A seminar organised by the EEA Grants Financial Mechanism Office was held on 9-10 May in Brussels, Belgium, with the aim of sharing good practices and lessons learned by the Operators of the Business Development, Innovation and SME Programmes, regarding the implementation of the Programmes.
Besides the participation of Portugal, through the Directorate-General for Maritime Policy (DGPM), responsible for the Blue Growth Programme, represented by the Director of Programming Services Sandra Silva, and the Director of Strategy Services Ricardo Veloso, representatives from Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania were present.
The first day was dedicated to the state of play of the Programmes. Sandra Silva informed about the situation of the Programme in Portugal followed by a panel discussion. The day ended with the evaluation of the Programmes in the area of innovation and information on what is expected in the last year of the programmes’ implementation.
This was followed by a debate on which should be the focus areas of the Programmes to be approved under the next Financial Mechanism. For this purpose, the seminar participants were divided into several groups: Green Industry Innovation; Blue Growth; ICT; Welfare Technology/Ambient Assisted Living.
On the following morning three thematic sessions were held - Legal; Results and Evaluation; Bilateral session; in which DGPM’s team members intervened with their ideas.
At the end of the Seminar, a summary of conclusions of the two days was presented and the importance of these meetings to share good practices and lessons learned among the beneficiary countries of the EEA Grants 2014 - 2021 was highlighted.