Smart Europe

Who?

The consortium of 13 partners, representing 11 EU regions consist of the following partners beside AER:
Province of Flevoland – Lead Partner
Almi Foretagspartner Mitt AB
Avila County Council
Èszak Alföld Regional Development Agency
Manchester Metropolitan University
Maramures County Council
Patras Science Park S.A.
Province of Bologna
Sor – Trondelag County Autority
The Baltic Institute of Finland
Veneto Innovazione
Veneto Region

What?

SMART EUROPE was for providing support to decision makers to improve their strategies with the aim of adopting the key objective of job creation to their activities. The sub-objectives were:
• Collecting and exchange of good practices and possible policy improvements in the field using a Peer Review methodology,
• Setting up of the SMART EUROPE Toolkit, a customized package of policy instruments and measures to facilitate the creation of innovation-based jobs,
• Development of concrete implementation plans for each partner region to achieve the main objective,
• Dissemination of the tested measures towards other interested EU Regions.

When?

The project duration was three years (1 January 2012 – 31 December 2014). This project was supported by the INTERREG IVC programme, financed by the European Union’s Regional Development Fund.
The start of the new ERASMUS+ programme in 2014 brought new opportunities for Smart Europe partners to support some of the recommendations experts made in the peer reviews related to innovation in education, training and learning.

Why?

Great efforts to increase employment rate were made with the Lisbon Strategy. The economic crisis resulted in job loss and also in reduction of funding to boost employment. Regions created their economic development strategies on promoting innovation, however, these were not always designed for job creation as priority. SMART EUROPE was designed to boost employment directly in innovation-based sectors through developing smart and targeted regional policies and interventions. Boosting employment opportunities has substantial impact on local economies.

What is AER’s role and how to get involved?
AER brought the ‘Regional peer reviews’ to its partners: the team of experts went to each region to meet all actors and stakeholders linked to the issue and formulated recommendations after analysing each situation. Exchanging, sharing and transferring policy experiences, knowledge and good practices were key features of this project. Therefore, dissemination of project outcomes to a wide range of stakeholders of wider Europe was AER’s role. AER promoted and built on the results of SMART EUROPE consortia on two separate occasions. The event in Province of Gelderland was a meeting of the AER’s Committee for Economy and Regional Development. The Smart Europe good practices was highlighted at the event on increasing the cooperation between the public and private sector, in order to boost employment, SME creation and regional growth at the European Parliament (Brussels).
You can find more information on the SMART EUROPE project website.

What is AER’s role and how to get involved?

AER brought the ‘Regional peer reviews’ to its partners: the team of experts went to each region to meet all actors and stakeholders linked to the issue and formulated recommendations after analysing each situation. Exchanging, sharing and transferring policy experiences, knowledge and good practices were key features of this project. Therefore, dissemination of project outcomes to a wide range of stakeholders of wider Europe was AER’s role.
AER promoted and built on the results of SMART EUROPE consortia on two separate occasions. The event in Province of Gelderland was a meeting of the AER’s Committee for Economy and Regional Development. The Smart Europe good practices was highlighted at the event on increasing the cooperation between the public and private sector, in order to boost employment, SME creation and regional growth at the European Parliament (Brussels).

You can find more information on the SMART EUROPE project website.