kongres-magazine-we-are-live-pro
Photo: Kongres

Shaping an authority that will be responsible for the event industry in the EU Parliament

#WeAreLive is a project made up of event associations from Central-Northern Europe, represented by Maria Kirilova, CEO at Baltic Event Industry Club. This coalition is working to help authorities grasp the true impact that events have on economies and job creation. They have created a petition that will be sent to the EU Parliament in order to demonstrate the industry’s worth to governments.


The Event Industry alliance extends beyond WeAreLive.pro and encompasses the most influential associations in the event industry from over 14 countries in Europe. They are acting in the interest of over 20.000 Companies with more than 500.000 thousand employees and more than 200.000 thousand apprentices.

The event industry has emerged in the last decade as a modern, complex “engine” of the progressive world. Our events serve almost all industries to present new products, communicate with their customers and generate sales. Business events are also a unifying activity that brings together the ecosystems in innovative sectors such as health and education, science and technology, creative industry and also retail, hospitality, entertainment and sports. Busi-ness events allow cities to promote their brand as live meetings are part of the innovation capacity of a city.

A glimpse at the event industry through the global economy:

1. In total, the Event industry in Europe generates EUR 172.6 billion in direct GDP, supporting 2.9 million direct jobs.

2. EUR 1.33 trillion of world GDP is supported by global business events, which would rank the sector as the 13th largest economy globally.

3. The resulting output multiplier for the business events sector is 2.36, implying that each EUR 1.00 in direct business event spending generates an additional EUR 1.36 in indirect and induced expenditures in the global economy.

4. Business events alone involve more than 1.5 billion participants across more than 180 countries yearly and generates approximately EUR 0.95 trillion of direct spending (510,4 million participants and EUR 309.38 billion direct spendings in Europe in 2017).

5. Every year Europe hosts over 500 million participants at business events.

Creators of the petition believe: “Live events should not be sitting alongside tourism and culture. Their proper place is within the economic engine of countries and cities.”

“In the process of organizing WeAreLive, we’ve realized that as an industry we are global, but in terms of the decisions that were being made around the future of our industry, most of these were being made locally.”

We need good input from the industry itself.

“We kindly ask you to sign the online petition that we have prepared to prevent a large number of bankruptcies, and quite possibly the permanent disappearance of the professional event industry.”

Join our newsletter!

Subscribe to our newsletter and stay up-to-date with the latest updates from Kongres Magazine.