From today, over 400 businesses from 32 countries in Europe are competing for the title of ‘National Public Champion’ for their country as the online public vote opens in this year’s European Business Awards, sponsored by RSM.

Each company has posted a video on the European Business Awards website www.businessawardseurope.com showcasing their success, which the public can view and vote for between 11 January and 26 February 2016. The National Public Champion for each country will be the company that receives the highest number of votes, and will be announced on 7 March.

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards said: “Last year over 170,000 votes were cast, almost double the number from the year before, which is great recognition for all the successful companies involved. This year we would like to beat that number – so we encourage everyone to go to the web site and choose their champion!”

Jean Stephens, CEO of RSM, the seventh largest global network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, said: “The public voting stage provides a great opportunity for these exceptional companies to showcase the story of their success to a wider audience. The videos provide a fascinating insight into some of Europe’s most innovative and inspiring businesses and I would encourage everyone to show their support and cast their vote.  Good luck to everyone in this round of the competition.”

The second public vote will see all of the 32 National Public Champions compete against each other to become the overall European Public Champion. The voting for this takes place between 7 March and 26 April 2016, and the result will be announced at the European Business Awards Gala event in June 2016.

Separately, the independent judging panel for the European Business Awards will review and score all the video entries plus written entries and select a final top 110 – the Ruban D’Honneur recipients. The overall winner from each category will then be announced at the same time as the European Public Champion at the Gala Event in June.

The European Business Awards was created to recognise and promote business success and support the development of a stronger business community throughout Europe. Additional sponsors and partners of the Awards include ELITE, the UKTI and PR Newswire.

In the 2014/15 competition, all EU member markets were represented plus Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Their combined revenue exceeded €1.5 trillion, and together they generated profits of over 60 billion Euros.

ENDS