Partnerships for Regional Innovation: From Pilot to Practice

The event will encourage participants to bring PRI collaboration to the next level by meeting other participants, discussing topics of interest and possibilities of close interregional collaboration. The event will be an excellent opportunity for gathering information on Regional Innovation Valleys for deep tech and net zero industries, for community building and for establishing partnerships. In particular, we would like to encourage each and every region to take the lead in a topic of their interest and mobilise the territories they would like to partner with to join the event.

Target audience

Regional and national authorities.

Objectives

In May 2022, the European Commissioner for research and innovation, Mariya Gabriel, the European Commissioner for Regional policy, Elisa Ferreira, and the President of the Committee of the Regions, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, launched Partnerships for Regional Innovation (PRI) as a pilot action. In total, 74 territories across the EU signed up to an inclusive learning and co-creation process. This final event of the PRI pilot action in the region of Dalarna, under the Swedish presidency, takes stock of what we have learned and launches the direction for the future expansion of the pilot action.

The Partnerships for Regional Innovation will help us to strengthen regional innovation systems for the green and digital transition and will help us deliver on the New European Innovation Agenda establishing 100 Regional Innovation Valleys across Europe. The PRI Pilot participants agree that inter-territorial innovation cooperation offers new avenues to address common challenges in areas such as low carbon technologies, food security, circularity, health or climate resilience. The high-level event in Dalarna will showcase concrete cooperation opportunities for Regional Innovation Valleys. PRI territories and private business leaders will also outline the new value chains in net-zero industries, such as clean mobility, low carbon energy, circular economy and climate resilience.

The Partnerships for Regional Innovation act as a bridge between smart specialisation and other EU policies to promote innovation-driven territorial transformation. Synergies of policy and funding are at the core of the PRI approach. Countries, regions and cities participating to the PRI initiative are exploring synergies across governments, mobilising regulations, education policy, tax policy and public procurement to accelerate their green transitions. At this high-level event, the territories participating in the PRI pilot will present good practices, discuss and learn from each other, co-shape the revised PRI playbook and methodology and engage with other interested territories to establish new partnerships.

Building on the positive feedback from many PRI territories, the event in Dalarna is also an occasion to look ahead and launch the next phase of Partnerships for Regional Innovation. Under the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU and the political co-lead of the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the European Commission, the Partnerships for Regional Innovation will move into concrete action, supporting territories across the EU in reaping the opportunities of the green and digital economy. In the high-level event in Dalarna, PRI territories will set the direction for the concrete implementation of the PRI approach and define concrete challenges where they would need support.  The PRI pilot action has proven to be a success. Now is the time to go from pilot to practice.