News

What reading has inspired, helped or even provoked our team lately? Here you have the chance to find out, and hopefully get a few ideas of your own!

Engaging with the research community is core to ECAT's work, especially when it comes to the investigation of systemic risks, as outlined in the DSA. A wealth of insights on these risks and their mitigations are regularly published across Europe, and we hope to draw your attention to just some of the projects that have caught our eye.

ECAT is still a new and growing team, with colleagues joining from a wealth of backgrounds and a diversity of high-level expertise.

The Stanford Internet Observatory has launched a pilot grants programme to support researchers studying trust and safety in the majority world. Applications are due 30 January, 2024.

Under article 40 of the Digital Services Act (DSA), vetted researchers will be able to request data from very large online platforms (VLOPs) or search engines (VLOSEs) to conduct research on systemic risks in the EU.

Earlier this month, the annual ROMA Awards ceremony took place. The award celebrates the contribution of women in various fields, and ECAT’s Lead Scientist Emilia Gómez Gutiérrez won the award in the STEM category.

Welcome to the ECAT newsletter! We are thrilled so many of you have signed up to join us on the journey to make the online space safer and more trustworthy.

After a transition period, the Smart Specialisation Community of Practice (S3 CoP) has now become the place to be for all news and updates about Smart Specialisation in the EU. It has been launched by DG REGIO to support the EU Cohesion Policy for the 2021-2027 programming period and is the new central node on guidance, networking, support, and peer-learning on S3, covering its conceptual development and its implementation. The S3 Community of Practice will assist regional authorities and stakeholders involved in Smart Specialisation across the EU through different forms of support and peer learning opportunities. The Smart Specialisation Platform will from now on focus on updates and news related to S3 beyond the EU and – accordingly - this newsletter will focus on S3 beyond the EU and research on place based transformative innovation policies.

A topical joint research by the JRC and Eurosystem central banks colleagues was recently published in the ECB Occasional Paper Series. Click on "more" to find out about it.

Interested to access EUROMOD using Stata? JRC will give a one-hour online session on the ‘Stata Connector to EUROMOD’ on Tuesday 5 December, 12:00-13:00 CET. Click on "more" for more information.

The Report on Public Finances in EMU 2022, one of the flagship publications of DG ECFIN, was published on 25 October. EUROMOD was used to illustrate the short-term budgetary impact of the inflation shock seen in 2022 across EU countries, in a situation in which this shock translates into wage increases.

A three-day EUROMOD training course took place on 18-20 October at JRC-Seville. The course was taught by JRC colleagues Ilda Dreoni, Chrysa Leventi, Andrea Papini, Fidel Picos and Hannes Serruys.

Marta takes care of the formal procedures related to EUROMOD and provides administrative support to the whole EUROMOD community. Let's get to meet her!

For this JRC session around 40 participants were enrolled. Presentations were made by JRC (Karel Haegeman), EIT Climate KIC and the JRC – EIT Working Group (Thomas Koetz), Basque Environmental Agency (Ander Elgorriaga) and STRITIH (Nataša Beltran). The key role of governance, innovation, social aspects and transformative innovation for climate resilience were recognised by the speakers and the audience.

After 3 years of leading the unit for Digital Economy – JRC.T.1, Carlos TORRECILLA SALINAS takes over the position of Head of Unit of JRC.B.7 – Innovation Policies and Economic Impact in Seville. Carlos holds a PhD in Informatics from the University of Seville. He has a broad experience in the field of Information and Communication Technologies in both the private and public sector.

The JRC.B.7-REMO organised two sessions on policy monitoring and evaluation. The session “Data and methods for policy monitoring: a learning lab for practitioners” focused on utilizing territorial data for regional policy-making, with discussions on local policy monitoring challenges and practical training using the data visualisation tool developed by the JRC: Territorial Economic Data viewer (TEDv). The second session “Lessons learned to support the future design of cohesion policy”, centered on leveraging insights from past cohesion policy evaluations to shape its future design. On both JRC sessions, there was an interesting debate with participants on the need for good quality data for policy monitoring and evaluation.

The PRI’s contribution to the Policy Lab organised by SECGEN, raised noticeable interest, gathering a good number of questions and several regions willing to get in contact with PRI and looking forward to exploring ways of involvement. This policy lab session explored how EU regions and cities are championing strategic foresight tools to explore, anticipate, and shape future trends, and how the EU can support them in this endeavour.

At the EWRC 2023, the JRC also took part to the participatory lab on “Green Competences for all – preparing learners for the green transition". The panel, moderated by the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sports and Culture, included the engagement of the European Training Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the EU Education for Climate Coalition and GreenComp, the European sustainability competence framework.

The session at EWRC 2023 was divided into two main parts. First, the audience was presented with a panel, moderated by Taina Tukiainen with the participation of Eva Lundin, Dalarna, Sweden; Paz Palacio, Asturias, Spain; Prof. Luc Soete, co-chair of the PRI Scientific Committee; and Ramojus Reimeris, Joint Research Centre. The panellists shared some reflections and lessons learnt gained from the one-year PRI Pilot that ended in May 2023. Secondly, panellists and participants engaged in a lively discussion with the audience who was tasked to reflect on challenges and opportunities for territories around governance arrangements, collaborative instruments and transformations. Among other things participants highlighted the importance of sharing experiences such as initiatives and opportunities they undertook and also how they dealt with challenges, both by sharing success and learning stories.

As part of the European Week of Regions and Cities 2023, this session aimed to highlight the importance of targeted support for Smart Specialisation in the EU Enlargement countries and to discuss the main needs for the future. Speakers presented key results from the countries' experiences in the design and implementation process of Smart Specialisation in two EU candidate countries based on the methodological guidance for applying the S3 approach in the EU Enlargement and Neighbourhood regions.