Partnerships and ideas taking shape at ERRIN’s Regional Innovation Valleys matchmaking event

Partnerships and ideas taking shape at ERRIN’s Regional Innovation Valleys matchmaking event

On 10 April 2025, the ERRIN Policy and Smart Specialisation (S3) Working Groups organised an interactive matchmaking event at its premises in Brussels in anticipation of two new upcoming Regional Innovation Valleys (RIVs) calls under Horizon Europe – one under the European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE) programme, and another under the Widening Work Programme:

  • The EIE CONNECT call (€35 million) aims to support 5–6 new RIVs across Europe with a focus on deep tech innovation and cross-border collaboration.
  • The WIDERA ACCESS call (€24 million) targets widening countries, requiring that the coordinator of the project must be located in a widening country and the major share of the project budget has to be allocated to participants from widening countries.  

The event brought together over 50 regional and local stakeholders from ERRIN's member organisations and their ecosystems around Europe, offering a valuable platform for experience sharing, exploring proposal ideas and early-stage matchmaking to support members in preparing for the upcoming calls, expected to be open from 14 May to 15 October 2025.

The event began with welcoming remarks from Pirita Lindholm, ERRIN Director, and Mirva Männikkö, West Finland EU Office, providing an overview of ERRIN's extensive work on RIVs and highlighting the importance of strengthened support for place-based innovation initiatives such as the RIV's in the next Framework Programme. Find ERRIN's recent input paper on support to territorial ecosystems here.

The Commission's perspective on lessons learned from the first Regional Innovation Valleys call in 2023

Magdalena Cymerys from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) reflected on lessons learned from the first RIV call in 2023, particularly noting the challenges around the co-funding requirements. Still, she expressed optimism that the upcoming 2025 calls and provided some clarifications on the requirements:

  • The EIE call requires the participation, as beneficiaries, of at least three (3) national or regional authorities, from at least three (3) different Member States or Associated Countries, of which at least one (1) is representing a 'moderate' or 'emerging' innovator region and at least one (1) is representing a 'strong' or 'innovation leader' innovator region.
  • The WIDERA call requires the participation, as beneficiaries, of at least three (3) national or regional authorities, from at least three (3) different Member States or Associated Countries, of which at least (2) two representing a widening country and one is non-widening country.
  • The consortium must allocate at least 50% of the total proposed budget to financial support to third parties (interregional innovation projects).
  • Co-funding requirement/funding rate is 50% of the total eligible costs. The consortium must provide a single letter of intent at the moment of submission of the proposal indicating the source of the required 50% of complementary funding (e.g. national and/or regional funding, EU funding, or private investments).

The calls aim to bring together less and more innovative regions to address common European challenges; reducing reliance on fossil fuels, increasing global food security, mastering the digital transformation, improving healthcare and achieving circularity. Cymerys highlighted that thematic areas to be addressed in the calls are intentionally broad, leaving space for creativity and regional specificity. 'The more creative you are, the better your proposal will be'.

She showed a strong interest in hearing directly from ERRIN members on regional experiences and challenges, particularly around the topic of co-funding and regional implementation – 'we want your feedback to make better policies'.

Key dates for the Regional Innovation Valleys call in 2025

  • Prepublication on the EIE CONNECT call is foreseen on 20 April 2025.
  • The Commission will organise an online Info Day on the upcoming calls on the 3 June. Find the Commission's interactive map of the regions engaged in the initiative here, highlighting the main commitments and challenges each region is tackling, as well as their innovation performance levels. 
  • A matchmaking event will be organised during the S3 CoP conference in Brussels on 18 June. As a partner in the S3 CoP, ERRIN will be actively participating in this conference.
  • The publication of lessons learnt 'RIVs Gap Analysis' will soon be available on the Commission's designated website.

Experiences from the implementation of current Regional Innovation Valleys projects

Participants also had the chance to gain firsthand insights from three current RIV projects that were selected under the RIV call 2023 and their experiences of the co-fund, presented by ERRIN Working Group leaders.

Representing the North-East Regional Development Agency of Romania, Raluca Abaseaca discussed the PRECISEU project on personalised medicine. The project aims to connect healthcare innovation ecosystems to reduce fragmentation and support the scaling of advanced technologies such as health data tools and advanced therapy medicinal products. Abaseaca highlighted that while it is still early to fully assess the outcomes of co-funding as the call has not yet opened, several structural challenges have already emerged. Among them is the difficulty in coordinating co-funding across a consortium where each region handled it separately since their models were different. She also stressed that the process of creating synergies between Horizon Europe and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) funding has been long and complex, a recurrent issue highlighted throughout the event.

Zoe Buyle-Bodin, Normandy Region, presented the European Circular Innovation Valley (ECIV), which brings together 19 partners from nine territories to foster circular economy innovation across Europe. Buyle-Bodin highlighted how they found the possibility of mobilising ERDF funding too complicated, as they were also mobilising ERDF to co-fund their European Digital Innovation Hub.

James Sharples, Scotland Europa, introduced the UNITE European Digital Health Valleys initiative, which aims to accelerate and strengthen innovation by creating a connected ecosystem developing interregional value chains in the thematic areas of ‘improving health’ using digital technology, whilst facilitating start up growth and scalability through integrated support systems. He acknowledged that participating in Horizon Europe projects can be resource-intensive but emphasised that when proposals align closely with regional priorities and existing investment plans, the required 50% co-funding can be seen as a top-up rather than a burden.

The presentation from the event is available for ERRIN members here: Regional Innovation Valleys: lessons learned and next calls | ERRIN Website.

Interactive sessions based on participants thematic priorities

Around 50 different organisations had expressed interest in the calls in an interest mapping done by ERRIN ahead of the event. In the interactive session of the event, participants were divided into thematic group discussions based on the thematic area they had expressed interest in addressing in their proposals. The group discussions allowed participants to share concrete ideas on topics they would like to focus on within the different thematic areas, find common ground, discuss how they plan to tackle the co-funding issue and explore potential consortia.

Next steps

To support the follow-up actions, ERRIN has uploaded the RIV calls on the Project Development Tool divided per thematic areas to facilitate further matchmaking. We invite ERRIN members to access the calls, express your interest and include your information and elaborate your specific interest under ‘Proposal Concept’. By expressing your interest, you increase your visibility to potential partners and gain access to see who else is interested, allowing you to directly connect with other members working on the same topic to continue the discussions and explore potential collaboration.

Find the calls divided per thematic areas in the ERRIN Project Development tool here:

ERRIN's work on Regional Innovation Valleys

ERRIN has been closely following the developments around the RIVs as a key initiative under Flagship 3 of the New European Innovation Agenda, continuously supporting members in applying to the related calls through a variety of activities, as well as engaging in discussions at the European level. Find examples of recent activities here and here. ERRIN will continue to offer opportunities for peer-learning and experience-sharing among RIV regions and support members in preparing for the 2025 calls.

Currently, 147 regions have been granted the RIV title, working to unlock the full potential of their innovation ecosystems. ERRIN is thrilled to see that 75 of these regions are ERRIN members. Read more about this here.