THE RS HAS TIED THE PARTNERSHIP FOR "Rural diversification and smart Agri-Food destinations&quo

The second edition of the high-level Smart Regions event took place on 1-2 June in Helsinki, Finland. This was a great occasion to provided the opportunity to national and regional authorities to share experience of how smart specialization has been implemented in their countries and regions. In 2014 smart specialization strategies were introduced in the European Union's Cohesion Policy as the basis for research and innovation investment. As a result, over 120 strategies have been established to shape investments from 2014-2020.

During the conference, parallel sessions were held covering the most important thematic platforms such as: Agri-Food, energy, industrial modernization in which RS used the opportunity to tied the partnership for "Rural diversification and smart Agri-Food destinations" targeted in the specific focus area of "Food, Gastronomy and New Technologies", together with the regions from Greece, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Romania and Finland.

The key objective of the S3P Agri-Food is to orchestrate and support the efforts of EU regions committed to work together for developing a pipeline of investment projects connected to specific thematic areas of smart specialization priorities through inter-regional cooperation. The S3P Agri-Food will be co-developed and co-led by the regions themselves ensuring an active participation and commitment of industry and related business organisations and clusters as well as research institutions, academia and civil society.