On 19 July 2023, the European Commission published a call for evidence to collect further input from multiple stakeholders for a European roadmap for Hydrogen Valleys. This roadmap will outline the strategic priorities and actions needed to reach the REPowerEU objective of doubling the number of Hydrogen Valleys in the EU by 2025. The Energy and Climate Change WG and Policy WG are working on an input paper for this call. The deadline for direct submission to the Commission is 16 August.
On 19 July, the European Commission (EC) published a Communication on the assessment of the EU Missions after two years of implementation. The EC details the Missions' successes but also recognises the need to address challenges related to governance, budget, citizens and private sector engagement. The EC also proposes to add a sixth Mission on the New European Bauhaus.
ERRIN’s Spring Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2023 took place on 22 June this year. As always, it brought together the large and dynamic community of member regions and cities. Following the format part with the update from the network, the main focus was the EU Missions, approached in two policy debates, on the support and implementation frameworks in Adaptation, Ocean and Waters and Soil Missions, and the governance innovation and the perspective on Cities and the Cancer Missions.
On 20 June 2023, ERRIN participated in the Plenary Meeting of the S3 European Hydrogen Valleys Partnership, hosted in the House of the Dutch Provinces in Brussels. In this context, ERRIN with its Energy & Climate Working Group is in the process of producing an input paper building on the work of the S3 Partnership on Hydrogen Valleys and collecting ERRIN’s members’ needs, challenges and solutions.
This week, ERRIN participated in the Second Forum of the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, organised in our member region Blekinge, Sweden. As a Friend of the Mission, ERRIN joined the pre-conference workshop to present how the network is supporting regions and their R&I ecosystems in developing EU projects, while also promoting the Pathways2Resilience call for Expressions of Interest.
On 7 June 2023, the first meeting of the ERA Forum sub-group ‘Access to excellence’ – ‘R&I and Cohesion Managing Authorities’ Network (RIMA) was held. The discussion focused on operationalising funding synergies, a topic covered also in the DUT & ERRIN Policy Working Group workshop on 8 June.