On the latest meeting of the Ministers of Economy of the German Länder on 18th/19th June 2009, ECRN President and Minister of Economy and Labour of Saxony-Anhalt, Dr. Reiner Haseloff, reported on the High Level Group on Chemistry and the role of the ECRN and on the HLG - Follow-up process which has just begun and in which the ECRN has taken the lead by organizing the first follow-up conference in April in cooperation with member region Ústí and under patronage of the European Commission and the Czech EU Presidency.

The participating Ministers welcomed the report and the HLG final recommendations and stressed their will to actively support these recommendations. The Ministers furthermore welcomed the fact that not only the Czech EU Presidency has put the HLG results on the agenda of the latest Competitiveness Council where a roadmap process with a first evaluation in 2010 has just been proposed, but that also the Spanish and Belgian governments have taken the HLG and the Follow-up process during their EU Presidencies in 2010 in consideration. The Ministers also invited the German government to actively support the roadmap process proposed by the Competitiveness Council.