Just came back from the INTERREG IVC Forum in Lille. The immense and increasing popularity of this funding mechanism for interregional cooperation was graphically demonstrated by the first call of this programme, resulting in piles of project applications. More than 400 applications mobilising nearly 5000 actors across Europe were received and the programme Secretariat in [...]

The Cluster workshop at the Europe Innova conference featured an interesting discussion: Antoni Subira from IESE Business School in Barcelona, who moderated the session, said that the idea of clusters has captured our imagination since it was put forward by academia some 20 years ago, so much in fact, that it looks like the concept [...]

I am at the Europe Innova conference in Lyon. In the Opening Session, one of the speakers, Luc Rousseau, Head of the General Directorate of Enterprises, who spoke on behalf of the French Presidency stressed, among others, how important innovation and entrepreneurship was to his country. He highlighted, in particular, the importance of eco-innovation, which [...]

DG Enterprise asks us to help them choose a name for a new EU mobility programme for young entrepreneurs. According to the information posted on their website, this new EU programme, like the ERASMUS programme for students, will promote mobility for entrepreneurs in Europe. It will offer people in the early stages of entrepreneurship (young [...]

DG Enterprise has published today its Communication on “Powerful clusters: Main drivers of Europe’s competitiveness”. It calls for more efforts for facilitating the emergence of world-class clusters in the European Union. The new strategy identifies persistent market fragmentation, weak industry-research linkages and insufficient cooperation as main barriers in the EU for achieving [...]

ESA, the European Space Agency, has a new approach of involving and mobilising regions. As ESA outlined at a seminar in Brussels last week, ambitious space missions come with high scientific and technological challenges and need to be supported by cutting edge technologies in fields such as medical systems, technical textiles, nano materials, nutrition, [...]

Today I received a pre-event newsletter of the Euregia 2008 that is running from 27 to 29 October 2008 in Leipzig, Germany. According to its organisers, Euregia is “Europe’s largest communication and benchmarking forum on regional development and territorial cooperation”. While this is certainly a bit of hyperbole, since the Open Days are clearly larger [...]

Thank god it’s Friday and the Open Days are over. But I don’t want to go into the weekend before having posted my report on our great ERRIN Web 2.0. and Knowledge Management seminar yesterday.
I start with the bad news: Those who were not there missed a great seminar, some excellent speakers and a really [...]

SSorry for the silence. But we are at the midst of the Open Days , the crazy days of the regional policy community in Brussels. More than 150 seminars and 7400 (according to the organisers) participants and yes, there is the “Investors Café”. While the European Week of Cities and Regions is no doubt a [...]

I would like to share a great website with you: www.zealanddenmark.eu This is the new website of Zealand region’s EU office. They employ a full time journalist to write jargon free articles about the EU. The articles are provided free of charge to regional and local newspapers. I was told that they are also [...]