The 26th and 27th of June the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability of the European Commission organised a seminar on Programming Innovation in Rural Development. This seminar took place in Madrid, being attended by European Member State (MS) representatives, some regional authorities, the EIP secretariat and the members of the Focus Group of Knowledge Transfer and Innovation (FG KT&I) of the European Network for Rural Development. Euromontana, as member of the FG KT&I, had the chance to take part in the seminar.
During the first day, concepts and findings around the EIP, the relation between the EIP, the Rural Development and Horizon 2020, as well as explanations about its structure regarding Operational Groups, innovation brokering and Focus Groups were given.
After the explanatory session, three Member States presented their ideas on programming innovation at MS and regional level for the next periodSpain, Slovenia and Italy. Followed by Estonia, Sweden, Belgium and The Netherlandspresenting their ongoing work in the second day session.
The main activity of the second day was the interactive groups’ sessions, built around some main questions listed below:
- How to programme the EIP in RDPs going from analysis to strategic orientations and the establishment of concrete eligibility and selection criteria for projects?
- How to get actors involved at the time of programming? Networking activities for innovation: How to start the process of initiating Operational Group projects?
- How to setup concrete Operational Groups projects: which innovation brokerage methods could be used? How can advisory and knowledge exchange support the EIP?
The conclusions of the session where harvested by the reports written from all the groups. An article will follow in the next days, explaining the conclusions and the interesting points of the seminar for mountain areas.
You can check all the presentations of the seminar by clicking here.