On Wednesday 12 September 2018, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, delivered his State of the Union Address at the European Parliament. In the speech the priorities for the year ahead were presented. This year's speech comes ahead of the 2019 European elections and of the EU summit that will be held in Sibiu in May 2019.
The aim of the project 5G-CARMEN (5G for Connected and Automated Road Mobility in the European Union) is to design and develop a 5G digital corridor that will be applied on European roads in the future. The project, that will be coordinated by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) of Trento, just obtained a total financing of 18,5 million euros: 14,9 from the European Union under the Horizon 2020 programme and 3,6 from the industrial partners of the project.
On 26 September the Autonomous Province of Trento and the European Large Families Confederation (ELFAC) will organize, with the support of the European Economic and Social Committee, an event dedicated to the presentation of two new European family-friendly initiatives: The European Large Family Card and The European Network of Family-Friendly Municipalities.
The event will take place from 9:30 am to 12:30 am and will be hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (Rue de Trèves 74, room TRE 7701, 1040 Brussels).
The program of the event includes the presentation of the two aforementioned initiatives, the presentation of three case studies (Latvia, Hungary and Poland) and two distinct panels with members of the European parliament and with representatives of pilot municipalities of the European Network.
ELFAC was formally constituted in 2004, gathering Large Families Associations across Europe. The Confederation represents more than 50 millions European citizens who belong to around 9 million large families.
The objective of the Confederation is to represent the social and economic interests of families with children, and in particular large families, that are considered the most appropriate environment for bringing up children, for integrating them into society, and for providing mutual support and solidarity among generations. The Confederation also sustains the promotion, development and unity of the movement of large family organisations.
On the occasion of the European Day of Languages, the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) will organize an event to celebrate the linguistic and cultural richness of Trentino.
The event will take place on 27 September from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm at the premises of the Representation of the European Region Tyrol – South Tyrol – Trentino and will include a poetry reading in all the languages of the Province of Trento (Ladin, Mòcheno, Cimbrian and Italian).
While regional languages have historically been discouraged and even suppressed, this initiative is part of a wider process of recognition of minority languages as integral part of the European cultural heritage.
Indeed, currently at least 40 million citizens in the European Union regularly speak a regional and lesser-used language, accounting for more than 60 European regional or lesser-used language communities. In this sense, Trentino can boast a great variety of regional and minority languages and can be considered as a good example of this richness.
The Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) is a European-wide network working in the field of language policy and planning for Constitutional, Regional and Small-State Languages (CRSS) across Europe. Members of NPLD include both national and regional Governments, Universities, and Associations.
The main objective of the network is raising awareness at the European level on the vital importance of linguistic diversity. NPLD also aims to facilitate the exchange of best practices among governments, policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and experts from all over Europe.
The lvh (Wirtschaftsverband Handwerk und Dienstleister in Südtirol / Association of handicraft service providers in South Tyrol) has recently embarked on a special journey. It went to Harvard University, where the Internet platform Open Innovation & Crowdfunding South Tyrol was presented as a regional showcase project. Harvard is one of the best-known American universities where Barack Obama or Bill Gates also studied.
The Trentino research and innovation system had a prominent role in Innsbruck at WIRE, the European conference of innovative regions that took place from the 4th to the 6th of July 2018.
Trentino was represented by the prototyping Mechatronics Laboratory ProM Facility and by the Contamination lab of the University of Trento.
Within the WIRE conference, the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission (DG RTD) choose to present as best practices the experiences of innovation and promotion of entrepreneurial culture represented by the ProM Facility of Rovereto and by the Contamination Lab of the Trento University.
As a confirmation of the fact that Trentino is one of the most innovative territories in Europe, upon the proposal by the EU Liaison Office of the Autonomous Province of Trento, the DG RTD selected the Trentino research and innovation system as a territorial best practice to be presented at the WIRE conference.
The 2018 WIRE conference, that throughout the years has become a European platform of reference for policy makers, experts in regional innovation, local and national authorities, knowledge centers and private enterprises, will look into three smart choices for regional ecosystems of innovation: Science & Research, Entrepreneurship and Connectivity. The strengthening of these three areas will also favor a better exchange of good practices and opinions for the drafting of the future European funding programmes.
The EU Liaison Office of the Autonomous Province of Trento, in coordination with the Knowledge Department of the Autonomous Province of Trento and with the support of local stakeholders, proposed to the WIRE steering committee different experiences connected to the three aforementioned areas. Two of those were selected: the ProM Facility and the Contamination Lab.
