The role of clusters in the Recovery Plans
Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 30 July 2020.
The last two sessions before the summer break are dedicated to the role of clusters in the recovery plans through the examples on national level. Ulla Engelmann from DG GROW opened the daily session recalling the deadline for the presentation of the national recovery plans, which will be informally presented by mid-October and officially presented in January 2021.
Annie Renders from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Belgium, illustrated how clusters in Flanders have supported companies by providing connection with government, knowledge centres trying to be fast and agile. When talking about the recovery plan in Flanders, two expert groups have been created – the economic advisory expert group and the societal advisory expert group – to draft guidelines of this plan. The innovation clusters will be part of the economic advisory expert group. As foreseen in the recovery plan, clusters will need to continue working in the smart specialisation strategies. Furthermore, they will increase their activities in:
- Connecting more in regional transformation priorities
- Play a greater role in international R&D&I on sustainability (whereby sustainability is understood in a broad sense)
- Deeper connections between 6 spearhead clusters in Flanders
- Be more active on internationalisation
Helena Moura from the Portuguese Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (IAPMEI) introduced their sixteen Sectoral Pacts for Competitiveness and Internationalization, that were signed with the Ministry for Economic and Digital Transition. She paid particular attention to the outputs of this pact with the aim of providing greater visibility to clusters at both national and international level. They include:
- a closer dialog between the Cluster Managing Entity and the members of the Monitoring Committee and other organisations whenever necessary
- better understanding of the cluster needs
- more intra- and inter-cluster activities and networking
- clusters studies aiming at identifying solutions
- working groups between cluster, representatives of the government and representative of private and public entities.
A recording of the session is available here.
These are the complete minutes of the meeting:
20200730 ECA dailyminutes_v2.pdfThese are the presentations from the meeting:
20200730_clusters in recovery plans.pdf ECA Meeting_30july2020_Helena Moura ppt.pdfFind information on the previous meetings here; information on the upcoming agenda here.
