OREANDA-NEWS. July 01, 2015. By having a look into this room, and seeing as many Chinese friends as there are there, would I still be the Luxembourgish Prime Minister, I would say that half of Luxembourg is in the room, represented by Chinese. But Prime Minister Li doesn't know it. When I was meeting, again and again, with his predecessors, I was always saying, knowing that Luxembourg has 500 000 inhabitants, you Mister Prime Minister and myself we are representing a third of the human kind. I will have to repeat that today, but now I am speaking on behalf of 500 million Europeans, which is changing the proportion.

I am very happy to bid you a happy welcome to this event. I have to apologise, because we had to reschedule the meetings today, because I was dealing with the so-called Greek problem, which was energy and time taking, but nevertheless leading to a major frustration. But so I had to deal with that and I am happy that Prime Minister Li is accepting my absence during a part of the meeting, but now we are here because I would like to pay tribute to the Prime Minister because as then Vice Prime Minister, he came to Brussels with this very important idea: to launch a partnership between China and the European Union on urbanisation.

The baby was born. It is Premier Li's baby. But Violeta [Bulc] was in charge of smart cities and myself, we are ready to adopt it.

We have a lot to learn from one another. China is urbanising very fast: today, 50% of Chinese citizens live in cities and this is expected to grow to 60% by 2020. In Europe, three-quarters of our people live in cities and our history and models of society are built upon and around cities. We are now, China, European Union, confronted with the same challenges, such as making our cities greener, more sustainable, smart.

I consider this partnership being a very important one. Let me give you three reasons why this is so.

First, mayors of cities, Chinese, European, are closest to citizens and to their everyday preoccupations. By exchanging ideas and confronting your experiences on issues such as urban transport, energy distribution, or housing, you can tell us, the leaders, what matters. A small town in Denmark, Sonderborg, and Haiyan County have developed a concept for zero-energy houses. They are now spreading in China. In the declaration the EU and China have agreed at this Summit, we commit to more cooperation of this type. We have listened to you.

Second, the initiatives you take local level can help us achieve national and international goals. The European Union, as you know, committed unilaterally to reduce its CO2 emissions by 20% by the year 2020 and by 40% by 2030. Through the Covenant of Mayors initiative, more than 6300 European cities went beyond that commitment, implementing projects and strategies to contribute to reaching the target.

-        new jobs are created to retrofit buildings to low-energy levels;

-        less pollution is generated thanks to shared transport;

-        more social life is created in open public spaces;

Third, through the urbanisation partnership, we create opportunities for our cities and for our companies. The city of San Sebasti?n together with local associations of entrepreneurs is developing a co-operation agreement with the city of Jiuquan [pronounced giuchuan] for business development in the field of renewable energies for urban areas. They will generate wealth, they will generate growth. Win-win cooperation that goes beyond words and beyond declarations.

I would like to congratulate the Chinese and European organisers of this Forum for the work accomplished. It's an important work both in the interest of China and in the interest of Europe. I welcome the experts participating in the events today, in particular the high number of Chinese participants that have made the journey here. I wish you a fruitful forum.

Thank you for your attention and I will invite my friend, the Chinese Prime Minster, to take the floor and to tell us what has to be done in the future.