Jean-Claude Fayat

Yes, of course we are attached to this region, but you know, I'll start with a little wink from Aquitaine: we are Girondins, not Jacobins. And so I think we can today also have important groups in France that are not necessarily centralized in Paris. Obviously we have collaborators in Paris, but we can also have our headquarters elsewhere in the provinces. There are a few others, even more prestigious than us, who are in the provinces. So there we are, attached to our city of origin.

Indeed, I believe today one of the first committees in France in terms of training. I think even it is the first since we provide 1200 to 1300 training interventions as volunteers, since the CCE as you know are volunteers, over one year in all the schools of Aquitaine, of the old Aquitaine. So I think when it becomes New Aquitaine, it will be even more. And these trainings are about what? Well, we intervene practically from Bac+2 to Bac+5, and of course it's about international. So the CCE do not claim to be trainers and academics, but we intervene in these schools to share our experiences, concrete cases, which are ultimately very complementary to what the official teachers can provide.

Well, I think it's nearly 40%. Nearly 40%. So four out of ten trainings are given in the Aquitaine region by the CCE. Yes, and why? Because when I took the presidency of the Aquitaine committee, we wanted, I considered that we had to get involved in this ant work. I felt it when I started working. It was one of the great shortcomings of France: not having enough young people who want to turn to international, this culture of international first, speaking languages, and then this culture of intention. So I consider that it is the duty of the CCE to prepare this seed. It's ant work, but I think it's our role overall.

Yes, it is progressing a lot. First because training has also progressed in that direction. I think the efforts made by the CCE also help to advance all that. And I think it's very good. It will prepare our country tomorrow to be more efficient internationally. I think it's a very important work that must continue.

So at the same time as I took the presidency of the CCE, some time after, we all said, all the CCE, we noticed that in Aquitaine as in all regions, there was often a dispersion of efforts made internationally, among others by the chambers of commerce. So we started in Aquitaine by centralizing all international on what was called CCI International Aquitaine, which centralizes all international efforts in the different territorial chambers. And then when we did that, we said to ourselves at the time there was a very important effort on collective actions. We believed in it quite little; we thought individual support was more important. So we made a lot of effort initially on individual support to advise companies, especially SMEs, to go international. And then we said collective is not necessarily bad, but not as it was done. So we preferred to reason on a collective that is around sectors, hunting grounds, to have more coherence, so that when we go to a country, we bring companies that are complementary, that present a global offer, and who instead of wondering how they will take a piece of the cake, they first wonder how to make the cake bigger. So that's a bit the object of this principle Urba Aquitaine, but it brings together everything around the smart and sustainable city. And today it represents 75 SMEs from Aquitaine that are in it.

So we are happy because today we have formed a new committee. It will be official from the election of the new board in December, but it's done. There is a single committee for New Aquitaine. And I think it was important to achieve that. It's not necessarily easy because each committee had its history, its culture. And finally we tried to reason also on the addition of cultures and not obviously a committee that absorbs another. It's the addition of these three committees that will constitute a new committee, first that matches the region. It was important since our interlocutor is the region, we had to match the region. And also to add our forces to be even better tomorrow and perform better.