On 16 March 2023, Lex Delles, Minister for the Middle Classes, Tom Wirion, Director of the Chamber of Crafts, and Romain Schmit, Secretary General of the Federation of Craftsmen, presented the “Pakt Pro Artisanat 2023”.
Launched in 2017 as a coherent and concerted approach, involving the Directorate General for the Middle Classes, the Chamber of Crafts and the Federation of Craftsmen, this strategic scheme has been the basis for many innovative initiatives supporting craft businesses. The “Pakt Pro Artisanat 2023” continues this approach and traditionally focuses on four areas of work, of which digitalization is one with the eHandwierk service.
Since 2018, the Chamber of Crafts’ eHandwierk service has been able to guide and direct craft businesses in their digital transformation. This has resulted in numerous initiatives, such as the digital performance self-diagnosis (“DigiCheck”), and around 600 meetings with company managers and 1,400 remote consultations.
From this year onwards, the service will offer a campaign under the label “Make.Shape.Innovate” on the subject of “quality” aimed at small businesses. In addition, the Directorate General for the Middle Classes’ support programmes ‘Fit 4 Digital’ and ‘SME Packages – Digital’ help small businesses to implement a digital tool.
The “Digitaalt Handwierk” competence centre, which was set up in 2017 on the initiative of the Federation of Craftsmen and Skill Centres of the Craft Industry, completes this offer. Its mission is to support, advise and train small and medium-sized enterprises in order to enable them to respond efficiently to the challenges of digitalisation within a development strategy. To date, Digitaalt Handwierk has assisted 120 companies in their digital transformation.