Widening

Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence is one of the sub-programmes of Horizon Europe, aiming to contribute to building research and innovation capacity for countries lagging behind. According to the Regional Innovation Scoreboard from 2023 and 9th Cohesion Report from 2024, despite the cohesion efforts, disparities in research and innovation performance across EU regions have been persistent and increasing. As the innovation divide continues to grow, widening measures remain of strategic importance to increase participation from underperforming countries. Low engagement of stakeholders from the widening countries in the Horizon programmes has been one of the key bottlenecks on the way to realising the full potential of the European R&I ecosystem as a whole.

Widening and deepening engagement in R&I was identified as one of ERRIN’s 20th anniversary priorities in 2021 and later as one of two key network priorities, next to EU Missions. The overarching objective of ERRIN’s activities in this area is to achieve a more inclusive ecosystem approach in R&I by raising diversity in regional research and innovation activities, as well as deepening engagement where collaboration between different stakeholders needs further encouragement.

Following this aim, we have been organising dedicated thematic meetings and discussions, identifying areas where further support is required, influencing policy and implementing practical steps for higher engagement internally. We have been also working on strengthening dialogue with the European Commission and Member States through involvement in the ERA Policy Action 16 “Improve EU-wide access to excellence”. Moreover, ERRIN started a reflection process on the Week of Innovative Regions in Europe conference (WIRE) and its potential role as a yearly European policy forum for regional and local R&I ecosystems. This could create connections between regional ecosystems with different innovation performance levels, making the EU R&I ecosystem more coherent as a whole.