The Mediterranean Coast and Macro-Regional Strategies Week (16-20 September 2024, Izola, Slovenia) brought together the key players of the European Macro-Regional Strategies, from the transnational to the local levels, to discuss about sustainable development pathways. Innovative Sustainable Economy Mission participated in the event for the second year in a row.
The ninth edition of the Mediterranean Coast and Macro-Regional Strategies Week focused on the exchange of best practices on circular economy policies, the implementation of S3 strategies, the development of innovation skills and the debate on the future of Cohesion Policy in the next programming period.
Innovative Sustainable Mission, representend by Alessandro Daraio, Emilia-Romagna Region, took part to the event, more specifically to the session “Macro-regions strengthening S3 interregional cooperation“, moderated by Mr. Marko Hren (Slovenian S3 team leader, Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development of Slovenia). Speakers at the session included Mr. Coen De Graaf (S3 Community of Practice Secretariat), Mr. Esa Kokkonen (EUSBSR Policy Area Innovation Coordinator, Director at the Baltic Institute of Finland) and Mr. Viktor Nedović (Serbian S3 Team Leader at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, EUSDR Priority Area 7).
During this programming period, Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) became key tools for strategic research and innovation policy planning in European regions and countries. In order to further strengthen their role as drivers of transformative innovation, better and stronger cooperation between national and regional governance structures responsible for the implementation of S3 strategies and stakeholders is crucial. This process must necessarily be underpinned by a clear identification of the priorities defined in each S3, which should be the basis for the different regions to seek synergies and opportunities for interregional cooperation between Quadruple Helix actors.
The aim of the session was to explore the different needs of interregional cooperation and try to identify the next steps for the future. In this context, Mr. Daraio not only presented some concrete examples of the implementation of research and innovation projects in line with the S3 strategy of the Emilia-Romagna Region, but also spoke about the approach of the Innovative Sustainable Economy Mission. In particular, he stressed that the Mission, through its Institutional Dialogue project, promotes favourable governance conditions to increase the impact of European territorial cooperation. In particular, Mr. Daraio underlined that the Governance projects are working on a series of concrete activities to facilitate interregional cooperation, also linked to S3 strategies, at the Mediterranean level: capacity building activities to design and implement transformative innovation policies that help accelerate the transition towards sustainable development objectives, and opportunities for networking and exchange of knowledge and experience. He concluded by mentioning one of the most important tools of the ISE Mission, which is the Innovative Sustainable Economy Community (ISEC) Hub, a space that could also be a virtual vehicle for these activities.
