E²Tech4Cities 2018 & SME Instrument

E²Tech4Cities 2018 took place in Brussels on the 7th of June as a part of the EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) and Brussels Exporters Day. It was organized by Brussels Enterprise Europe Network and hosted by hub.brussels with the aim of organizing a networking event for those working in the energy efficiency field.

Hub.brussels also spoke of the role of the National Contact Points (NCPs) have for the local businesses. NCPs provide assistance with identifying suitable EU projects, support you with advice during the writing process as well as assess and give feedback to the proposal before it is submitted. However, they do not write the proposal for the applicant. NCPs also provide assistance throughout the project itself legal, financial, etc issues completely free of charge. Of course, the service is aimed at businesses registered in the NCP’s region, i.e in the case of hub.brussels it’s aimed at supporting businesses registered in Brussels.

Therefore, if you need any assistance in the process of your project, you may freely turn to your local NCP and they will provide you support in your local language. The list of NCP’s across Europe is available here.

If you need assistance with the finances of your project, you may turn to EFMC as we are here to help you out. See the list of our services here to find one suitable for you or contact us via email info@efmc.eu

 

The SME Instrument

Hub.brussels also introduced the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument. Your business may apply for the SME Instrument if your product or service idea is disruptive and your business qualifies as an SME.

To check if you qualify as an SME and for other useful tips regarding the SME Instrument see  this site.

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European Development Days 2018

The European Development Days 2018 took place in Tours & Taxis, Brussels on the 5th and 6th of June. It featured prominent speakers such as Jean-Claude Juncker, Antonio Tajani, Frederica Mogherini, Cecilia Malmström,  Queen Mathilde of Belgium, Queen Letizia of Spain, Paul Kagame the president of Rwanda, Marie-Louise Coleriro Preca the president of Malta, and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka the Executive Director of UN Women.

This year’s event focused on topics of sustainable development with a special emphasis on gender- the rights and opportunities for women and girls.  The hashtags #SheisWe and #SheDDs marked the event and trended on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

The president of Malta, Marie-Louise Coleriro Preca spoke in the opening ceremony of the fact that in recent decades the gender gap has actually increased. Gender parity has shifted into reverse since measurements begun by the World Economic Forum. She urged that action needs to be taken to change this trend.

In the panel on Empowering Women in Sustainable Investment and Business through the EIP, Rebecca Holmes said that as women are more socially and economically vulnerable then social protection policies targeting women should take into consideration local causes, such as social protection labour division, etc.

Betsy Nelson mentioned that women are the most loyal customers of banks. However, often do not go into entrepreneurship, and when they do then they have smaller businesses. Also, women have trouble receiving loans, as their applications are evaluated more harshly.

The EIP (EU External Investment Plan) has stepped in to help in these cases to provide funding for women entrepreneurs.

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Open calls for energy efficiency and integrated renewables

 

EASME has a number of open calls for Research & Innovation in the Sustainable Energy sector. See the list of open calls below for the following topics:

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European Day of Social Economy Enterprises 2018

“Social Economy- How to scale up?”

 

The European Economic and Social Committee held a conference on the 4th of June in Brussels on the topic of how social enterprises can scale up. Successful social enterprises shared their experiences on the road to success. The aim of the event was to propagate the social enterprise model and at the same time create a space for discussions on how to create an impact, have gender equality, and to scale up.

 

Nicholas Schmit (Ministry of Labour, Employment, Social and Solidarity Economy, Luxembourg). In Luxembourg they had adopted social economy and now see it is vital to be adopted on a larger scale too encourage entrepreneurs to adopt social economy standards. The hope is that social economy is adopted on the level of large enterprises. Start-ups already adopt the social economy approach and Schmit hopes this gains ground and becomes more popular around Europe. Time to be concrete and to develop social economy strategy on the European scale. Also, in Africa, Balkans, etc. The international community has a role to play in helping social enterprises scale up.