The result of collaboration between Trentino Sviluppo, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and the University of Trento, ProM Facility provides businesses in the mechatronics industry an integrated platform for the design, development, implementation, verification and validation of systems and manufacturing processes. At WIRE ProM Facility was presented by Paolo Gregori, the Director, within a session co-organized by the ERRIN Network titled “Cooperation between regional innovation ecosystems: inspiration from Alpine Regions”.
Contamination Lab was presented by Roberto Napoli, from the University of Trento. Contamination lab, that is managed by the University of Trento in partnership with HIT-Hub Innovazione Trentino, has two main aims: complementing the traditional training activities provided to students with knowledge transfer regarding innovation and entrepreneurial culture, and promoting new successful businesses based on real cases and new industry requirements.
On the 3rd of July 2018, as part of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, ERRIN (European Regions Research and Innovation Network) and the common Representation of the European Region Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino in Brussels, organized in Brussels two events dedicated to the promotion of cultural heritage connected to the two world wars.
In the morning the event “The Road from War to Peace, More Democracy and European Integration. War Architecture, Sites and Memories as Part of European Heritage and History” took place at the House of European History. The conference, organized by ERRIN with the support, among others, of the EU Liaison Office of the Autonomous Province of Trento, tackled the socio-cultural and educational aspects connected to memories and war sites. In particular, it analyzed their contribution to the construction of a common European identity. The initiative was also an opportunity to present and share good practices of enhancement of cultural heritage at the regional level.
The moderator of the panel and of the discussion has been Luisa Chiodi, director of the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa of Trento.
During the event Chiodi also presented the European project meSch (Material Encounters with digital Cultural Heritage), that has seen the participation of the Italian War History Museum of Rovereto. The goal of the project was to enable museum curators to offer visitors new experiences through the interaction with smart objects.
In the afternoon the workshop “The cultural heritage of war in contemporary Europe: EU programmes and European cooperation” took place at the premises of the Representation of the European Region Tyrol – South Tyrol – Trentino. During the workshop, representatives of the European Commission gave an overview of those EU programmes relevant for the support and enhancement of cultural heritage. In addition, the speakers also provided interesting examples of projects already financed. Subsequently, based on the suggestions offered by the speakers, the participants had the chance to exchange experience, to network and to discuss potential opportunities for collaboration.
PowerPoint Presentation Creative Europe
PowerPoint Presentation Europe for Citizens
On 3 July the ERRIN network and the Representation of the European Region Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino will organise in Brussels two events dedicated to the enhancement of the World Wars cultural heritage, on the occasion of the European Year of Cultural Heritage.
During the morning the event organised by ERRIN in collaboration with the Liaison Office of the Province of Trento and other members will take place at the House of European History. The title of the event is “The Road from War to Peace, More Democracy and European Integration. War Architecture, Sites and Memories as Part of European Heritage and History”. The event will address political as well as educational aspects of memories and memorial sites and explore the role of war memories for our common European History and European Identity. It will be an occasion to present and exchange good practices to enhance the cultural heritage at regional level. The Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra of Rovereto will take part to the event.
The moderator of the panels will be Luisa Chiodi, director of “Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa” of Trento.
In the afternoon, at the Office of the Representation of the European Region Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino it will be organised the workshop “The Cultural Heritage of War in Contemporary Europe: EU Programmes and European Cooperation”. The event is part of the common agenda of the Representation. The representatives of the European Commission will provide an overview of the relevant European financing programmes with regard to the support and enhancement of cultural heritage and will present some examples of previously funded projects. The participants will then have the opportunity to exchange experiences, network and discuss potential collaborations.
On 11th of July 2018 the Representation of the European Region Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino will host the final conference for the EU funded Project ‘PAYBACK: Towards a EU Data Management System for Seized Assets’.in Brussels.
The conference will present the results of the Project, that developed an innovative ICT tool aimed at improving the efficiency of seized assets management, and tested it as a prototype in selected Member States.
The Project PAYBACK originates from the recognition that currently a great number of assets lay in bad conditions and lose value before final confiscation, in turn undermining the effectiveness of the actions carried out by the prosecutors. This is mainly as the consequence of the lack of a comprehensive and updated data management system for mapping seized assets.
