The European Commission (EC) will organise the EU – South MED Matchmaking Event as part of Euromed Clusters Forward’s TechDays during the GITEX AFRICA which will be held on 31 May – 2 June 2023. The EU – South MED Matchmaking Event itself will take place on-site in Marrakech, Morocco on 31 May – 2 June 2023. The event will be jointly organised by the European Commission through the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP), in collaboration with the StartUp Maroc for Euromed Clusters Forward and the Enterprise Europe Network.

Apply and submit your expression of interest as an SME here.

The EU – South MED Matchmaking Event will bring together cluster organisations and SMEs from the European Union (EU), non-EU COSME countries, and South MED countries: Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia. It will provide participants an excellent chance to promote Cluster to Cluster (C2C), Cluster to Business (C2B), and Business to Business (B2B) collaborations.

The overall objective of the event is to promote information exchange and networking opportunities for European cluster organisations and their members with counterparts from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia, particularly in the fields of Agri-food & Cosmetics, Textile, CleanTech & Renewable energy, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The objectives for the participants include:

• Strengthening EU-South MED cluster cooperation for the benefit of their members, including a seminar, a cluster matchmaking event, and site visits.
• Identifying potential areas of common interest for cooperation and synergies, in terms of the sectoral, value chain, and market focus of their SMEs and other companies.
• Improving, through clusters, the EU-South MED industry and academia-industry collaboration in research, development, and innovation. For its members, the clusters will identify possible areas of RDI collaboration (academia, research organisations, industries...).

This call for Expression of Interest is launched to identify small and medium-sized enterprises from EU (and non-EU COSME) countries (please see section “Who can participate” below) who are willing and committed to participate in the EU-South MED Matchmaking Event.

Further details about the event, the eligibility requirements, and how to submit an expression of interest can be found here.

This call is targeting only SMEs. A separate call exists for cluster organisations and business network organisations. So if you are a cluster organisation or a business network organisations you should respond to the call that is available here.