The new economic portal started by the chambers of commerce and industry from Saar-Lor-Lux-Palatinate and co-sponsored by the EU Commission programme for regional integration, "INTERREG III A", serves as a search engine for companies and corporations in the Greater Region. Its database lists about 7,000 industrial enterprises and 1,800 trading firms and is accessible in German, French and English.

A wide range of services

A novelty of the website is that it uses the geographic information system to enable customers to locate a specific trade or service within a radius of their choice. The portal also offers other services such as advice to newcomers to the region on tax and labour law regulations and social security policies. A special section of the website is dedicated to helping businesses organise a trade exhibition or a trade congress. It provides a useful list of venues and rates them according to their utility and their size. The website also has a section for current events and one for economic and financial news.
 
While offering information to regional companies, the portal has the purpose to serve as a figurehead for the SaarLorLux region in the rest of France, Germany and Europe. The CCI is also currently negotiating with partners from Wallonia and the French  "Départment de la Meurthe-et-Moselle" to further expand its activities.

A twin brother?

SaarLorLux.biz is however not the first portal of its kind in the Greater Region. It bears a very strong resemblance to the website (www.granderegion.net), which was started by the Luxembourg government on the initiative of the regional commission of the 2001 Saar-Lor-Lux-Palatinate regional summit. The latter may be less focussed on trade and commercial activities but its existence begs the question whether it is necessary to have two rival websites for the same project of regional integration? When comparing the two, SaarLorLux.biz nonetheless retains the advantage as it offers a wide range of services and most of them in three languages instead of two.