The Project is coordinated by the eCrime research group of the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento and carried out in cooperation with CSD (BG), INHESJ (FR), CRJ (RO), Fondazione Nazionale dei Commercialisti (IT), and with the support of: AGRASC (FR); CAB (IE); Commission on Illegal Assets Forfeiture (BG); COSC (BE); Asset Management Section, Ministry of Interior (CZ); Openbaar Ministerie, Functioneel Parket (NL); Rome Tribunal (IT). It is co-financed by the European Commission under the ISFP 2014 programme.
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The conference “YES-Youth Entrepreneurial Spirit” will take place on June 27, 2018, at the premises of the Tuscany Region Brussels Liaison Office.
The conference is the first step on the path established by the EARLALL's Working Group on Youth Policies. The working group is promoted and chaired by the Tuscany Region’s Ministry of Education, Training and Labour Policies and coordinated by Giovanisì, a Regional project supporting the autonomy of young people. It has been created to deepen specific areas of focus regarding youth policies, namely: mobility in the vocational education, apprenticeship and young entrepreneurship, which tools in the fight to reduce unemployment rates and improve the education system in Europe.
Throughout 2017, the working group has been particularly active on the issue of young entrepreneurship, collecting existing best practices at local level. “YES - Youth Entrepreneurial Spirit” aims to systematize the best practices regarding resourcefulness and self-entrepreneurship, from the experience gained in the education system to a proper support for business creation. The conference will share successful strategies that are improving the transition from education to employment and reducing the number of young people leaving school early. For example, possible pathways for work-linked training will be presented as they are considered extremely useful in supporting young people to find employment.
YES– Youth Entrepreneurial Spirit” is promoted by Giovanisì-Regione Toscana and by the Tuscany Region Brussels Liaison Office, as part of the EARLALL’s Working Group on Youth Policies coordinated by the Tuscany Region’s Ministry of Education, Training and Labour Policies.
The SUPERSEDE (https://www.supersede.eu/) project proposes a feedback-driven approach for software life cycle management, with the ultimate purpose of improving users’ quality of experience. Decisions on software evolution and runtime adaptation will be made upon analysis of end-user feedback and large amount of data monitored from the context. An integrated platform will articulate the methods and tools produced in the project. The project will provide advancements in several research areas however, the major contribution will be in integrating methods and tools from the mentioned areas, thus providing a new solution framework for software evolution and adaptation for data-intensive applications Three use cases have been identified to provide a solution, which is based on the needs of different companies. They are representative for different data-intensive application domains (i.e. energy consumption, sport event webcasting). This diversity also allows a validation of the methods and tools produced to ultimately provide evidence of potential for productivity gains.
From 13 to 15 June the second high level event of FOOD2030, the initiative of the European Commission to create a Food Research Area, will take place in Plovdiv.
The project “L’Ecovigilessa Vanessa”, developed by the cultural association H2o+ in collaboration with the BIM of Brenta, was selected as one of the 12 finalists on the Sustainable Energy Awards 2018. The project aims to bring the environmental education into primary schools through engaging and playful educational activities.
The European Commission published today its proposal for a Regulation for the next Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, named "Horizon Europe". The structure of the programme remains tripartite and the pillars are: Open Science, Global Challenges and Industrial Competitiveness and Open Innovation.
The structure is described as follows:
“The first pillar on Open Science will ensure strong continuity with Horizon 2020 in supporting excellent science within a bottom-up approach in order to reinforce the Union’s scientific leadership, high-quality knowledge and skills development, through the European Research Council, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and research infrastructures. The principles and practices of open science will be mainstreamed across the entire Programme.
The second pillar on Global Challenges and Industrial Competitiveness will take forward the societal challenges and industrial technologies in a more ‘top down’ directed approach addressing Union and global policy and competitiveness challenges and opportunities. These are integrated into five clusters (‘health’; ‘inclusive and secure society’; ‘digital and industry’; ‘climate, energy and mobility’; and ‘food and natural resources’), aligned with Union and global policy priorities (the Sustainable Development Goals) and having cooperation and competitiveness as key drivers. The integration in clusters, each having a number of intervention areas, is designed to incentivise cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, cross-policy and international collaboration, thereby achieving higher impact and better seizing the innovation potential that is often greatest at the intersection of disciplines and sectors.
Alongside the regular calls for proposals, a limited set of highly visible missions will be introduced. These will be designed in the context of a strategic planning process. Missions, with ambitious but time-bound and achievable goals, should speak to the public and engage it where relevant. They will be co-designed with Member States, the European Parliament, stakeholders and citizens.
