Brussels, 5 October 2016 – The European BIC Network recently elected its new President – Patrick Valverde (France) – and Vice Presidents – David Uhlí? (Czech Republic) and Michael Maddock (Ireland). The election took place during a Board of Directors meeting at the recent EBN Congress in Guimarães. Under the theme Design for Innovation, the 25^th EBN Congress, gathered over 350 delegates from 34 countries. 

Patrick Valverde is Director of Toulon Var Technologies (TVT) and a 25-year veteran of the innovation and entrepreneur support system in France. At TVT, he has taken the organisation through several waves of innovation to ensure the Toulon region’s businesses are best able to benefit from the latest trends: incubation, co-working, acceleration, technopoles, clusters in the digital economy (“FrenchTech”), creative industries and social innovation. He is also the current Chairman of RETIS, the French Association of EU|BICs, Incubators and Technopoles. At the European level, Valverde has always participated in the international networking and opportunities that EBN brings to its members. He was instrumental in adopting and promoting the EU|BIC quality and benchmarking system, as a way to enhance performance and efficiency.

Commenting on his appointment, Patrick Valverde said “It is an honour to become President of EBN at this important time of EBN maturity, a time when startups, innovation and entrepreneurship are high up in the policy agenda of all national governments and the European Commission. I intend to continue to promote EBN as the only non-governmental agency providing certification and networking services to professional organisations who deliver high-impact support to innovative startups, scale-ups and SMEs. I am very optimistic as the Network has never shown such a potential for growth”.

Valverde’s first act as President was to open the 25^th EBN Congress and to welcome the Portuguese Minister for Economy – Mr. Manuel Caldeira Cabral –  who delivered a speech about the new national “Startup Portugal” policy, at the EBN Congress Gala Dinner.

The new officers take over the positions of now past President Alvaro Simon de Blas (Spain) and past Vice President Lennard Drogendijk (Netherlands), who came to the end of their mandates.

-ENDS-

View the full EBN Board of Directors here.

Contact: media@ebn.eu , +32 2 761 10 81