Webinar series in Hungary: Sustainable and circular bioeconomy

June 2020

A three-part webinar series was organised in Hungary in June 2020. The aim of the webinars was to inform the audience about the sustainable and circular bioeconomy, with a special focus on the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking call published in April 2020.

The first occasion was held on 15 June and detailed the bioeconomy developments in Europe, Central-Eastern Europe and Hungary. First the European bioeconomy concept was presented, as well as the Central- Eastern-European developments through the BIOEAST initiative. Opportunities of bioeconomy in the RDI framework programmes were also listed. The Hungarian Bioeconomy Cluster (established within the framework of POWER4BIO project) was also introduced to the audience.

The second occasion focused on the opportunities of industry and research sector, and it was considered as the National BBI JU Info Day. The speakers of the event were Paloma Mallorquin, project officer at the Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU), Marco Rupp from the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), Tévécia Ronzon of the Bioeconomy Knowledge Center of JRC and Dr Barna Kovács, Permanent Representation of Hungary to the EU, Brussels. One of the main focuses of the day was the Annual Work Plan 2020 of BBI JU.

The third webinar provided a starting point for the establishment of the local and regional strategies and action plans by detailing the challenges and opportunities of the local bioeconomy. The 2019 Report of Committee of the Regions about bioeconomy was presented and Ákos Koós, representative of the Hungarian Bioeconomy Cluster, gave a presentation about the Cluster.

The three webinars succeeded to mobilizing all the targeted stakeholder groups: academic, higher educational, industrial and government sector, as well as the municipal actors participated. All Hungarian regions were covered by the participants and additionally the second webinar – which was held in English – attracted participants from Romania, Croatia, Slovakia and Spain as well.

The webinar-series was organised by the Hungarian Bioeconomy Cluster, Ministry of Agriculture, National Research, Development and Innovation Office and the National Delegation of Hungary at the European Committee of the Regions.