Clusters in the National Recovery Plans: Lithuania and Czech Republic

Submitted by Veronika Muller on 13 October 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 30 September 2020

In the webinar on 30 September 2020, the European Alliance Against Coronavirus welcomed representatives of Lithuania and the Czech Republic to talk about the situation and recovery priorities in their countries.

Jekaterina Rojaka, vice-minister of the Lithuanian Ministry of the Economy and Innovation, presented the DNA plan for the future economy. The country will invest an additional 1.8 billion for human capital, digital economy and business, innovation and research, economic infrastructure, and climate change and energy to the original investment plans. For the period 2021-2027, Lithuania defined as objectives of the structural funds a smarter and greener Europe, enhancing the mobility and regional ICT connectivity, as well as more social inclusion and resilience across the country. Clusters are needed for the implementation; they strengthen the research and innovation capacity of the industry and the growth and competitiveness of SMEs. They are needed to participate in R&D projects, in unlocking investment in product manufacturing, in internationalisation of value chains, and in the development of competences required for the industrial digitisation.

Jakub Hájek, CzechInvest, guided the group through the COVID-19 crisis development in the Czech Republic. The government opened several calls to promote the companies’ innovation and liquidity and an online platform has been gathering initiatives and projects from all over the Czech Republic to help each other. One industry that is very important for the country is the nano-fibre industry. The increase in needs for this technology is immense and it is one of the cornerstones for the future of the Czech industry. Luboš Komárek, Czech National Bank, pointed out that they are working on the implementation of new solutions to scale up. The cluster networks will help with the dissemination of these solutions. Cluster representatives are currently in a dialogue with the government about the national recovery plans.

A recording of the session is available here.

These are the presentations shown during the meeting:

prez-ministerija.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.

Share this Article