SMART SPECIALISATION STRATEGY (S3) IN THE ADRIATIC -
IONIAN MACRO-REGIONAL STRATEGY (EUSAIR)
Workshop & Webinar
Tuesday, October 27, 2020, 10.00 am
Motivation
"Smart specialisation will be more important than ever in the post-2020 period. For these strategies to express their full potential in the coming years, we need two things: more partnership and more ownership, especially in those regions that need to catch up the most." Corina Creţu (European Commissioner for Regional Policy)
In the programming period 2014-2020 EU countries and regions have embarked on the design and implementation of S3, at the crossroads of innovation policy and regional development. S3 has become a guiding concept to make Europe more cohesive and, at the same time, to foster regions’ competitiveness. S3 has been adopted by some 120 national and regional institutions within the EU as well as candidate countries and regions.
2014 was also the starting year of the European Union Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region. The aim of EUSAIR is to foster cooperation between EU and non-EU countries thus contributing to the further integration of the internal market and the stability of the area. Exploiting the potential synergies between these two strategies may foster inter-regional cooperation while contributing to regional growth and economic and social cohesion.
Aims
The meeting is aiming at exchanging experiences and views on how to build synergies and embed cooperation in the overlap between the EUSAIR pillars and the areas of specialisation defined within S3. It also aims at discussing the methodology adopted for the design and implementation of S3 in EUSAIR regions and countries.
In recent years, S3 has become a guiding concept to make the EU more cohesive and to foster regions’ competitiveness. However, while Europe was close to make the next step towards more smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, the CoVID-19 crisis now represents a serious challenge for its present and future. In the current debate on post 2020, it would be important to capitalise on the two pillars of the ongoing policy programmes: the transnational macro-regional strategies and the research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation.
The workshop will address both the theoretical underpinnings of these two strategies as well as the problems arising from their practical implementation. It will review the experiences in the integration of the two programs and explore future challenges and potentials.
