In mid-February 2020, Europe registered its first cases of COVID-19. Since then, the outbreak of the coronavirus and the following sanitary and economic crisis has severely impacted our lives and has led to a series of changes that our society and industries are undergoing.

The European economy has suffered disruptions in its value and supply chains throughout its different ecosystems. For example at the very beginning of the crisis, the main disruptions were related to healthcare (e.g. lack of PPE) or difficulties with supplying raw materials. However, over the last months, the pandemic has continuously interrupted the usual flow of activities for European companies and has brought to light the necessities to adapt and rethink our business models and value chains.

A report from the European Commission summarises the European Clusters Alliance (ECA)’s activities to detect disruptions in European ecosystems, analyse them and propose solutions.

The ECA started these activities in mid-March and created the European Alliance Against Coronavirus (EAAC) - an open forum joining social and industrial clusters with many other private and public agents and institutions.

A few weeks later, the ECA was invited to participate in the Rapid Alert Function, guided by the European Commission, with the aim to report evidence, identify needs, suggest corrective actions and try to measure impacts and bottlenecks created by the pandemic.

ECA started a loop process that improved itself day by day to understand the current reality, think about needs, identify potential solutions, and transfer these solutions among its networks.

Read and download the full report here.