Policy Briefings For 10 European Regions

Submitted by Lucia Seel on 05 November 2019

The European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change (EOCIC) has provided customised advice on modern cluster policy in support of industrial modernisation to 10 regions in industrial transition. The services were funded by the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), as part of the work of the EOCIC. The regions were selected as a result of an open call for expression of interest, published and assessed by the Commission services.

The aim of the work by the EOCIC for 10 regions in industrial transition has been to define a set of actions which constitute a comprehensive strategy to foster regional economic transformation, identify collaboration and funding opportunities, and connect with other regions in regional and cluster partnerships. This pilot helped testing new approaches to industrial transition and provide the European Commission with evidence to strengthen post-2020 policies and programmes.

A Summary Report  on lessons learnt from fostering modern Cluster Policy in regions in industrial transition, summarising the results of the work carried out by the EOCIC in the 10 regions, was also published.

EOCIC map

The 10 policy briefing reports ((see in the attachments below) are the second and final output of the customised advice on modern cluster policy in support of industrial modernisation provided to 10 European regions. The following regions were selected:

  • Cantabria (Spain)
  • Centre Val de Loire (France)
  • East & North Finland
  • Hauts-de-France (France)
  • Lithuania
  • North-Middle Sweden
  • Piemonte (Italy)
  • Saxony (Germany)
  • Slovenia
  • Wallonia (Belgium)

The policy briefing reports summarise the key challenges of industrial transition in the 10 regions and present the regional strategies to deal with those challenges. Based on these assessments, custom-made policy measures were developed for each region to support them in using modern cluster policy to foster industrial modernisation in the context of existing regional strategies and policies.

The solutions developed depend strongly on the identified challenges and cover a large part of modern cluster policy elements. The measures include for example the development of innovation clusters (Lithuania) or the adaptation of existing clusters to counter skills challenges (Hauts-de-France). Other examples are the founding of new spearhead clusters (East North Finland), new measures to support SME growth and startups (Piemonte) or the development of new monitoring structures (Slovenia and Wallonia).

 
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