NEWS FROM EUSALP BODIES
EUSALP “Via Francigena” awarded the call for proposals of the Council of Europe
Following the Routes4U call for proposals, six Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe have been awarded the Routes4U Grant to implement projects contributing to the EU macro-regional strategies: the Adriatic-Ionian (EUSAIR), the Alpine (EUSALP), the Baltic Sea (EUSBSR) and the Danube Region (EUSDR). EUSALP has been represented by the “Via Francigena” Cultural Route, for this reason: “It will involve local people to protect and promote through tourism based activities such as signposting and information panels, in line with the EUSALP Action Groups 2 "To increase the economic potential of strategic sectors” and 6 “To preserve and valorise natural resources, including water and cultural resources”
Discover the Cultural Routes awarded here
ITALIAN PRESIDENCY
EUSALP Italian Presidency presents the calendar of the events for 2019
The year of the Italian Presidency has begun with a first political-institutional debate during the kick-off event which has been attended by more than 80 high-profile and prestigious politicians, at the presence of almost 400 people.
The ceremony has been followed by numerous events of the calendar and by further moments of discussion and dissemination of the Strategy themes throughout the territory.
The next activities organized by the Italian Presidency will be: 3-4 July 2019, at Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, "Boostalps 2.0 Circular Economy to boost macroregional sustainable growth" on circular economy; 13 July 2019 "The Violins, the voices of the Alps"; 21-22 September 2019 the "Convention of Young Administrators of the EUSALP area", with the young administrators of the Alpine territories, 27 September 2019 the "Convention of Young Entrepreneurs of EUSALP area”
The calendar of the events is available here.
Action Group 1
Towards a common agenda for R&I and the RIS3 in macro-regional strategies
On June 25th, the AG1 organizes the workshop “RIS3 in Macro-Regional Strategies: Building A Comparative Framework To Learn From Other Regions”, available also via streaming. The meeting aims at discussing which comparative framework can help policymakers and stakeholders to improve their innovative performance and what synergies and complementarities can be enhanced within the Macro-Regional Strategies. The ultimate goal is to better focalize future actions in the context of R&I for the Alpine Region. This event is the result of the AG1 effort in fostering synergies among institutions, universities and R&I centers, which began with the workshop “Start-ups and technology transfer in innovation ecosystems in South-East Europe and the Alpine Region” (Ljubljana, November 2018), followed by the event “Promoting Open Innovation in the EUSALP macro-region: experiences and lessons learned from the Alpine Regions” (Innsbruck, November 2018) and the meeting “How to build a successful incubator ecosystem in the Alpine Space? The power of networks” (Constance, March 2019).
These events underlined the importance of promoting a common and shared agenda for R&I and a common S3 strategy. FOLLOW US IN STREAMING!
Action Group 2
Study on Bioeconomy and new implementation initiatives
The new “Study to Prepare a Synchronized Funding Scheme for Bioeconomy Development in the Alpine Region” (produced in cooperation with AG 2 Sub-Group Bioeconomy) provides an overview of the extent to which the Alpine Space regions have defined Bioeconomy as a priority in their Smart Specializations Strategies as well as entry points for transnational cooperation. The study serves as an input for the preparation of a synchronized call (Bioeconomy Master Plan) in order to strengthen the Bioeconomy along the transnational value chains, which is one of the main aims of AG 2 Sub-Group Bioeconomy.
Six new implementation initiatives, which were developed within the 4 Sub-Groups of AG 2 (Bioeconomy, Digital Industry, Health Tourism and Wood), are envisaged to be implemented in 2019.
The next Action Group meeting will take place 9-10 July 2019 in Stuttgart. More information is available here.
Action Group 3
AG3 presents the results of the TELEPAT project
During the event of Courmayeur dedicated to Smart Villages, the Action Group 3 presented the project TELEPAT, aiming at the improvement of the quality of the public administration of Autonomous Province of Trento, through the enhancement of human capital.
The priority areas of intervention and the development actions have been identified and collected in the: “Strategic plan for the planning and development of human capital” in which the following strategic axes have been identified: the enhancement of the reconciliation between work and personal objectives, the reduction of costs, the analysis of the "Age Management" – where the impact of the ageing processes on the quality of the work experience is studied. The analysis of these aspects, together with enlargement of the digital offer, especially addressed to young people, both leaving in the territory, or those who would like to come back, has produced innovative solutions for the organization of "smart" work.
The plan developed by the Autonomous Province of Trento, Leader of AG3, consists of providing a "software" for the AGs work, related to the hardware.
AG3 makes TELEPAT system available to other public administrations, with the idea that the project could also be extended to the private sector.
The project proves that smart working should not be not be considered as a welfare measure, but also as an accelerator of innovation, aimed at producing organizational changes thanks to the introduction of the concept of “managerial skills”. Through training courses, based mainly on focus groups and remote follow up, it is possible to create a culture of innovation and improvement.
Action Group 4
EUSALP AG4 Strengthening Leadership for Mobility in the Alpine Region
The addition of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur to the AG4 Lead Team has extended the scope of cooperation in mobility and further balanced it towards the western part of the Alpine Region. This development provides additional momentum to devising the new AG4 Work Plan, which has occupied a prominent position in the recent AG4 meetings in March in Bolzano and in June in Innsbruck.
The major objectives of the AG4 include the promotion of inter-modality and interoperability in transport as well as the support of the modal shift from road to rail. To this end, the AG4 is investigating multi-modal logistic chains from and to the Alpine Region focusing on issues in combined transport and empty container management. The aims are to optimize multi-modal logistic chains and to reduce the ecological footprint of goods in the Alpine Region.
