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Ms Nona Deprez is Head of Unit for the Partnership Instrument in the Service for Foreign Policy Instrument (FPI – European Commission). Within the FPI, she has worked previously on Election Observations Mission and the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace after having served in two EU Delegations to Indonesia and Benin. She holds a Master’s of Science in European Studies from London School of Economics, following a first masters in Business Engineering from the Solvay Business School (ULB). In this editorial, the relations between Foreign Policy Instruments and Smart Specialisation are presented, with a focus on the EU-LAC region-to-region pairings.

Dana Bachmann joined the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission in January 2015 as Head of unit in charge of Vocational Education and Training, Apprenticeships and Adult Learning. Together with her team, she is responsible for working with Member States, social partners and stakeholders for developing and implementing policies that help endow citizens with the skills they need, so they can play an active role in the economy. Successful initiatives like the European Alliance for Apprenticeships, Upskilling Pathways for Adults or the European Vocational Skills Week are few of the main achievements of our unit. Prior to joining DG Employment, she served as head of unit in DG Education and Culture being responsible for the same policy areas. Before joining the Commission in December 2011, she worked as a lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights and managed diverse projects in the field of environmental law in Central and Eastern Europe.

All seven Portuguese regions along with the National Innovation Agency met in Faro in mid-May 2019 to reflect on how S3 has been implemented, how it can be improved, and what changes are needed in light of the "Enabling condition" of the proposed Cohesion Policy post 2020. A peer learning workshop including other European regions was followed by a conference with the Portuguese Secretary of State for Regional Development, and representatives of DG REGIO. Dominique Foray stressed the importance of governance arrangements that allow a continuous process of entrepreneurial discovery, once priorities have been established. A programme of EDP workshops and focus groups with Higher Education Institutions are planned over the coming months.

REGIOSTARS 2019, the annual competition rewarding excellence and new approaches in regional development has gathered 199 submissions. Stakeholders are invited to cast a vote for their favourite project. The summaries of all eligible proposals in five key domains are now available on the DG REGIO website: i) Promoting digital transformation; ii)Connecting green, blue and grey; iii)Combatting inequalities and poverty; iv) Building climate-resilient cities; and v)Modernising health services. The finalists will be announced on 9 July 2019.

The S3 Platform presents a wide range of implementation examples from across Europe, in various domains including policy instruments for S3 implementation, governance & EDP, transregional collaborations, and monitoring. The cases shed light on key challenges faced by regions/countries, the actors involved, the solutions encountered and success factors as well as the milestones reached. These examples capture the changes that have occurred thanks to the implementation of the S3 approach, and the positive impacts in other realms than Research and Innovation for Smart Specialisation Strategies.

Lithuania outlines its approach to conduct the RIS3 interim evaluation, with the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders in the process. Their strong governance structure has facilitated the assessment of the policy mix and S3 priorities relevance, as wel as the review of S3 priority domains.

The Smart Stories reflect the way in which S3 stakeholders have used the Smart specialisation concept to develop their own innovation-driven development policies at national and regional level. The Tuscany Region (Italy) provides an account of its RIS3 mid term review and roadmaps revision that holds a strong territorial focus, with the aim of exploiting the cohesive potential of regional innovation policies.

The Smart Stories reflect the way in which S3 stakeholders have used the Smart specialisation concept to develop their own innovation-driven development policies at national and regional level. The Region of Castilla y Leon (Spain) depicts the review and reorganisation of the regional science system in accordance with the RIS3 approach that led us to build a "Regional Stairway to Excellence" system.

In February 2019 a Technical Report was published with empirical evidence explaining trade agglomerations over short distances using Spanish data.

Organised by the Smart Specialisation Platform, this working meeting gathered a selected number of experts from across Europe to carry out a stocktaking exercise regarding S3 national/regional priorities revision/refinement and the policy measures implemented/planned on their basis. In addition, participants reflected about the preparation of the S3 impact assessment. The report and a number of presentations from stakeholders are now available on the S3 Platform website.

The RHOMOLO-EIB results on the macroeconomic effects of the European Fund for Strategic Investments are featured in the official document of the European Commission's contribution to the informal EU27 leaders' meeting in Sibiu (Romania) on May 9th, 2019.

