The FINANCIAL — These days Commission presented the first results of an initiative launched a year ago to support 10 EU regions and two Member States in industrial transition.
They applied to receive Commission support and expertise in achieving industrial transition and designing development strategies based on their areas of competitive strength – their so-called ‘smart specialisation’ assets.
Over the past year, Commission experts sat down with national and regional authorities and diagnosed what was holding back job creation and growth. The first results of this initiative are the launch of 12 pilot schemes, one per region or Member State, to overcome specific obstacles to industrial transition. Each of these schemes presented today will receive a €300,000 EU grant.
Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu said: “Based on the first results of this initiative, I invite all regions to replicate the experience in the future. They should identify weaknesses to address and assets to build on to haul themselves up the value chain in our globalised economy. To achieve this, they will have access to more than €90 billion of cohesion funding for research, innovation and small and medium businesses in the next long-term EU budget.”
Discussion about this post