Report on actions to foster participation of regional stakeholders in international networks

Confidential report D6.3 has been delivered to the European Commission

In a confidential report, POWER4BIO partners from AKI discussed the actions to foster participation of regional stakeholders in international networks, with a focus on Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions. Due to the specific economic, environmental and social challenges of the CEE, CEE stakeholders tend to be detached from classic European-wide networks. However, the results of the questionnaire prepared by AKI confirm that CEE stakeholders are aware of the main advantages of joining networks (gaining information, networking) and have identified several networks that could benefit them. Therefore, the following actions have been taken to foster the participation of CEE stakeholders in international networks: specifying key international networks for regional stakeholders from CEE regions based on their characteristics and needs, recommending bioeconomy related events and organising virtual meetings for CEE stakeholders with a network that is most relevant to the region’s bioeconomy.

In order to foster participation of regional stakeholders in international networks, 46 European-wide networks were recommended to CEE stakeholders that best match the bio-based resources and the bioeconomy of these regions: in total ten circular-bioeconomy, twelve agriculture, three biotechnology, eight energy, two fishery, five forestry and six manufactural industry related network were listed. AKI has also created an event calendar containing 28 events linked to bioeconomy, tailored to the CEE regions with events picked from the event calendar of the 46 networks. AKI also organized meetings to which each region, one network and BZN were invited. These meetings reached a total of 54 participants. The main outcomes of these actions were establishing two new memberships, boosting knowledge transfer, showcasing business models successfully implemented in practice and establishing potential business relationships via networking.