What the forum offers

The Forum aims to offer under-represented businesses, including but not limited to race, disability and gender the same opportunity to compete for the supply of quality goods and services as other suppliers.  It is an expansion of the pioneering work of the European Supplier Diversity Project, a two-year pilot project on supplier diversity which ran from January 2002- December 2004. The Forum provides strategic, practical and public policy support for building supplier diversity programmes in Europe.  The members will run pilots in the UK, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands and address challenging issues such as options for verification and certification and the creation of a supplier register. In addition, the forum aims to make feasible recommendations to the public policy communities at both the European Union and national levels.

The Forum will be officially launched during the UK Presidency in the second half of 2005 and organise series of round-table events in five European countries over three years to involve the Forum's members, potential suppliers and key intermediary organisations. A tool will be developed to evaluate how members' programmes fare against a best-in-class benchmark.

The Forum offers external communications opportunities for its members to illustrate their work on supplier diversity. It will produceBest Practice Report, which will share case studies of the members on their programmes.

• A flexible but robust framework for registration and certification of minority businesses.
• The groundwork for a register of intermediary organisations and potential suppliers.
• Public policy options for the European Union and national governments and opportunities to meet with decision-makers.
• A mapping of the leading European organisations and initiatives working on supplier diversity and partnerships with organisations where appropriate.
• A feasibility study on whether a permanent, independent organisation should be set up following the close of the Forum, and
• a closing International Conference in 2007 attended by senior government officials and opinion-leaders