The Commission for Economic Affairs held its 15th meeting in Brussels on 19 September 2017.

The meeting elected Michel Delebarre (FR/PES) as the new chair and Arnoldas Abramavičius (LT/EPP) and Rob Jonkman (NL/ECR) as the new vice-chairs of the ECON Commission.

The former chair of the ECON Commission, Mr Christian Buchmann (AT/EPP), summarised the activities undertaken during his chairmanship and Mr Delebarre outlined his vision for the ECON Commission for the duration of his presidency.

The opinion on The European Commission Report on Competition Policy 2016 (rapporteur: Michael Murphy (IE/EPP)) was adopted. The opinions on Strengthening territorial resilience: Empowering regions and cities to face globalisation (rapporteur general: Micaela Fanelli (IT/PES)), on the Reflection Paper on the Deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union by 2025 (rapporteur: Christophe Rouillon (FR/PES)), on A European strategy for industry: The role and perspective of regional and local authorities (rapporteur: Heinz Lehmann (DE/EPP)) and on The future of the COSME programme beyond 2020: Regional and local perspective (rapporteur: Robert Sorin Negoita (RO/PES)) were discussed.

There was also be a brief update on the work of the European Committee of the Regions within the EC multi-stakeholder platform on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and on the CoR survey on "Funding, management and regulatory challenges to infrastructure investment of EU cities and regions".