated interventions in the labor market regarding the area of its ​​responsibility, which addressed directly to 4,000 beneficiaries, while at the same time, we believe it affected positively a far wider range of businesses and employees. These interventions contain interesting features of novelty and were designed and implemented under the current conditions of economic and social crisis.

In 2013, the Vocational Training Program, for the Certification of Technical Competence by ISO/IEC 17024, which was addressed to 500 unemployed and 1.000 employees threatened by unemployment from the Piraeus industrial Zone. The second major intervention is the project "Integrated Program providing training services, counselling and certification for the employees threatened by unemployment, the employees and self-employed, mainly in the industrial sectors of the wider region of Piraeus and Thriasio, aiming to improve their employability and to retain them to the labor market» (MIS 488597), addressed to 2.500 beneficiaries, qualified staff, from the industrial sector, an intervention which will be completed within 2015.

In terms of society, the main added value of the projects was important since an experienced part of the productive potential of the area managed to renew and enrich the professional knowledge of technicians in 11 specialties and certify with modern procedures and standards their technical skills. It was a substantial contribution to adapt to the current labor market requirements for "certified workers”. As a result, more than 200 certified – through the program – employees now work abroad and 1.500 in Greece.

The Piraeus Chamber of Commerce & Industry, itself, gained significant expertise from the administration and management of such a complicated program. Valuable experience for PCCI is its cooperation with businesses, unions and other institutions of the city, cooperation which has promoted, organized and used in order to design a program, corresponding to the actual requirements of businesses and society. I believe that the results of the effort that we present today is a small but characteristic depiction of such a plan. Any idea of ​​intervention in important and crucial issues, such as unemployment and growth, can be translated into practice, using the productive resources of the EU structural funds. The correct use of Community funds mobilizes a remarkable number of business staff and executives, adds know-how, encourages cooperation between employers and employees in achieving solutions, improves practices, adapts changes, combines partnerships and promotes private sector initiatives.

The Prizes awarded to PCCI, are dedicated to the employers and employees of the wider area of Piraeus, Perama amd Elefsina, as well as to those of our Chamber who have worked for the Program..."