The second pillar embodies industry’s essential role in achieving all the Programme’s objectives. The second pillar will also provide scientific evidence and technical support to Union policies, including through the activities of the Joint Research Centre. This pillar will help realise Union policy objectives within the spirit of the Innovation Principle as put forward in the European Commission's Communication of 15 May 2018 on Research and Innovation: a renewed European agenda. Particular attention should be given to increasing the share of participation in research and funding of entities from low-to-mid income third countries.
While innovation will be supported throughout the whole programme, the third pillar on Open Innovation will essentially focus on scaling up breakthrough and market-creating innovation by establishing a European Innovation Council, support the enhancement of European ecosystems of innovation and continued support to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The European Innovation Council will offer a one-stop-shop to high-potential innovators. Activities will be defined mainly bottom-up. This should significantly simplify and streamline current support, and fill any gap between the grant funding in other parts of Horizon Europe and the financial instruments of InvestEU. Support will also be provided for collaboration with and between national and regional innovation agencies but also any other public or private and general or sectoral actor of the European innovation landscape.”
Read more: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4041_en.htm .
The full text is available at http://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/initiatives/com-2018-435_en .
On the 31st of May the event "Energy transition in Europe’s Regions" took place at the European Economic and Social Committee.
The entire report (in German) can be downloaded here.
On the 25th of May the conference “Integrate Social Sciences and Humanities in FP9” took place at the Copenhagen EU Office.
Nikolaj Burmeister, head of dean’s office from the Copenhagen Business School, declared that about 20% of the funding of the Copenhagen Business School are EU funding. Regarding the FP7 (7th European Framework Programme for Research and Development) he declared that it was seen as a sign of hope for social sciences and humanities (SSH) but that many people who applied to it have had bad experiences. Regarding the FP9 (9th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation) he gave the following recommendations:
• to avoid calls which are prescriptive;
• to establish long-term strategic research programs with broad political support;
• to build a network long time before the application;
• to focus on the challenges and not on pre-identified solutions;
• to pursue an interdisciplinary approach to the development of calls and evaluation of applications.
He explained that it is important that the EU continues to focus on further integration of SSH. He argued that an integration of SSH will ensure the identification of the right problems and better solutions.
Harald Hartung, head of unit “Open and inclusive societies” from the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, presented the 3rd report on Integration of Social Sciences and Humanities in Horizon 2020. He declared that in the year 2016, 181 million euro went to SSH partners, which presents 7% of the total funding available for the calls for proposals in the Work Programme 2016. He explained that according to the report the discipline Economics is highly represented, the disciplines Sociology & Marketing are fairly well represented and the Humanities and many social sciences are less involved in Horizon2020. He declared that the following Member States: Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, France Belgium and Netherlands are dominating in this fields and that it is necessary to integrate the other Member States as well. Overall, he came to the conclusion that there is a need for improvement. He declared that the flagged-topics are a beginning but not enough. He declared that a large number of projects under flagged-topics are financed with no or little social sciences and humanities content.
Furthermore, he declared that it was necessary to integrate the social sciences and humanities from the very beginning. The SSH and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) communities should contribute to Missions and Global challenges on an equal footing. The topic design and evaluation process should be closely examined to facilitate this in practice.
Rebeca Fernández, senior manager in food policy for FoodDrinkEurope, explained that the main challenges in the food sector are the demographic and environmental changing and the distrust of consumers in this sector. She explained the platform food for live which brings together consumers and industries. It is fully transparent and has the aim to bridge modern and social sciences.
Kim Brinckmann, vice director of Research & Innovation from the University of Copenhagen, gave the following recommendations regarding the SSH integration:
• to introduce new instruments in future funding programmes;
• to develop a new approach for the drafting calls for funding proposals;
• the SSH community needs to create new role models and showcase interdisciplinary experiences.
The entire report can be downloaded here.
On the 24th of May the event "The new European Social Pillar: models of local governance" took place.
The entire report (in Italian) can be downloaded here.
On the 23rd of May the conference “Revising the Clean Vehicles Directive – How to promote clean mobility solutions in public procurement at the local and regional level” took place at the Region Västra Götaland & Gothenburg European Office. At the conference the proposal for revising the current Clean Vehicles Directive was discussed.
On the 18th of May the Bioeconomy WG meeting with the topic food took place at the Central Denmark EU Office.
On May 9, the Day of Europe, the European Commission launched an online public consultation addressed to all Europeans, asking them what direction they want the European Union to take in the future.
