News

The ESM Pilot annual meeting took place in Brussles on 13th December. Besides presenting the progress of the Pilot and its demo-cases, the meeting also had the intent to discuss potential synergies with the European Commission in the future programming period. 

Giacomo Copani, coordinator of the ESM Pilot, introduced the Pilot and its ambitions:

• Act as a European asset (pilot plants infrastructure and innovation community) to transfer research results generated in R&D activitiesto the industry 
• Stimulate and align regional funding to complement EU Commission investment to achieve strategic manufacturing goals of Horizon Europe (based on RIS3)
• Contribute to build European Value Chains by consolidating interregional cooperation based on S3: bottom-up open participation including both advanced and emerging regions
• Focus on topics emerged from the needs of the companies and aligned with the mission and priorities of future EU Programming period, as well as with the regional strategies of the participating regions.

After having presented the general progress, he outlined the Pilot's plans for 2020:

• Consolidation of existing demo-case projects, focusing on the inclusion of new Regions and capitalisation of synergies among demo-cases as well as the enlargement of industrial basis; 
• Starting new demo-cases on the basis of the priority topics and needs emerged from companies in the different regions.
• Build and start operating some infrastructures identifying proper synergies among instruments at different level.

The ESM introduction was followed by a session in which representatives of the European Commission presented the opportunities of the future programming period from the perspectives of various DGs: Jürgen Tiedje – DG RTD, Matthias Kuom - DG Connect, Nikos Pantalos – DG GROW, Valentina Pinna – DG REGIO. Demo-case projects were then presented in terms of technical development, progress and potential for the upcoming year, by demo-cases coordinators  : 

• De- and Remanufacturing (Marcello Colledani, AFIL-Politecnico di Milano)
• Digital Transformation (Sergio Gusmeroli, AFIL-Politecnico di Milano)
• Polymer-based functional products (Jordi Romero Mora -Eurecat)
• Energy-flexible and resource-efficient factory operation (Katja Haferburg – Fraunhofer IWU)

The morning session was closed by a round table of the representatives of the regions composing ESM Steering Committee (Lombardy, Baden Wurttemberg, Catalonia, South Netherlands, Saxony, Tampere) who remarked the strategic role of Vanguard Initiative in interregional collaboration based on regional smart specialisation strategies.

The meeting continued in the afternoon with a workshop among pilot and demo-case representatives discussing on strategies and actions to be planned for 2020. Besides favouring the inclusion of the new Regions that recently expressed their interest in the ESM Pilot, an interregional roadmapping activity will be lunched within the pilot, starting from the topic targeted by the demo-case projects. This action will consolidate the knowledge developed in the ESM Pilot and will be useful to favour the coordination and alignment of funding instruments (at interregional and European level) in a strategic perspective.

To learn more about the ESM Pilot, please see here or contact Giacomo Copani, AFIL (Lombardy) or Roberta Curiazzi, AFIL (Lombardy).