Industrial Ecosystems: Aerospace & Defence

Submitted by Veronika Muller on 17 September 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 15 September 2020

In the webinar on the aerospace & defence ecosystem, Krzysztof Krystowski​ presented the analysis and proposals from the European Aerospace Cluster Partnership (EACP), a partnership of more than 40 European clusters. Especially the aviation sector is suffering from the negative COVID-19 impact, meaning collapse of travel activities, destruction of competitiveness, and financial vulnerability. The next wave of staff reduction will however come next spring.

Cluster have found short-, mid-, and long-term support activities, as can be seen by the presented examples of Germany, France, and Poland. However, the EU and national countries can help to rethink aviation processes to fit with the new habits of living with COVID-19, prevent collapse through financial aids, allow cash flow for SMEs and protect skills.

Innovation will be an important part of the recovery. R&D programmes can help to make the ecosystem greener. SMEs need to be involved in innovation projects to develop new products and services. One promising field are UAVs.

Jean-Pierre Lentz from DG DEFIS shared his understanding of the situation and encouraged the clusters to address their national governments to be included in the drafting of the recovery plans. The areas for innovation need to be identified and he proposed a new beginning of coordination in the drone sector.  

A recording of the session is available here.  

These are the presentations shown during the meeting:

Aerospace sector clusters EACP ECA session 15.09.20.pdf Aerospace_ECCP_2020.pdf

Find information and recordings of previous meetings on the Role of Clusters in Accelerating the European Recovery (since September 2020) here. For European Alliance Against Coronavirus webinar summaries of March - July 2020, please follow this link.

Finally, please find information on the upcoming agenda here.

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