EU Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand H.E Sem Fabrizi spoke at the launch of the Smart Specialisation Strategy in the Hunter Valley at Parliament House on 16 March 2016. “Smart specialisation Strategy (S3) is a key public-private/EU-regional partnership for economic development through targeted support to research and innovation.. a ‘gateway’ to funding support for regions and sectoral development,” Ambassador Fabrizi said. He congratulated Regional Development Australia Hunter Valley region (RDA Hunter) as well as the Australian government, “particularly the Prime Minister for bringing forward the NISA “ideas boom””

In his speech Ambassador Fabrizi outlined the European Union’s Cohesion Policy, the Horizon 2020 programme and gave some concrete examples of regions using innovative hubs to push for growth, and more jobs through smart specialisation.

“The EU is a leading innovation player. 24 per cent of global R&D is spent in Europe, 32 per cent of patent applications are European, 25 of the top universities are in Europe, and one quarter of the top 2000 RD companies are European.

“The European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, our flagship initiative, is funded to 80 billion € over the EU budget cycle.  This is the biggest research programme in the world,” Ambassador Fabrizi said.

“In a moment of economic difficulties we focused on innovation as a tool for growth and jobs! This programme is open to researchers from around the world. Since its launch in 2014 – there are 80 projects between EU and Australian researchers, with a total investment of $A330 million in key sectors.

“With the new National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) put forward we believe that our cooperation will increase.  Only two weeks ago the European Commission granted 8 million dollars to CSIRO and other agencies in Australia and Europe, for the feasibility study of phase 1 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) – which is major research infrastructure identified in the NISA,” Ambassador Fabrizi said.

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