General review of the disruptions and received proposals during the last months

Submitted by Tedora Aibu on 30 July 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 28 July 2020.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the European Clusters Alliance has organized over 130 daily sessions and has formed the European Alliance Against Coronavirus, an open high-level expert group to exchange about solutions for the crisis. During this intense activity, 84 disruptions were collected and recorded, which, during today's session, were analysed and grouped by Luca Patti from REI – Reindustria Innovazione. He gave a general overview of the analysis of the disruptions, focusing on their geographical origin (most of them, in fact, affected almost all of the EU), ecosystems, interventions needed by the European Commission and finally which stage of Porter’s Value Chain model has been affected.

The disruptions came from these main sources: the daily sessions, the ECCP COVID-19 Forum, and the survey on disruptions in value chains. The disruptions were specified to identify their geographical origin, the stage of the value chain affected, the time horizon and the required actions from the European Commission in terms of funding, regulation, and coordination.

Nina Hoppmann from Cluster IDiA gave a recap of the recommendations collected during the daily sessions, the survey, and the ECCP COVID-19 Response Forum. They derived from a wide range of stakeholders (companies, clusters, policy makers, research organizations, etc.) and are expressed in the form of needs, best practices and actions, or information on policies and funding schemes. The recommendations can be grouped to concrete actions needed, such as (I) collaboration and coordination, (II) innovation and digitization, (III) green and circular economy, (IV) reducing dependence on foreign markets, (V) re- and upskilling, (VI) safety on workplace, (VII) legal framework, and (VIII) funding. Clusters can support with a variety of activities, such as co-creating process, training, implementation of policies, connection with national and regional authorities, and combining top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Marek Przeor from DG GROW gave a recap of the shared topics, the purpose of the sessions, and the evolution over the last months – from the need to better understanding of the situation to concrete proposals of mutual help. The long-term goal is to increase the role of clusters in the ecosystems. Marek shared some important achievements from the work done: increased visibility of clusters (thanks also to the important result of organising a dialogue and discussion with Commissioner Breton), the acquisition of numerous contacts, the develpoment of co-creation policies and sharing ideas.

The next steps are very important to continue the work: prepare pipelines of projects and flagships at regional level (smart specialization, just transition, rural development) and participate in the national recovery plans at national level, as these are the areas where clusters should be acting right now.

A recording of the session is available here

These are the complete minutes of the meeting:

20200728 ECA dailyminutes_v2.pdf

These are the presentations from the meeting: 

ECA disruptions 28 July 2020.pdf 20200728_ECA_recap_recommendations.pdf Disruption Analysis - Luca Patti.pdf

Find information on the previous meetings here; information on the upcoming agenda here.  

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