On 22 February 2018, national representatives from 25 EU member states, Commission officials and cluster policy experts met in Brussels during EU Industry day to share experiences and discuss how to better use and develop clusters for driving industrial change and growth. Wallonia was one of the participating regions at the forum and was given the opportunity to give input on how to design and implement effective cluster policies that can create cluster-driven growth.

The regions of Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels recently published the Belgian position paper on the EU’s industrial strategy, as communicated by the European Commission in September. Belgium welcomes the Communication on a renewed EU industrial strategy, but requests a further long-term consolidation of this strategy in line with strategic objectives to be set for 2030. In its position paper, Belgium underlines the importance of interregional innovation investments and collaboration, pointing to the Vanguard Initiative’s experience.

Senior political representatives from 29 of the 33 member regions of the Vanguard Initiative met in Brussels on the 22nd of November to reconfirm their political commitment to further implementing the Vanguard methodology. Five new regions (Autonomous Province of Trento, Lower Austria, West and East Slovenia, Region Orebro County and Varmland) joined the recently created Vanguard ASBL.

Although its relatively recent launch, the ADMA pilot based project NeSSIE is progressing at a steady pace. September marked the launch of the interregional collaboration on anticorrosion technology and novel subsea material solutions own website and steps are now being taken to further develop NeSSIEs’ three demonstration projects.