The Lead Partner of Danube Energy+ project, InnoEnergy attended  the 8th edition of the EUSDR Annual Forum in Bucharest, Romania.

As a key event of the 2019 EUSDR Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania is jointly organized together with the European Commission and the Danube Transnational Program (DTP), between the 27th and the 28th of June 2019 in Bucharest (Palace of Parliament), the 8th Annual Forum of EUSDR. The event standed under the motto: “Building cohesion for a shared prosperity in the Danube Region”.

The 8th Annual Forum  covered topics of particular importance for the Danube region such as: 

• connectivity and regional mobility
•  the fostering  of clusters’ development
• research and innovation
• digitalization
• People to People contacts and tourism.

The second day of the Forum was dedicated to post-2020 EU policy design, with a focus on the role of Interreg DTP and of the ESI Funds for the region. Emphasis was placed on the possibilities of creating better synergies between macro-regional strategies and EU programs and policies in the framework of the new Cohesion Policy. Discussions over new opportunities for enhancing funding for macro-regional strategies were also feature in the program prominently.

The Public Hearings Workshop and the dedicated session about the revision of the EUSDR Action Plan allowed stakeholders to take stock of the ongoing progress of the Revision Process and at the same time to become involved more in shaping the Strategy’s future by sharing concrete proposals for the final stage of EUSDR’s Action Plan Revision. To this purpose, public consultations were organized by the Danube Strategy Point with the support of the Romanian EUSDR Presidency.
The Forum was preceded by a Ministerial meeting that took place in the morning of the 27th of June, allowing the Ministers in charge of Economic Affairs from the EUSDR participating countries to share views and provide strategic guidance for enhancing competitiveness and economic convergence in the Danube region.
The Ministry for Business Environment, Commerce and Entrepreneurship of Romania organized, throughout the duration of this event, an exhibitiondedicated to promoting the best practices & success stories of transnational cooperation in the Danube Region.
Business to Business (B2B) sessions were organized for the first time within an Annual EUSDR Forum by the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) and its regional partners, represented by the Romanian Association for Electronic and Software Industry (member of the EEN), also with the support of the Romanian Ministry for Business Environment, Trade and Entrepreneurship and the European Commission/ DG GROW.

The 8th EUSDR Annual Forum  continued the tradition of bringing together a balanced number of high level officials and independent civil society experts from both the EU and non-EU countries sharing their expertise on current developments that could impact the Danube region.

Selection of speakers and facilitators has aimed towards the achieving of a gender/national/rural-urban balance and has been based on transparent, competitive, relevance-based criteria as well as on an inclusive process of cooperation with all the relevant Stakeholders.