On 18 June the Vanguard Initiative held its annual High-level Directors’ Meeting in Brussels. During the meeting, the Directors took several steps forward in strengthening the cooperation within the network. The Directors unanimously elected Region Skåne as new Chair for the 2ndsemester of 2019 and engaged with speakers from the European Commission’s DG RTD and DG GROW on Horizon Europe, technology infrastructures and EU industrial policy. 

The International Cluster-to-Cluster Meeting - C2C - is conceived as a summit gathering national and regional clusters from European countries aiming to exchange innovative models for cluster cooperation, explore common areas of interest, activate new partnerships among clusters and between clusters and other innovation actors. 

Over the last weeks, the 3D-Printing Pilot project has put a particular emphasis on three key action lines, which resulted in some promising progress. Within the currently identified strategic collaboration areas (“demo cases”) companies from the partner regions are actively working on the specificities of the demo cases in order to prepare their implementations. A dedicated event, which will take place in Bologna on 18 June, will allow discussing the industry-driven cases related to the ‘Multi-materials components by hybrid 3D Printing manufacturing’ demo case.

In April 2018, the Emilia-Romagna region joined Skåne as co-leading region for the Nano Pilot. This new partnership has had a positive impact on the Pilot and progress has been made across all three demo cases.