The highly interactive and participatory workshop concluded with a recommendation to reenergise North Sea cooperation by focusing on several joint priorities and market opportunities, which should be used to structure future cooperation. Delegates identified three such priority topics:

• naturally ‘derived’ products (marine food and products from marine resources);
• clean maritime operations (shipping, ports, etc.); and
• innovative cross-sector solutions with multi-use applications.

Participants also highlighted the need to encourage public private partnerships with an emphasis on cooperation across clusters and sectors, as a way to better exploit the innovation potential of the blue economy and to renew its skills base.

The discussions on how to take North Sea cooperation on blue growth forward generated several creative ideas and recommendations, including:

• setting up a transnational partnership between clusters, businesses, universities and other knowledge and education providers for blue growth, modelled on the existing European 'Knowledge and Innovation Communities';
• pooling funding in a Joint Programming Instrument to invest in transnational blue growth innovation projects;
• including a blue growth priority axis and blue growth flagship operations within the INTERREG North Sea programme;
• setting up a cross-border financial instrument to support blue growth demonstration projects in the North Sea;
• creating a competition for innovative cross-over solutions for blue growth targeting, in particular, young people; and
• setting up a scheme to place young graduates as innovation assistants into blue economy SMEs.

The workshop was funded under the 'Preparatory Action for the North Sea', an initiative launched by the European Parliament in 2013, and was supported by the North Sea Commission of the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions CPMR.

A workshop report will be presented to the European Parliament's Seas, Rivers, Islands and Coastal Areas Intergroup for further discussions on the way forward.