12 Feb 2024
CoR publishes opinion on FP10 and EU's industrial policy
The EU's Committee of the Regions (CoR) has published an opinion paper on FP10 and the EU's industrial policy, stating that regions should be placed at the centre of the EU's industrial policy narrative, since they are playing an increasingly key role as drivers of innovation. The set of recommendations was adopted by the CoR on 31 January 2024.
The opinion calls for better coordination at all levels of government and for better synergies between EU funds and programmes that aim to stimulate green and digital innovation, including Horizon Europe, EU structural and investment (ESI) funds, the Recovery and Resilience Facility, Erasmus, InvestEU, and sectoral programmes.
The opinion argues, however, that the cornerstone on which to strengthen innovation capacity at local and regional levels is cohesion policy, and that cohesion policy must therefore continue to benefit all EU regions in the next programming period, after 2027. Partnerships between the public sector, universities, businesses and civil society are also identified as being critical to innovation in the paper, quoting the Partnership for Regional Innovation as an example of a success story in this context. The Committee argues that it demonstrates a strong need to better link the EU's innovation policies with 'smart specialisation' strategies developed in the framework of ESI funds programme and therefore calls for the pilot project to be continued and extended to other regions.
Finally, CoR points out the increasingly important role that regions play as drivers of innovation and that they should be at the heart of EU industrial policy in the New Innovation Agenda, to be defined after 2024, as well as in the next EU Research Framework Programme (FP10), whose purpose the CoR sees as boosting regional innovation ecosystems and reducing the innovation divide between regions.
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