The East and North Finland EU office represents regions of Central Ostrobothnia, Kainuu, Lapland, North Karelia, Northern Ostrobothnia, Pohjois-Savo and South Savo in Brussels. In close collaboration with the regional councils, the Brussels office aims to improve the competitiveness and conditions of the businesses throughout the East and North of Finland. The Brussels office closely follows the developments in EU policies, focusing especially on regional policy, research, development and innovation policies, transport and energy policies, arctic policy and industrial policies.
Avenue Palmerston 24
1000 Brussels
Belgium
The East and North Finland (ENF) in industrial transition – smart specialisation strategy 2019–2023 is based on the pilot project ”Regions in Industrial Transition” launched by the European Commission in 2017. Our common priorities have been collected from the smart specialisation strategies of the ENF regions. The identified common topics are bioeconomy and new products, sustainable mining, chemical industry, sustainable tourism and appeal, and manufacturing industry. Based on these topics, common S3 priorities have been established for the ENF area: Clean technologies and low-carbon solutions, Industrial circular economy and Digitalisation, innovative technologies and production processes. Our fourth priority is the development of joint cluster working the ENF area.
The NetZeroCities project, in which ERRIN is a partner, has through its Twinning Programme matched 40 Twin Cities from across Europe with the 53 Pilot Cities that were selected earlier this year. ERRIN is pleased to see that 13 of the selected Twin Cities come from ERRIN member regions.
International partners from Be.CULTOUR project community traveled to West Yorkshire from 27 to 30 May to learn more about key events and destinations in the district, including Bradford 2025, exchange successful approaches and build collaborations. The visit was organised in the frame of the peer-learning activities of Be.CULTOUR, where Saltaire Inspired, an arts charity creating contemporary art events in Saltaire Industrial Village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the 16 mirror ecosystems. Among the visitors, 3 ERRIN members took part in the event, presenting their innovative approaches toward circular cultural tourism and experience as Capitals of Culture: the City of Leeuwarden, APT Basilicata and the City of Savonlinna.
Oulu University of Applied Sciences (Finland) with its Finnish partners is interested in joining a Horizon Europe project proposal in cluster 5 on the topics such as HORIZON-CL5-2022-D4-02-05 and HORIZON-CL5-2022-D4-02-01, where a high-level demo site would be planned and built with respect to more sustainable buildings and life-cycle performance.
Regions of East and North Finland (ENF) collaborate to develop new approaches based on smart specialisation. One of the goals is to develop new practices that support companies in utilising the expertise and versatile network of innovation platforms in the ENF area. The innovation platforms in East and North Finland have been collected to the East and North Finland Industrial Transition website. The website contains almost 50 service providers, or the so-called innovation platforms. The purpose of the site is to provide information of the different services offered to companies across the seven regions of East and North Finland, and to encourage interregional and international collaboration.
Kuopio sub-region has been participating in national consortia to create “Omaolo.fi” online survey-tool to assess the symptoms COVID-19.
SuperEcosystem, Finland’s second ECCP-certified Meta-Cluster, is organising a European Week of Regions and Cities side event on how clusters and ecosystems are drivers for green and digital transition, featuring keynote speeches, roundtable discussions, workshops, and networking with leading organisations in Finland.