2. ABOUT EUROCHILE FOUNDATION
EuroChile was constituted as an autonomous non-profit Foundation incorporated, under
private law, on December 23rd, 1992. Although it is a non-profit organization, it can execute
economic and financial operations the product of which has to be fully destined to the
fulfilling of its social object. The Chilean law 19.186, by which EuroChile was created,
established in its third article that the foundation “will promote the establishment of exchange
mechanisms between public and private entities and natural persons established in the EU
member countries and Chile. This will allow the fostering of a more intense economic,
technological, commercial, and social cooperation, and fortify the actions that other entities
carry out with the same aim, all this fundamentally oriented to SMEs.”
The main action lines are: business promotion by business meetings, entrepreneurial
missions in order to facilitate the concretion of businesses and commercial agreements
between Chilean and European SMEs; technology and know-how transfer in order to
promote and consider technology links between entrepreneurs and institutions of the
European Union and Chile. Therefore the foundation offers technical assistance to the
entrepreneur in the technological innovation project development and execution, in the
promotion of transnational technology transfer agreements, and in the execution of different
training activities. To reach these aims, EuroChile uses its specialized international network
contacts.
EuroChile Foundation is active member of the main international European collaboration
networks:
• Enterprise Europe Network: support net for companies that are looking for business
partners, technology exchange, commercial and legal information of the EU.
EuroChile is the only Latin American member of the network. The network has more
than 600 centers in 40 countries, with more than 4000 professionals working in it. The
members are mainly chambers of commerce and technology innovation centers.
• AL-INVEST: a network that reinforces economic cooperation between Latin American
and European SMEs by facilitating the organization of business rounds, the
concretion of commercial and entrepreneurial agreements between Latin America
and Europe.
• European Business Organization: a network of entrepreneurial organizations
created by the European Commission for the fostering of business development in
non-EU countries; getting to know the reality in every region and distributing
information about European politics. There are more than 20 members worldwide,
three of them in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile by EuroChile.
The concrete experience of the foundation in these 15 years is concentrated in 162
technology and business rounds, 158 training programs and seminars, 9 special interest
tourism projects, 4 investment projects for company creation, and 159 other initiatives. We
advised 2.036 clients and brought 75 European specialists to Chile. More than 15.000
Chilean SMEs benefited from our work.
The priority sectors are:
Food. The EU demands healthy and innovative products. Chile produces them,
Europe has top processing technologies.
Special interest Tourism. Chile has enormous unexploited potential, Europe is
world leader in the industry.
