News

In a new non-paper, the Vanguard Initiative calls for the adoption of an ambitious EU industrial Strategy and expresses full support of the European Commission’s ambition to adopt a renewed EU industrial strategy as a central initiative in delivering the European Green Deal.

The non-paper outlines several key principles that the Vanguard Initiative would like to see embedded in the EU industrial strategy :

• The EU industrial strategy must fully recognise the regional dimension of industrial and innovation policies and that the involvement of regions in the definition and implementation of those policies is crucial.
• A significantly strengthened approach to managing and coordinating multi-level governance is a must to make a successful implementation of the EU industry strategy.
• Investments in EU strategic value chains is enabled by interregional cooperation. The smart specialisation approach is a driver for interregional cooperation and should be recognised in the EU industrial strategy.
• The EU industrial strategy should put a clear priority on developing networks of state-of-the-art pilot infrastructures, demonstrators, and shared facilities with open access to SMEs on the European territory.
• The development of an ambitious EU cluster policy should be a central part of EU industrial policy to strengthen the development of European world-class clusters connecting regional clusters, networks and ecosystems.
• The implementation of the EU industrial strategy must be based on effective and facilitated synergies between EU instruments.
• The EU industrial strategy should present a vision on how State aid rules can be designed to better allow effective policies for addressing emerging needs and state-of-the art innovation policies and funding solutions, notably for start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs.
• The EU industrial strategy should recognise the role of regional authorities in ensuring the availability of skills to support the industrial competitivity and transition.

The Vanguard Initiative is very concerned that these key principles will be overlooked in the strategy that will be presented in March 2020. The Vanguard Initiative calls on the European Commission to acknowledge these key principles as crucial to deliver on the EU objectives to be the driver in the green and digital transformation of industry. We, the Vanguard Initiative member regions are committed to play an active role in this.