The AG4 continues to promote and participate in cross-regional and interdisciplinary cooperation with relevance for mobility topics in the EUSALP. Therefore, the AG4 co-organized the conference “Smart Villages – A common perspective through different visions”, presenting innovative solutions for better service provision regarding transport and mobility.
Action Group 5
AG5's Smart Villages Conference in Courmayeur on 23-24 May 2019
On May 2019, Courmayeur became the Center of Europe, thanks to the Smart Villages event organized by the Autonomous Region of Valle d'Aosta and Action Group 5, in collaboration with Action Groups 3, 4 and 9, within the framework of the Italian Presidency of EUSALP, where technical and political representatives presented innovative solutions to secure the provision of basic services and sustainable economic development, so that people who live in the Alps can remain within their territory, enjoying the same opportunities as people who live in cities, to counter the trend of the depopulation of small mountain villages.
What emerged was the central role of smart villages in the development strategy of the Alpine area and the importance of introducing, through EUSALP, a flexible approach towards implementing local development while at the same time following common guidelines: citizen participation and the engagement of political representatives. Thanks to local and global technology, innovation and tradition become complementary to create opportunities responding both to territorial and to people's needs, creating new professional skills as well as new opportunities, including employment opportunities based on digital experiences.
Action Group 6
Territorial Brands in the Alpine Region – Valorizing regional and local agri-food products!
More than 80 practitioners of the agri-food sector and experts met on 13 May 2019 at EURAC Research in Bolzano/Bozen (IT) for the international workshop on “Territorial Brands in the Alpine Region”, organized by EUSALP Action Group 6, sub-group 2 “Future-oriented farming and forestry”.
Territorial Brands are commercial valorization instruments, which promote a multiplicity of products sustainably made in a specific territory. An umbrella organization coordinates the common marketing activities, involves and interfaces with the single producers.
The workshop provided insights into different ways of creating a successful Territorial Brand as well as into the framework conditions underpinning such processes and the impact of a successful Territorial Brand on the development of the corresponding territory. Contributions from Territorial Brand managers and experts from all over the Alpine Region and presentations of good practices demonstrated the potential of development of Territorial Brands for local sustainable growth in the agri-food sector of the Alpine Region.
After the workshop 35 participants seized the chance of a field trip to visit two concrete examples of Territorial Brands.
Action Group 7
AG7 is connecting actors for strategic planning of Green Infrastructure
Join preparation of strategic implementation initiatives for ecological connectivity and green infrastructure (GI) has been the ‘’green line’’ of activities, carried out in the last weeks. Members of AG7 are joining knowledge, forces and ideas for preparing concrete project proposals to be submitted to different programs, supportive to GI implementation (mainly INTERREG Alpine Space programme, cross-border INTERREG Germany/Bavaria-Austria programme and ARPAF II – Alpine Region preparatory Action Fund).
Different aspects of GI have been addressed, such us connecting urban and semi urban areas, developing joint GI concepts for cross-border rivers, connecting sectors of forestry to sustainable wood production and others. Many actors and sectors are recognizing the concept of GI to be of strategic importance for future development and protection of EUSALP territory, that way strongly confirming the AG7 mandate stated in the declaration on Alpine GI. While activities for concrete implementation of GI are on their way and the network of AG7 members and other actors is growing, AG7 members are currently preparing next steps and interactive discussion to further developing the vision and work plan.
Action Group 8
Playfully transferring knowledge - an interactive exhibition by AG8
The 6th meeting of EUSALP Action Group 8 took place from 25 to 26 April 2019 at Schloss Seggauberg in Southern Styria, Austria. The highlight of this meeting was certainly the “Exhibition of Natural Hazard Models and Risk Communication Tools” on 25 April 2019. The joint workshop was based on the initiative for collaboration between the EUSALP Action Group 8 and the PLANALP working group to implement knowledge transfer and exchange of good natural disaster risk reduction practices and climate change adaption on local level. The target group was not limited to the younger generation, but also included multipliers such as teachers and media representatives who can disseminate the knowledge they have acquired about how to deal with natural hazards.
After the exhibition, experts discussed recommendations for future events and natural hazard communication.
The two main conclusions of this discussion are that:
1) an Alpine-wide workshop with teachers would support the building of a network and improve risk communication and natural hazard knowledge transfer and
2) a study on status quo and existing models would be useful to get an overview about the currently used teaching methods.
Action Group 9
Action group 9 presents microgrids in rural areas
Action group 9 participated to the Smart village event in Courmayeur, AURA-EE, co leader of the AG9, presented microgrids in rural areas.
Renewable energies are abundant in rural areas, but with a weaker grid than in urban areas. In the same time, there are emerging energy communities, with new governance schemes, and a growing interest for community microgrid. Recent evolution of regulatory facilitates the participation of citizen and municipalities in RES companies, and many of them are citizen-owned. Microgrid can be defined by a group of consumers, producers, storage systems which share a common point of coupling to the main grid, and can operate both in grid-connected or islanded mode.
Microgrids have several objectives:
- Increase the share of RES in rural areas
- Reduce infrastructure costs
- Reduce electric losses
- Provide services to the grid
- Ensure electricity during power outages
- Propose a lower cost of electricity to local consumers
When energy communities get involved in micro grid operations, the law in France allows a direct sale of energy between local energy and local consumers.
Watch the video of St Julien en Quint, in a South of France!
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