Colin Wolfe was appointed Head of Western Balkans Regional Cooperation in the Directorate General for Neighbourhood & Enlargement Negotiations, European Commission, in January 2017. He is responsible for the Regional Cooperation policy approach, as well as supporting multi-country assistance programmes. Previously, Colin held several posts in the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy. In particular, he was Head of the Competence Centre Smart & Sustainable Growth. He was also responsible for regional cooperation, including the development of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, the EU Strategy for the Danube Region, and the full range of INTERREG programmes in the EU-28. He also worked to set up and implement the EU PEACE Programme in Ireland/Northern Ireland. Prior to his different responsibilities for regional cooperation, Colin worked in the Budget and Employment services of the Commission. He also spent considerable time with Directorate General Enlargement, negotiating the accession of Hungary and Malta. He is a graduate in natural sciences of the University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland and holds a post-graduate degree in geography from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

An analysis carried out with the RHOMOLO model is included in the OECD Regional Outlook 2019 published in March 2019.

This second Regional Economic Modelling newsletter showcases the activities related to the development and use of the RHOMOLO model over the first semester of 2019.

The Centre for Industrial Studies (CSIL), under the auspices of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, has just launched a survey about the assistance provided by the European Commission to the design and implementation of Smart Specialisation Strategies. In particular, this survey aims at collecting the views of the entire Smart Specialisation community on the support framework delivered through e.g. guidance documents, the Smart Specialisation Platform, independent experts, etc. The data-collecting phase of the survey will continue until 30 April 2019.

The RHOMOLO model has been used for the Impact Assessment of Horizon Europe SWD(2018) 307 final published in June.

The European Commission has approved a new thematic area focusing on “Water Smart Territories” as part of the S3 Industrial Modersation Platform. The three leading regions of this initiative - Aragón (Spain), Centre-Val de Loire (France) and Fryslân (The Netherlands) - are gathering expression of interests from other regions to participate in this thematic area. The main goal is to strengthen European regions' innovation capacity beyond water resource efficiency, and to facilitate investments based on open innovation infrastructure and new technologies for sustainable water management, with the involvement of clusters and other actors in regional ecosystems.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) are running a survey to understand what is the state of digitalisation and digital competitiveness across industries within the region where Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) are located and how synergies between DIHs and S3 are and can be further fostered. The survey is addressed to all DIHs listed in the EC catalogue and to policy actors from regions where there is at least one DIH present. If you are a potential respondent, you should have received an invitation to answer this survey (otherwise, send urgently an email to JRC-B3-DIH@ec.europa.eu requesting an invitation), before its completion on 15 April 2019.

On 3 April 2019, 200 participants from regions, Digital Innovation Hubs, research centres and industry representatives gathered in Brussels to discuss how to best use marketplaces and solutions from EU funded projects to support digitalisation of companies across Europe. The S3 Platform organised and chaired a session bringing together, for the first time, 3 Interregional Partnerships under the S3 thematic platforms for Industrial Modernisation and Agri-Food (Photonics, Smart Sensors 4 Agri-Food, Traceability and Big Data in Agri-Food). They highlighted their eco-systems of collaboration between regions, DIHs and clusters to generate common investment projects. Funding opportunities for DIHs for the next programming period were presented in another session (new H2020 calls, Digital Europe Programme and ERDF). Moreover the event hosted the launch of the DIHNET.EU Community platform that, in combination with the JRC DIH Catalogue online tool, will serve as a central information point for DIHs and to disseminate information, share views, learn from others, select best practices, propose training activities and more generally, foster collaboration among Digital Innovation Hubs.

Presently Head of Unit for “Innovation and EIT” at the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. She joined the European Commission in 1998 as Scientific Officer at the Directorate-General for Research, within the Unit for Marie Curie Fellowships. From 2007 she served as Head of Unit in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, responsible for the units “Marie Curie Actions – Networks”, “External and Internal Communication” and “International Cooperation North America, Latin America and Caribbean”. She studied Biological Sciences at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid where she completed an MSc and obtained her PhD. After working as researcher at the Spanish Research Council (C.S.I.C) she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship between 1996-1998.