12-13 June 2014, Athens

The Week of innovative Regions in Europe ‘WiRE’ organized by DG Regio brings together different stakeholders in policy making and regional development. The Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) has been at the core of the event and much emphasis has been given to the implementation of these strategies. How to support those regions that are less developed, how to set S3 priorities and choose the most appropriate policy instruments for implementation, how to boost innovation on regional level to close the R&D divide in Europe, how to strengthen international outreach of the regions – all these questions have been discussed intensively.  In particular trans-regional, cross-border cooperation has been identified as one key element for regional development with the ambition to achieve complementarity, raise visibility of the (cross-border) regions on global scale, build capacities for R&D&I. Along this line, JPI Urban Europe contributed to the session on “A new mission for Territorial Cooperation: research & business on board” where cooperation of regions has been addressed in particular. Besides the issue of trans-regional cooperation, the following issues came up, fitting very well into the JPI Urban Europe scope and approach: the broad debate on how to link H2020 and ESIF (still on theoretical level!), the request to prioritize and focus regional strategies not on broad sectors (health, ICT, energy, etc.) but on very specific activities (with the opportunity to go for more integrated approaches!) and the need of capacity building in Europe on different levels.