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First exchange meeting of EU Regions and Japanese Prefectures

By María Fabregat - Assistant Project Officer

 

On the 13th of July the First Exchange Meeting “EU-Japan Region-to-Region Innovation Cooperation” was organized online. This gathering provided opportunities for the 6 Regions from different Member States of the EU and 5 Japanese prefectures to meet, present themselves, exchange information and ideas, and establish an initial contact for collaboration.

The EU-Japan Region-to-Region Innovation Cooperation project's goal is to assist Japanese Prefectures and European Regions in exchanging bestpractices and information to enhance and internationalise their respective regional innovation agendas and promote global value chains. During this first meeting, it was explained that the project will provide peer-level information sharing through study visits and seminars with a focus on thematic areas of regional innovation and competitiveness policies, such as green transition, industrial transformation, and demographic transition, based on the smart specialisation strategies for sustainable and inclusive growth of each region.

At this initial meeting, speeches were made by the representatives from the European Commission and the Government of Japan about EU-Japan Region-to-Region Innovation Cooperation such as Yasunori Ishida, the Director for the International Affairs Office, City Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The opening of the meeting was made by Normunds Popens, Deputy Director-General from DG-REGIO. He was followed by Hidefumi Imura, Team Leader from IURC-Japan, who presented the “Project Implementation Plan and Schedules in 2022-2023” focusing on the study visits in November 2022 and May 2023.

After setting the scene, each of the EU regions and Japanese prefectures presented their specific features of regional development policies and innovation strategies:

  • The EU regions are: Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), Basque Country (Euskadi)(Spain), Catalonia (Spain), Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Ljubljana Urban Region (Slovenia), and Val d’Oise County (Paris Region) (France).

 

  • The Japanese Prefectures are: Aichi Prefecture, Kyoto Prefecture, Osaka Prefecture, Hiroshima Prefecture, and Oita Prefecture.

These 11 regions and prefectures were selected for this project to exchange best practices and knowledge to improve and internationalise their respective regional innovation strategies while promoting international value chains. They are divided into two groups according to their topics of interest. Foreach group, there will be study visits of EU regions to Japan and Japanese prefectures to the EU, in which senior officials and experts from each region/ prefecture will participate.

More information

For more information about this meeting, please find here the link to the Agenda. In addition to this, you can find more information about the project and EURADA’s role.

Should you have any more questions, do not hesitate in contacting Ivana Rae.