The Smart Specialisation Platform on Agri-Food (S3P Agri-Food) kick-off event took place on 6-7 December in Florence, Italy.
The Smart Specialisation Platform on Agri-Food is meant to accelerate innovation and to promote regional economic transformation through the development of new value chains. Through the S3P Agri-Food, EU regions and member states will able to implement more efficiently their smart specialisation strategies, and regional stakeholders benefit from the new cooperation opportunities with partners from other regions.
The platform will link different regions in Europe that have a common goal to develop specific parts of their economies following Smart Specialisation Strategies. In this way, European wide value chains will be created. The S3P Agri-Food will be co-developed and co-led by the regions themselves ensuring an active participation and commitment of industry and related business organisations and clusters as well as research institutions, academia and civil society. A region can participate in different thematic areas as a coordinating/lead and/or participating region. Euromontanaโs Basque member for example has expressed its interest in participating in the platform.
The S3P Agri-Food will focus on RIS3 priority areas related to agriculture and food and further proposed by the regions which are keen to act as coordinating/leading region(s). You will find more information about a proposal submission and the support of the European Commission on this page. Several proposals for the development of S3P Agri-Food thematic partnerships have already been made such as โRural diversification and Smart Agri-Food destinationsโ coordinated by regions of Central Macedonia and Noord-Brabant, โHigh-tech farmingโ coordinated by Tuscany, โSustainable development of production field cropsโ coordinated by the North-East region in Romania, etc.
The projects, to be implemented under the platform, will be funded under existing instruments such as the ESI funds. Expressions of interest for setting-up and co-leading interregional new partnerships in specific thematic areas related to Agri-Food may be submitted here.
Next cut off day: 1st February 2017.
More information: http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/agri-food
8 December 2016
