Editorial

Dear colleagues,

I’m happy to announce that the platform of the New European Bauhaus Festival becomes available today. The Festival takes place from 9 to 12 June 2022 as a hybrid event and will bring together participants representing fields from science to art, from design to politics, and from architecture to technology. They will discuss and shape a sustainable, inclusive and beautiful future. The Festival will be built on three pillars: Forum, Fair and Fest. The first will feature several conference formats from round tables to TEDx style talks and include the NEB Awards ceremony where we will hand out prizes to winning NEB projects in four different categories. The Fair will showcase some of the activities performed in the New European Bauhaus framework, from local citizen labs to pioneer research. The Fest will populate Brussels’s Mont des Arts with dance, installations, theatre, music performances, scientific experiments, upcycling workshops, and more. I am really looking forward to this exciting event!

In May, we also celebrated 30 years of nuclear forensics at the JRC. Since the early 90s, the JRC has been playing a pioneering role in this field and helped minimise risk from the illicit trafficking of nuclear materials. The first sample of seized nuclear material reached our Karlsruhe laboratories in 1992. Since then, we helped EU Member States successfully investigate more than 60 incidents involving nuclear or other radioactive material.

The Commission also announced the 63 regions, seven cities and four Member States selected in the pilot project for Partnerships for Regional Innovation, co-developed with the Committee of the Regions. Participants will exchange good practices and develop tools to mobilise sources of funding and policies, connecting regional and national programmes to EU initiatives for the twin green & digital transition. For this, they can use the Partnerships for Regional Innovation Playbook written by the JRC. The guidance document proposes a wide range of tools and governance mechanisms for better coordination of regional, national and EU innovation policies. A core proposal is to set up local missions to coordinate actions. The Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel welcomed the initiative, emphasising the potential of the partnerships “to facilitate synergies of investment and innovative solutions”. Commissioner Elisa Ferreira, responsible for Cohesion and Reforms, expressed hope that the pilot would help reduce the innovation divide within the EU regions.

Happy reading,

Stephen Quest, JRC Director-General