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Cross-border
economic
development
Project factsheets
Cross-border Euroregional strategies for economic development and innovation
Border
France / Spain
Territory
Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion; Aquitaine-Euskadi Euroregion
Date
2013 and 2014
Objective
Formulation of Euroregional strategies with a dimension linked to cross-border economic development
What is the context?
The strategic role of the regions in the area of economic development
was strengthened during the 2007-2013 European programme period,
with the formulation of regional innovation strategies. This trend will
continue in the 2014-2020 period as Smart Specialisation Strategies –
S3 – will take over.
The Euroregions are becoming an important level for
the formulation of cross-border strategies for economic
development.
What do the strategies
consist of?
In 2014, the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion
, which is made
up of the Midi-Pyrénées and Languedoc-Roussillon Regions and the
Autonomous Communities of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands,
put in
place a Euroregional Innovation Strategy for three priority sectors
(water, e-health and agri-food) and a cross-cutting area (tourism).
The objective of this strategy is to encourage Euroregional collaboration
in the cooperation between public-sector and economic players in the
four member regions. The strategy will also contribute to the integrated
territorial development of the Euroregion. In the same way as the regional
S3S, this strategy aims to focus public resources on a small number of
sectors in which the Euroregion has a global comparative advantage.
In concrete terms, it will support initiatives that make more sense and
have a greater impact at the Euroregional level.
The basis for this strategy is an assessment that has highlighted
complementarities in the regional innovation strategies of the four
regions that make up the Euroregion. Comparative analyses of the three
priority sectors, which notably brought out the four regions’ common
aspirations and challenges, made it possible to identify sub-topics of
common interest (cross-border areas of specialisation). Lastly, for each
area of specialisation the Euroregion’s assets, the dominant players in
the four member regions and existing projects were analysed.
The Euroregional Innovation Strategy sets out
two strategic work guidelines:
- to reconcile top-down and bottom-up approaches in order to
take better account of the aspirations of players on the ground
- to create the conditions necessary for the emergence of a
Euroregional ecosystem of innovation