The European Week of Cities and Regions is the most important EU-wide event for regional actors. This year iEER was part of the activities with project coordinator Christine Chang presenting the project in Brussels at the Committee of the Regions.
Around 6000 participants from cities and regions across the EU arrived to Brussels on 10.-13.10. to demonstrate what they are doing to boost growth and jobs, how they implement EU cohesion policy and why local and regional levels are crucial for good governance. The iEER project was invited to the ‘Promoting young entrepreneurship at regional and local level: The European Entrepreneurial Region experience’ workshop by the Committee of the Regions to showcase how it enables the exchange of experiences for better entrepreneurship support policies.
Ms. Katarzyna Balucka–Debska from the European Commission was among the panelists and underlined the need to accelerate skills learning. The world is changing so fast that it is very difficult for institutional learning to catch up. Best skills are often learned from one’s peers, which is why it is so important to connect different actors and regions. Ms. Balucka–Debska also noted that there are several regions in Europe which have tremendous entrepreneurial and startup activity, the challenge is just to connect these regions.
The beauty of iEER is that we actually bring people together
Connecting people and regions is one of the main goals of iEER. ‘The beauty of iEER is that we actually bring people together’ Christine Chang underlined. The learning camps organized during the project provide a great opportunity for startups, universities, accelerators and municipal actors from regions across Europe to meet and learn from their peers. Chang noted that startups are told to go global from the get-go, and close relations with their European peers should be a goal for regions as well.
Director Francisco Alvarez Molina from iEER partner regional government of Valencia talked about the many activities Valencia has to support entrepreneurship. The next iEER learning camp is coming up at the end of the month in Valencia under the theme startup support and acceleration. Follow us on Twitter at @BoostiEER for up to date news on the project!
Images courtesy of the European Week for Cities and Regions 2016.