Christophe Itier (High Commissioner for Social Economy and Solidarity Economy and Social Innovation, FR) sees that political and economic influencers/decision makers have wrong or different ideas about social economy scaling up (increasing the visibility is often undervalued). They don’t think it is economically viable and it is just a means for social help, but this is simply not true. Therefore, it is necessary to make social enterprises more visible and show that it can be sustainable and economically profitable.

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Innovation Sessions: Healthcare Systems and Future Therapies

The 2018 edition of the Innovation Sessions took place on the 4th of June. It was aimed at bringing together various stakeholders from both public and private sector to discuss and debate on the topic of Healthcare Systems and Future Therapies.

 

The Keynote speech was by Carlos Moedas (the Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation) who spoke about the future directions of Horizon Europe.

Horizon Europe will be about merging the physical and the digital worlds. One of these is the Health field. Links between citizens and health- digitization of health.

Last 100 yrs were about killing the disease. He thinks the next 50 yrs would be about managing the patient life quality- personalised medicine.

Moedas believes (in reference to GDPR and the Facebook scandal) that we should personally own our data, especially our medical data, and do what we want with it- donate it for research or monetize it if we want to.

Carlos Moedas also thinks that in 5 years we will go to a doctor who utilizes an AI. If they do not use an AI then we would change the doctor. But we would not have the AI as the doctor, we still need the doctor with the human perspective.

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EU Budget for the Future

 

The Commission has published an overview of the budget plans for Research and Innovation, namely Horizon Europe and Euratom. You may have a look at the publication here 

New features of Horizon Europe will be:

The European Innovation Council, which will provide support for start-ups and companies focusing on breakthrough innovation to scale up via two funding instruments.

EU-wide Research and Innovation missions will aim to create more impact by encouraging citizen involvement alongside stakeholders, the European Parliament and Member States and and focusing on the bold, ambitious goals.

Open science policy will put a greater emphasis on openness and sharing.

A new approach to Partnerships will rationalise the funding landscape.

Simpler rules will increase legal certainty and reduce bureaucracy.

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Horizon Europe: the new FP9 of the European Union

Richer, Visionary, Simpler and Close to the market.  Those seem the be the keywords and lofty rhetoric which is emanating from the newly envisaged Horizon Europe programme promoters and designers that the upcoming new Framework of the European Union for research and innovation which will replace H2020 from 2021 onwards.

The ninth edition of the EU Framework Programme (FP9) will benefit from a significantly higher funding injection compared with its predecessor, (ca. €97.6 billion) which will make it the most highly funded R&D programme ever in the Commissions’ history. Part of this cash injection is a 6% decrease in direct funding for agriculture which has been reallocated to fund Horizon Europe as Common Agriculture payments will now be capped at a maximum of €60,000 Euro per farmer and an increased financial contribution from all member states to the R&D budget.

The EU parliament was expecting €120 billion, lobbyists were pushing for €160 billion and at the end, despite expected Brexit-related headaches and financial shortfalls, this FP will be one of the few MFF headings to be actually increased accompanied in tandem with a doubling of Erasmus+ which is a truly remarkable achievement

The name of the new FP has been wisely chosen by Commissioner Moedas in order to reflect the vision of the new programme, which aims to capture stakeholders’ hopes and expectations, and marking the first step on the road to a more prosperous future for all EU citizens.

EU citizens’ perception and public knowledge is limited and the benefit and the importance of EU spending in research and innovation is influenced by for example high profile R&D achievements across the water in the USA such as when NASA discovers new planets which were in fact actually uncovered by an EU funded Belgian scientist. Commissioner Moedas realized that a renewed and more efficient communication plan of the EU around its FPs is fundamental to build consensus among citizens and stakeholders.  A “new deal”, based on a type of mission specific approach, for EU research was felt to be required to be readily understandable to the public and capture their imagination and interest.  Ambitions such as plastic-free oceans by 2030 or ensuring the survival of three out of four cancer patients by 2034 is akin to such lofty goals such as former US president John F. Kennedy had back in 1961, when he promised to send a man to the moon and return him safely. Ambitious, aiming high but ultimately achievable and realistic if all the parts of the jigsaw are put together.

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