Pilot Calls on industrial transition and interregional cooperation

Submitted by Alina Danieles… on 03 October 2017

On 18th July, the European Commission adopted the Communication "Strengthening innovation in Europe's regions: towards resilient, inclusive and sustainable territorial growth strategies" (COM(2017)376 final), in the frame of which the Commission proposed launching two pilot actions by the end of 2017 on "Interregional innovation projects" and "Industrial transition regions":

1) Call for Expression of Interest for Regional Authorities to Participate in a Pilot Action on Industrial Transition

Deadline: 31 October 2017, 23:00h Brussels time.

Under this Call, DG REGIO seeks expressions of interest from national or regional authorities, at the appropriate geographical level and at least at NUTS level 2, willing to work on the basis of their respective smart specialisation strategies in order to promote broad-based innovation to address the challenges of the industrial transition.

Budget:

A total of €1 million from the ERDF to help develop regional strategies. Regions can also receive up to €300,000 from the ERDF to support the implementation of their strategies in 2019.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

By the end of 2018, each test region should have defined a set of actions in the form of a comprehensive strategy building on their smart specialisation strategy, clusters and digitisation of industry plans to foster comprehensive regional economic transformation, identifying where possible collaboration and funding opportunities at European, national and regional level. This includes also linking with other regions in regional and cluster partnerships.

There will be a capitalisation and evaluation exercise in the first half of 2019 to synthesise the lessons learnt on addressing the challenges of industrial transition for other regions as well as for the development of European policies. A particular focus shall be placed on drawing conclusions concerning how to better support the implementation of smart specialisation post 2020 to address industrial transition and to improved collaboration between the European Commission and the regions, taking account of the transition to a low-carbon and circular economy, for example through cluster partnerships.

All information related to this Call will be published online here. Further information is also available here.  

2) Call for Expression of Interest for Thematic Partnerships to Pilot Interregional Innovation Projects

Deadline:  31 October 2017, 23:00h Brussels time.

Under this Call, DG REGIO seeks expressions of interest from transnational partnerships of regional authorities, which include regional stakeholders (universities, research centres, clusters, SMEs, etc.), willing to pilot interregional innovation partnerships aimed at facilitating the commercialisation and scale-up of interregional innovation projects and to incentivise business investment.

Apart from the support from the Commission services notably through technical assistance from the ERDF, DG REGIO has allocated a total budget of EUR 1 million to provide technical assistance directly to the partnerships

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

By the end of 2018, each selected partnership should have defined a set of actions to support the commercialisation and scale-up of interregional investment projects

By the end of 2018, the selected partnerships should have analysed the financial and legal obstacles to commercialisation and scale-up, and developed cooperation with other EU programmes and initiatives as well as with partnerships already established under other Thematic Areas that are covered by the three Smart Specialisation Platforms.

Budget:

A total of €1 million from the ERDF to develop five to ten thematic partnerships.

All information related to this Call will be published online here

In case of any questions, please contact REGIO-SMART-GROWTH [at] ec.europa.eu

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