Regional dimension of innovation

The recent enlargement to 25 Member States, with Bulgaria and Romania also set to join the Union in 2007, has dramatically increased disparity levels across the EU. The recently published Third Interim Report on Cohesion confirmed that the enlargement of the Union to 25 Member States, later to 27 or more, presents an unprecedented challenge for the competitiveness and internal cohesion of the Union. At the same time, the report noted that some of the poorest parts of the new Member States have some of the highest growth rates in the Union (see map in annex).

The Community Strategic Guidelines contain the principles and priorities of cohesion policy and suggest ways the European regions can take full advantage of the € 308 billion that has been made available for national and regional aid programmes over the next seven years. National authorities will use the guidelines as the basis for drafting their national strategic priorities and planning for 2007-2013, the so called National Strategic Reference Frameworks (NSRFs). According to the guidelines and in line with the renewed Lisbon strategy, programmes co-financed through the cohesion policy should seek to target resources on the following three priorities:

The overall objective of the FCI was to find a way of bringing all players together so that successful and less experienced operators were integrated into a viable and successful European Food Cluster by building on the FP6 project FINE as a prototype. A key aspect was to develop ways of involving the present and current project partners and potential successful projects under future Calls and prepare for new coordination actions to be funded under FP7. The Food Cluster Initiative has proved to be beneficial as its critical mass allowed it to attain outcomes that would not have been reached at individual project level as described in this document. It allowed notable unlocking of the research potential in the uropean Food Research Area by bringing together regional research actors that would not have met otherwise.