The Commission announced the 63 regions, 7 cities and 4 Member States selected in the pilot project for Partnerships for Regional Innovation, an initiative developed together with the Committee of the Regions. Participants in the pilot action are open to sharing good practices and to co-develop and testing tools to mobilise multiple sources of funding and policies and connect regional and national programmes to EU initiatives for the green and digital transformations. These Partnerships will feed into the new Innovation Agenda for Europe, where innovation drives the transformation for sustainability, connecting local strategies with EU-level initiatives.

The call has attracted a wide representation of the EU innovation ecosystem, ranging from Member States such as Slovakia participating at the national level and a broad variety of EU regions, such as Andalusia, Azores, Hauts-de-France, Ostrobothnia, Podkarpackie, North Aegean, Emilia Romagna and many others. The call has also triggered a bottom-up collaboration and networking process, already bringing together many participants as part of multi-region networks.

The participants in the pilot project will explore the new Partnerships for Regional Innovation based on the ‘Partnerships for Regional Innovation Playbook', an initial guidance document published by the Joint Research Centre. The Playbook proposes a wide range of tools and governance mechanisms to enhance the coordination of regional, national and EU innovation policies to implement Europe's green and digital transitions and to tackle the innovation divide in the EU.  A core element of the proposed approach is the introduction of local missions to coordinate actions under a coherent directional logic, enabling the exploration of broad-ranging policy mixes for system-level innovation.

During the Pilot Action, the participants will test these policy tools while co-creating operational guidance. The Playbook and Pilot Action will also promote good practices, facilitate learning through experimentation and support public administrations and the broader ecosystem. The pilot action will not impact the current programming process of the 2021-2027 funds.

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