It's been quite a journey! Pannon European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation’s (Pannon EGTC) INTER VENTURES - "Policies to promote the internationalization of SMEs for more competitive regional ecosystems in border areas of the EU" Interreg Europe project is coming to an end.
The main goal of the project is to promote the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises in the border regions of the European Union, under the leadership of the Pannon EGTC and with the cooperation of 8 European partners (German, Spanish, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish), thus contributing to the increase of their competitiveness. Within the framework of the project taking place between 2019-2023, the partners share their experiences on the subject and elaborate on the final document called the Action Plan for each of the five regions included in the partnership, on how policy instruments could be used to help the internationalization of businesses.
Pannon EGTC’s Action Plan focuses on the creation of a program that helps less prepared SMEs to become international and to have a direct impact on the Hungarian-Croatian cross-border cooperation program between 2021-27 (HU-HR CBC) to achieve the publication of calls for proposals (such as the B-light program), which help the internationalization of businesses.
During the Inter Ventures project, the partners collected and analyzed good practices. The joint infographic brought together 13 examples of good practices that revealed key information on the situation of small and medium-sized enterprises in each partner region. In addition, each project partner also developed action plans to improve policies for business internationalization.
This year In February, the project entered the second phase of implementation, which focused mainly on the implementation of the action plan, the monitoring of the process, and the application of good practices.
Over Phase 2, two online meetings were held to share experiences and check the status (updating the monitoring work plan beforehand): 1st monitoring meeting was in May, regarding 2nd the monitoring meeting, was planned for September/October but eventually decided to be connected to the final meeting which was held on November 3.
The final partner meeting was held both online and hybrid. As part of the closing event, there was a conference called ”Cooperation of SMEs for internationalization”. The event was free, and the whole conference was streaming on YouTube, so people could join everyone when they prefer. The conference brought 55 people in total.
The whole conference is available here: youtu.be/459QlWu2z1o
Straight after the conference partners jumped into the final project partner meeting. During the meeting, the Lead Partner gave the last update on the overviewing status, reporting, and project closure. After that, each project partner gave an update on the Action plan implementation.
Now all project partners are working on the last task – the internal report which has to be done by December 1st.
