The last edition of the Industry Magazine before our Conference is here, and I would like to invite you all to register for this year’s 20th Anniversary event. As a reminder, it will take place in Madrid on September 10-12, and we have a great programme waiting for you.

We will start with a keynote on the state of play of the European economy by Head of Bloomberg Economics, Stephanie Flanders. We will discuss socio-political disruption in Europe with José Manuel Barroso, former two-times President of the European Commission and Prime Minister of Portugal, and Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Minister of Finance. A global investor panel will look at REITs versus non-listed vehicles, followed by a discussion on the phenomenal rise of Barcelona and Madrid.

As no EPRA Conference would be complete without a PropTech session, renowned digital strategist Antony Slumbers will speak about space as a service. You can already take a peek at his views in this edition. Finally, Javier Solana, former Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister, Secretary General of NATO and the EU High Representative, will be in discussion with BBC Europe Editor Katya Adler on his perception of the European political landscape. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors without whom this Conference would not be possible.

In addition to our traditional US investor outreach with our sister organisation Nareit, which I have just returned from, we also promoted the European listed real estate sector to sovereign wealth funds and other large institutional investors in the Middle East. Our outreach also brought us recently to Asia for our biannual Asia Week, and I invite you to read the interview with Jana Sehnalova, CEO of La Francaise Forum Securities.

Closer to home, the Belgian REIT Association achieved a major breakthrough in terms of allowing more flexibility to access equity markets through accelerated bookbuilds. You can read more about this improvement in an interview with Befimmo’s Laurent Carlier and WDP’s Mickael Van den Hauwe.

With the European elections now behind us, we are engaging in an active outreach programme with the new Members of the European Parliament through our #webuildEU campaign. Discover more about our proposals for the policymakers on the dedicated website www.webuildeu.com.

On a final note, I would like to welcome our newest members, Cromwell European REIT Management, Hoivatilat, KAREIT, Polski Holding Nieruchomości, SBB, Triple Point Social Housing REIT, Urban Logistics REIT and Warehouse REIT.