R&I Investments & ESIF

The aim of work package 6 is to plan and establish operational synergies between R&I investments (public and private) and the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) in order to strengthen competitiveness of the mining and metallurgical industry and to foster market uptake and replication of innovative solutions. A strong emphasis is based on the Smart Specialisation Strategies (RIS3 or S3), which set priorities at national and regional level to build competitive advantage by developing and matching research and innovation strengths with business needs. They are also a backbone of national or regional research and innovation strategic policy frameworks in Europe. WP5 will analyse the soundness of Regional R&I investments and ESIF within the context of their respective policy frameworks at the regional, national and European levels, with the goal of improving their impact over the long term through MIREU’s networking regions, taking into account the upcoming changes in the EU cohesion policy after 2020.

The objective of WP6 is to identify regional administrative mechanisms that can increase R&I infrastructure by creating a policy framework specifically to encourage R&D investments & ESIF. This will be accomplished through measures that attract policy makers and can be included in the policy making processes; by better understanding the different ESIF and Regional investment mechanisms at the national level and to bring them up to the European level, and by developing synergies and providing recommendations for a) increasing the effectiveness of existing ESIF and Regional investments at a European scale, b) stimulating Regions without any FFI/ Regional Investments and policy background to establish policies and Regional investments that encourage mining and metallurgy and c) fostering synergies between a) and b). WP6 is closely linked with WP1, WP2 and WP4 and Interreg Europe project REMIX.