The EREF Network consists of the following 16 regions: Stockholm, Lapland-Oulu, Flanders, Wallonia, Scotland, Baden Württenberg, Styria, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardia, Emilia Romagna, Valencia, Cataluña, West Pannon, Slovenia, Croatia, Turkey.

The fourth Forum with thematic focus on knowledge-based society took place in Nova Gorica, Slovenia on 5^th and 6^th of June 2008.  At the Forum  best practices in gaining competitiveness in the knowledge-based society through cooperation among different actors from the public and private sectors, thanks to the support of European, national and regional institutions were presented.

 The recommendations and conclusions of the forum were summarised in the following points:

1. Knowledge society requires radical changes in policies, behaviour and institutional setups at all levels and in all domains; from individual stakeholders to the highest European authorities. From being a general policy framework the knowledge-society has to be translated into visions, policy priorities, and operational rules of implementation.
2. Knowledge-based competitiveness in Europe will not be achieved without establishing the single market of knowledge, to be elaborated within the concept of ERA (the Ljubljana Process). ERA can only be achieved with intensified RTD cooperation among local, regional and national research entities and businesses across Europe, with upgrading of European RTD funding, with productive linking between RTD and structural funding, as well as with gradual opening up of national research programmes for all European researchers.
3. Regulatory and fiscal environments undoubtedly contribute to corporate RTD investment but for achieving knowledge-based competitiveness companies, including SMEs, have to increase their own RTD investment substantially (recommended average level of at least 3 – 5% of turnover, depending on sector).
4.  PPP can be a very productive instrument for combining public and private RTD funding, it is strongly recommended that various types of stakeholders and public authorities achieve synergies of their respective innovation efforts by using this instrument.
5.  Although faced with critically low demographic growth most European countries fail to develop comprehensive human capital development strategies, including migration management. Particularly since human capital is relatively the most abundant resource in Europe such a situation is completely unacceptable and requires urgent action.
6. Regional and national innovation support systems need to become more productive and efficient, and should be defined in a long-term, strategic pattern, and should cover the entire innovation cycle.
7.  European regions should pursue more selective development strategies, exploiting their strengths and support excellence, based on promising potential identified through a bottom-up process taking account of realistically assessed comparative advantages. This also broadens the scope for a competitive European single market and contributes to better utilisation of readily available human and economic resources.
8.  For a knowledge-based competitive Europe, the overall regulatory, fiscal and political environments should be geared much more to support entrepreneurship and SMEs in all possible forms.
9. 9.Closer integration of Lisbon and cohesion policies can be achieved starting at local and regional level, and requires greater flexibility in combining several EU funding sources for the support of individual, high quality projects.
10.  RTD funding should not be labelled and treated as “spending” but rather as “investment” at all levels and by all policy makers and stakeholders. This will contribute to the successful implementation of Barcelona targets – being an essential condition for achieving knowledge based competitiveness.

In the recommendtions especially the necessity of the collaboration of all stakeholders from academia to bussiness and authorities on local, national, or transnational level on the path to knowlege-based society was stressed out.

Additional information on EREF can be found on: http://www.eref.si/si/preparatory_workshops.wlgt