European Commission vice president Günter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry policy, and Vladimír Špidla, commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, will address the 'Managing change in the textiles and clothing industry' conference in Brussels on Tuesday April 25.

The conference will look at developing strategies to better anticipate and handle change at company, regional, national and European level and forms part of a series of concrete initiatives to improve the competitiveness of European industry while accompanying the process of structural change in which it is engaged.

Participants include textile and clothing trade associations and trade union representatives, Member States and Candidate Countries representatives with responsibilities for industry, textile and clothing manufacturers, chambers of commerce, supplier industries, training and research institutes, regional authorities and associations and EU institutions. Around 200,000 companies, mostly SMEs, operate in the EU's textiles and clothing industry, employing some 2.4 million people and with a turnover in excess of €207 billion. The sector accounts for 4% of total manufacturing value and occupies 8% of the industrial workforce in the EU.