Built at the mouth of two major Scottish rivers, the Dee and the Don, Aberdeen is a thriving, cosmopolitan port in the North-east of Scotland.  The Granite City owes its distinctive appearance to the famous, locally quarried and widely exported, building material. Traditional industries such as fishing and farming still flourish in and around the city but Aberdeen’s buoyant modern economy – reflected in unemployment rates consistently under 2% – is fuelled by the oil industry, earning the city its epithet as ‘Oil Capital of Europe’.

Aberdeen City in Europe
Through the Socrates programme, the Council’s Education Service has developed working links between individual schools, teachers and head-teachers and their counterparts in the Czech Republic, Romania, Malta, Slovenia and Lithuania.   With the support of ESF, the Council also runs a range of employment-related initiatives, which assist individuals play a more active role in the economic life of the city.

Aberdeen companies have active trading links with Europe.  In a recent export survey the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Italy, Germany and Ireland were among the top twenty current export destinations for Aberdeen companies.