In a global economy marked by conditional market access, complex supply chains and accelerating technological change, Quality Infrastructure remains the often-invisible system that underpins trust in safety, quality and fairness in everyday life. While largely operating in the background, QI provides the stability economies require to adapt in times of disruption, including supply chain shocks, geopolitical uncertainty and rapid innovation cycles.
It acts as a bridge between public policy objectives and market practice, translating regulatory requirements and standards into operational reality for businesses and enabling predictable, trusted market access across jurisdictions. In this environment, the central question is no longer whether QI is important. It is whether today’s QI architecture remains sufficiently agile, coherent and capable to support competitiveness and innovation in a new industrial order.
This roundtable therefore examines:
Are the industrials requirements met by the current QI eco-system and how to evolve to become the reliable partner of trust building for both industry and policy-makers? What is the current Quality Infrastructure system missing — and how must it evolve to remain fit for purpose?
This segment is structured deliberately as an introduction of the customers of QI (traditional industry and modern industry), standards and accreditation representative, and European Commission.
Each speaker will have 5 minutes to answer one central question: What is the current Quality Infrastructure system missing in order to support competitiveness and innovation today?
Participants, seated at assigned roundtables, will identify systemic gaps emerging from the introductory session.
Guiding Question: Where is the system failing to keep pace — and what is the competitiveness impact?
Building directly on Session 1, participants will shift from identifying gaps to designing reforms.
Guiding Question: Given the identified gaps, how must QI evolve to support both traditional and modern industry over the next five years?
Please register by COB 2 May.
The TIC Summit 2026 will bring together senior policymakers, industry leaders and the global Quality Infrastructure community to examine how industrial strategies can remain competitive, interoperable and open in a more fragmented world.
The Summit will explore:
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How Europe can rebuild industrial capacity while maintaining global competitiveness
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What must align for trade to function across divergent regulatory systems
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How energy transition and digital technologies can scale safely and credibly
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Why testing, inspection and certification are strategic enablers of investment and market access
A globally recognised pioneer of clean technologies and sustainable innovation, he will present Climate Impulse, his latest flagship initiative demonstrating how pioneering climate solutions can be deployed at scale. His intervention will illustrate how breakthrough technologies move from ambition to industrial reality only when their safety, reliability and performance are independently verified. The keynote will set the strategic tone of the Summit by reinforcing a central message: innovation becomes transformative when it is trusted.
The keynote speech is sponsored by Seamflow.
Connecting ambition to execution
The Summit will continue with a conversation moderated by Jennifer Baker, highlighting:
- How trade, productivity and governance shape resilient value chains
- What businesses need to invest with confidence and make sustainability claims credible
- How companies operating across borders manage compliance, trust and market access
A high-level address from the European Commission will place Europe’s reindustrialisation in context. The focus will be on how Europe can strengthen competitiveness while remaining open, sustainable and secure.
The focus of this session will be international competitiveness and how CBAM develops international carbon markets: how CBAM reflects a broader shift in global trade, where market access increasingly depends on the ability to demonstrate carbon performance, compliance, and credibility, and shaping investment decisions to accelerate competitiveness of European industry.
