The 8th Steering Group meeting of the Priority Area 8 “Competitiveness and Cluster Development” of the EUSDR was held on 3rd December 2014 in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Budapest/ Hungary.
The meeting gathered participants from 11 EUSDR-countries, including members from Austria, Baden-Württemberg, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine, as well as the European Commission (COM), the OECD and the European Investment Bank attended the meeting.
In addition to the update on implemented and planned actions of the respective Working Groups and the report on the work of the socio-economic study, there was a first open exchange of ideas concerning the 4th Annual Forum on 29th/30th October 2015 in Ulm/Germany.
Other subjects covered at the meeting were the presentation of the National Contact Point in Ulm for the newly created Danube programme as well as the new coordination office of the Danube Strategy- the Danube Strategy Point (DSP) – based in the Representation Office of the State of Baden-Württemberg in Brussels. The DSP shall improve the implementation of the EUSDR and support the COM, the Priority Area Coordinators (PACs) and the National Coordinators (NC) in their work. The COM will finance the establishment and work of the DSP for two years with an amount of 2 million EUR and the support of the PACs with approximately 2.1 million EUR. The follow-up financing for the DSP could be provided by INTERREG V B. The setting up and running of the DSP is planned for May 2015.
Further topics were opportunities for cooperation between the OECD and the EUSDR as well as funding opportunities such as European Investment Fond, Horizon 2020 and COSME in the macro strategy.
The Powerpoint presentations are available in the section “Steering Group”.
