In the meeting of the European Alliance against Coronavirus on 5 April, the group discussed ways to approach the exit strategy, based on input from Ulla Engelmann, Head of Unit Advanced Technologies, Clusters and Social Economy at the European Commission.

It became clear that when we talk about exiting the crisis, we have to distinguish between short term measures for reopening and long term fundamental changes for the relaunch of the economy. The current crisis has shown that we have to redefine European value chains and find innovative ways to organise our ecosystems. 

There can be considered three building blocks: 

• identify strategic supply chains and production possibilities in Europe 
• analyse how the ecosystems reacted to the lockdown measures 
• reopen the borders in a coordinated way 

But governments should not work on this alone. We all have to be involved: clusters, companies, universities and the social economy. It is time to build better linkages among these entities to overcome the crisis successfully.