ADRION at the 2019 edition of the EU Regions Week

The 2019 edition of the EU week of regions and cities took place from 8 to 10 October at the Square Convention Centre in Brussels, welcoming more than 9.000 attendees and 1000 speakers, involving 70 countries and gathering 200 journalists.

Among the 300 sessions organised in the frame of the event, ADRION was co-organizer of the workshop “The future of transnational cooperation: what impact in a changing Europe?”, together with all Interreg Transnational Programmes. The workshop, designed as discussion session with three roundtables covering the topics: enterpreneurship, risk management and energy efficiency, gave the opportunity to project represenatives to illustrate their activities and relevant impact at regional level. This was particularly the case of ARIEL, the ADRION funded project devoted to sustainable fishery. Francesca Perretta, ARIEL project representative, contributed to the discussion by emphasizing the important role of scientific cooperation for SMEs working in the field of small scale fishery and acquaculture. Through technical support, ARIEL looks to empower small entrepreneurs in several ways: through brokering events, exchange visits, integration of new technologies into the daily work of fisherman in order to pursue sustainability yet competitiveness in the long run.

At the workshop “Boosting Innovation for Mediterranean Blue Growth” focused on the strategies, experiences, good practices and successful initiatives for innovation in the Blue Economy sectors,  the project BLUE_BOOST was presented as good practice for its Transnational Innovation Voucher Scheme for knowledge and technology transferring in the blue sectors. Moreover, innovation in the small-scale fishery and aquaculture sectors oriented to technological and non-technological solutions was also developed through the presentation of some case studies which include also the pilot actions carried out under the ARIEL project.

On the other hand, the workshop “Smart Specialisation in Emerging Sectors of Blue Economy Value Chains”, Domagoj Saric, Head of Sector for Economic Competitiveness of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, described the experience of the ADRION funded project OIS-AIR which tries to boost smart specialisation at macroregional level through different means of cooperation, among others a web-based platform and a tailor-made voucher scheme for innovation projects.

At the exhibition, the project NEWBRAIN was present with a stand showcasing the main areas of intervention of the project focussed on intermodal transport. NEWBRAIN project aims to improve connections between the major logistic nodes with the Adriatic-Ionian Macro Region. Other ADRION projects were also promoted at the Interact stand through a slideshow presenting project results in Interreg.

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