Press Release

Over 250 participants, representing the European Commission and national governments, regional development agencies and innovation actors, industry and academia, clusters and cluster associations from all over Europe debated on 22 and 23 November in Bucharest about the role of clusters in the smart specialisation process, integrating value chains and trigerring business driven innovation. Particular foci were put on the Danube Strategy and the Danube Transnational Programme, tools for cluster development wiith particular emphasis on bioeconomy as developed by the DTP Project "Danubiovalnet" approach and on  internationalisation solutions for bussiness by Afaceri.ro platform. Around 50 B2B/C2C meetings took place in the adjacent EEN brokerage event. 

Started as a regional event of the INTERREG IVC project "Clusterix" in 2012, the conference has reached its full maturity and represents a best practice example of international policy learning transfer process pursued all along the years by the INTERREG Europe "Clusterix 2.0" approach. 

The relevance of the event has been aslo proven by the presence of three Romanian Ministries. i.e. for Research and Innovation, Economy and European Affairs. In their opening speeches the according state secretaries emphasised the role of clusters in shaping up the regional and national innovation ecosystems, driving industrial change and fostering international cooperation. 

The conference has been co-organised by the Romanian Cluster Association, the Ministry of Economy, the National R&D Institute for Agricultural Machinery,  the Institute for Economic Forecasting of the Romanian Academy and the Association for the Knowledge Economy Promotion.. The event took place with support of CEC Bank, the Romanian Regional Development Agency "Centre" , the Institute for Research and Automation Design and enjoyed the patronage of the Ministry of Research and Innovation. 

For next year a joint Romanian-Hungarian Cluster Conference is in plan and high hopes have been set for 2019 as the candidature for the organisation of the European Cluster Conference under the Romanian Presidency early 2019 has already been launched.