In the opening segment of the conference, Upper Austrian governor Dr. Josef Pühringer, Upper Austrian State Minister of Economy Dr. Michael Strugl, and Peter Friedrich, State Minister for the Federal Assembly, Europe and International Affairs from Baden-Württemberg spoke about the importance of interregional cooperation for the benefit of innovation and cluster policy. 

The three politicians together also officially launched the cooperation initiative DanuClus (Danube Cluster Networks), a networking platform that was thought up by the Working Group Clusters of Excellence of PA 8. DanuClus aims to link clusters, cluster managers, cluster experts and cluster policy-makers from the Danube Region, in order to prepare clusters in this geographic area for the new EU funding period of 2014-2020. Therefore, these stakeholders together collect and develop project ideas for clusters and support their implementation with their expertise.

On the agenda of this conference were a number of inter-related topics. The first issue was an update on developments in the preparation of the new EU funding period of 2014-2020. Experts from the European Commission, governments and funding agencies explained the current state of play in the Structural Funds, Interreg VC and Horizon 2020. This session was concluded with a panel discussion about how such funds can be used in practice for strengthening the regional power of innovation.

Conference Booklet.pdf

The next session gave an overview on the benefits of being part of interregional cooperation initiatives such as the EUSDR and the ERDV (European Region Danube-Vltava). In this session the viewpoint from the European Commission was juxtaposed with the experiences from the small region of Upper Austria.

In the final session of the first conference day, cluster experts from all over the Danube Region and the Baltic Sea Region shared their recipes for cluster success with the audience. Many important suggestions were proposed to the conference participants about how to boost innovation through meaningful cluster work, regionally and interregionally.

On the second conference day, the audience took center stage in the discussions, as the conference participants were invited to share their experiences with project funding and EU Commission support for cluster development. In three parallel workshops, panelists from the European Commission and representatives of different funding programmes, such as cross-border programmes as well as transnational programmes with an impact on the Danube Region, namely the new Danube Programme and the Central Europe Programme, discussed with stakeholders from the audience on how these support schemes should be improved for the period of 2014-2020. Output of these highly engaging sessions were three concept notes that were handed over at the end of the conference to the representatives of the European Commission and the programming delegates, in order to create a long-lasting impact of this stakeholder consultation for the coming years.

Concept Note - WS A.pdf
Concept Note - WS B.pdf
Concept Note - WS C.pdf
 

On the website www.tmg.at/conference you can now find:

• Results of the three programming workshops - we invite you to distribute them among the officies in your national or regional governments, which are involved in the programming process for EU funding programmes 2014-2020. These documents are intended to give them guidance about the needs of stakeholders in these funding programmes.
• Powerpoint presentations from the conference
• Photograpic impressions of the conference
• Short news broadcast from Wirtschafts-TV (in German)