News

A new Task Group on Co-Funding has been launched, with the aim to share experiences, debate and influence regional funding policies, instruments and tools that can play an active role in supporting interregional innovation actions and investments. Such investments should be relevant for the Vanguard Initiative’s Pilot Projects and other relevant activities, such as:

• Development of shared infrastructures such as demonstrators and pilot lines
• Promote the access of stakeholders to the shared infrastructures (particularly SME’s)
• Dissemination and awareness actions
• Support applied research and technology development and uptake projects
• Support to education and training activities (namely those using the shared infrastructures)
• Support the networking activities between the shared infrastructures

In this context, three possible lines of work for the Task group have been outlined:

• regional public co-funding to further support interregional innovation investments and activities in the context of European programmes
• guaranteeing the “outward looking perspective” of the future EU Operational Programmes and making sure it turs into reality
• designing own regional policies, instruments and tools capable of actively stimulating interregional innovation investments and activities, without any necessary link to other EU support programmes

One of the expected results of this work will be a mapping between funding needs (from the identified activities) with existing instruments and, from there, the identification of funding and financing gaps and the definition of proposals and recommendations for the next MFF, both at European and national/regional level. As such, the Task Group will be contributing to building and strengthening European industrial value chains and deliver on Vanguard members political commitment.

If your region is interested in getting involved in the Task Group or if you would like to receive more information about its activities, please contact José Carlos Caldeira