Markku Markkula today welcomed the adoption of the Horizon 2020 programme, which will enable local and regional authorities to make considerable strides towards excellence and greater innovation in Europe's businesses. Turning to specific achievements, the CoR rapporteur praised the dedicated measures for SMEs and that finances will be available for pioneering regions and smart specialisation. Finally, he added support for the simplified rules for participation in Horizon 2020 and quicker delivery of grants, which will bring further improvements for participants.
"There is a huge gap between the latest research knowledge and real life practice. Now, for the first time, we have an EU programme to bring research and innovation funding together under one single programme. This is a great achievement and a testament to the intense preparations that have taken place over the past three years. I welcome the support that I have received from my colleagues in the European Parliament, notably Maria da Graça Carvalho and Christian Ehler, and look forward to reaping the rewards of this programme throughout Europe's regions and cities from 2014."
The EU still lags behind major players on the world stage in terms of investment for research and development. Furthermore, large differences in funding and innovation performance exist at the regional and local level in the EU. Innovation communities operate as ecosystems through systemic value networking in a world without borders. The key principle within the programme period 2014-2020 is integrating the use of local and regional funding with Horizon and Cohesion funding. Every regional smart specialisation strategy can be made a reality by means of multi-level governance and shared ownership based on orchestration.
"For Europe to become a global leader in tackling societal challenges, we need our research, development and innovation activities to have a strong regional component." Markku Markkula insists. "Horizon 2020 will be the essential financial instrument to generate innovation ecosystems, key enabling technologies, public procurement and research infrastructures in our regions and cities. Now we also have an adopted regulation for Cohesion funding, we can create the concepts, tools and other pre-conditions through which local and regional authorities can actively promote innovation, take risks and invest."
Markku Markkula, the EPP-CoR Chair of the Task Force Europe 2020, sums up: "No more separate projects operating in their silos. From the governance perspective, societal grand challenges cannot be tackled through minor adjustments and conventional management methods. Boosting regional renewal capital - at the level of real life change management - is critical to success: societal innovations and the confidence to innovate and reform are also key instrumental for local and regional decision-makers."
Link to Markku Markkula's CoR opinion on Horizon 2020