Advanced Monitoring and Coordination of EU R&D Policies at Regional Level (AMCER)

EU R&D support policies and funding programmes arguably have a substantial impact on regional R&D systems and territorial cohesion, both at a European level and inside regions.

However, at regional level, there is often only have a fragmented vision of the territorial impact of EU programmes such as the FP6/FP7 and the CIP on their territories. To monitor these issues, they are using generic national or European assessments and local empirical data.

Moreover, and despite the fact that regions often shelter multiple actors that are active in the R&D field, regions frequently lack the strategic knowledge to build better synergies between their own policies and EU R&D support programmes, on the one hand, and for developing effective regional innovation strategies that are able to get support from and serve the conjoint of available regional R&D and innovation actors, on the other.

At the same time there is the issue of attributing R&D capacities, participations and benefits on behalf of regions (or Member States) to incorrect locations. This is the so-called “headquarters effect”. This effect is partially a consequence of the political structures in Member States and the use of subsidiaries and dépendances (without their own legal seat) on behalf of the main research stakeholders in countries (large research organisms, large companies...).

As a consequence, there is a growing need for reliable indicators (and uniform procedures) to measure the impact of regional, national and European programmes on regional RDI systems and economies.

Against this backdrop, the ESPON project “Advanced Monitoring and Coordination of EU R&D Policies at Regional Level” (AMCER) has the following main aims and objectives:

• To analyse the impact of EU R&D support policies and funding programmes at the level of the 9 regions, and meanwhile:
  
  • Improve information data gathering at regional level for this purpose
  • Improve accessibility to relevant EU statistics to this end
  • Formulate recommendations for the development and follow-up on regional indicators with regard to the impact of EU R&D support programmes
• Put in place a fit-for-purpose methodology (“assessment tools”) for ongoing monitoring of the impact of EU R&D support programmes
• Issue recommendations on how to raise the effectiveness of EU R&D support programmes for the regional cause, notably by:
  
  • Pointing out possibilities to come to better coordination between e.g. Operational Programmes of the EU Regional policy with the FP6/FP7 and CIP, on the one hand, and the EU Regional policy, FP6/FP7 and CIP with the R&D policies implemented by the regions and by national authorities, on the other.

Publikationen:

• Stuck, J.; Revilla Diez, J. (2013): Synthesis of the territorial and R&D systems of the nine case study regions involved in the AMCER project. Component 1 in the ESPON Advanced Monitoring and Coordination of EU R&D Policies at Regional Level (AMCER) project. Research report. Available from:  www.espon.eu/main/Menu_Projects/Menu_TargetedAnalyses/amcer.html

Wissenschaftliche Vorträge:

• Stuck, J.: Advanced Monitoring and Coordination of EU R&D Policies at the Regional Level (AMCER) - Mapping the regional contexts. AMCER Final Conference. 27th June 2013. Regione Toscana Office, Brussels, Belgium.
• Stuck, J.: Component 1 - Mapping the regional contexts: Synthesis of the territorial and R&D systems of the nine case study regions involved in the project. AMCER Steering Committee Meeting. 16. February 2012. Regione Toscana Office, Brussels, Belgium.