FROM IDEAS TO IMPACT

Discover the projects shaping our work

Explore the EU-funded projects and initiatives in which SERN has participated over the past 10 years. From innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurship to sustainability, youth engagement and regional development, our projects reflect our commitment to building stronger, more connected and future-oriented European communities.

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Ongoing projects

EPIC-X – Excelling deep tech through place-based innovation and connected ecosystems for women-led start-ups

EPIC-X is a two-year Horizon Europe project focused on empowering and supporting women-led start-ups in the deep technology sector across 16 “moderate” and “emerging” innovator countries in the EU (Slovenia, Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic). The project will support 20 female-led deep tech startups, distributing a total of €1.2 m to accelerate their growth and impact and addressing the innovation divide and underrepresentation of talent within the EU.

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FoodCop – Strengthening Regional Collaboration to Transform Food Systems

By building a vibrant community of Startup Villages, the Horizon Europe FoodCoP project promotes circular bioeconomy practices to optimize resources, reduce waste, and strengthen local economies. With a focus on community engagement, knowledge sharing, and place-based action, the project seeks to transform rural food systems into sustainable and self-sufficient models. By bridging the innovation divide between cities and rural regions, FoodCoP contributes to a greener, more resilient future for Europe, aligning with the EU’s commitment to sustainable growth and environmental stewardship.

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Symbio – Shaping symbiosis in bio-based industrial ecosystems based on circular by-design supply chains

Symbio is a three-year Horizon Europe project that provides 12 European regional communities in six pilot countries (Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Spain, Belgium) and their industries with tools and approaches to build bio-based business models that are profitable and sustainable. Accelerating industrial symbiosis guarantees local supply chains, minimizing the input of material resources and environmental impacts on soil, water and air quality, biodiversity and climate in all processes involved. 

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MountResilience

MountResilience will support European regions and communities located in mountainous areas to increase their capacity to adapt to climate change and to transition towards a climate-resilience society. The project will conceptualise, test, and scale up multi-level, multidimensional and re-applicable climate change adaptation and nature-based solutions addressing policy and societal needs, as well as citizen behaviors, to address specific climate impacts in mountainous regions.

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RESIST – Regions for climate change resilience through innovation, science and technology

RESIST is a five-year Horizon Europe project that has emerged from the need to make regions more resilient to climate change. The project will adopt a new practical framework in which climate adaptation pathways will be tested in four EU regions with different socioeconomic profiles, such as Southwest Finland, Central Denmark, Catalonia and Central Portugal. Know-how and adaptation pathways will be transferred to eight twinned regions through mutual-learning activities and immersive digital twins.  

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Silver Up – Improving Regional Development Policies to become enablers of the Silver Economy in depopulated areas

Silver Up is a four-year Interreg Europe project that seeks to revitalise aging and depopulated regions. It does so by promoting the exchange of experiences and best practices for regional development policies and measures that support the Silver Economy. Expected outcomes include enhanced policy instruments in the participating regions, increased regional attractiveness, and improved quality of life and social inclusion of older adults, contributing to both economic growth and social cohesion.

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FI4INN – Financial instruments for boosting innovation in SMEs and start-ups

Funding schemes for market-driven research and innovation are rare in central Europe. Finance providers and policy makers often shy away from introducing such schemes due to their complexity. The FI4NN project is changing this by supporting the co-design of new finance instruments in regions that want to boost research and innovation. A knowledge centre promotes innovative instruments that already exist elsewhere and new financial instruments are piloted in seven regions.

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SKALE2CT – Policy transfer of Skills and Scale-up for Business Acceleration Services

SKALE2CT is a four-year Interreg project that aims to increase the resources and capacities of public and intermediary organisations in order to improve business acceleration (scale-up) services for enterprises. SKALE2CT partners will address key SME needs, such as: executive leadership, access to specific infrastructures for companies in emerging sectors and for talent management.

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Past projects

DIGISOL – Digital Financial Solutions for Farmers in Rural Areas

This EU-funded project supports Nigerian cooperatives and SMEs to adopt digital solutions in the field of agriculture, in order to create decent jobs and reduce of financial vulnerability of farmers, especially in rural communities and far off remote locations.

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STEPUP STARTUPS

As digital innovation and entrepreneurial activity continue to shape Europe’s economic landscape, understanding the startup ecosystem has become more important than ever. This initiative aims to provide a comprehensive view of the key dynamics, challenges, and opportunities within Europe’s startup scene, providing EU policy makers and with evidence-based reports about the critical areas of the ecosystem.

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Logo of the Youth 4 Outermost Regions Project.
YOUTH 4 OUTERMOST REGIONS

YOUTH4ORs provides financial support to youth-led actions in the outermost regions through the launch of two calls for actions. Young people, either as individuals or as teams, and organizations working with young people are invited to propose actions to improve their local communities or regions and foster development – on any issue or any topic that they think is important.

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HealthEConnect

HealthEConnect’s objective is to strengthen the cooperation between the healthtech innovation ecosystems of the Lisbon and Vale de Tejo region (Portugal) and Hovedstaden (Denmark). This will support the rise and growth of next-generation healthtech companies through a new innovation and entrepreneurship educational offer launched in Lisbon.

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RInnoValleys

RInnoValleys seeks to transform regions into innovation hubs. To bolster the innovation capabilities of EU regions, the project intends to collaborate with the European Innovation Council (EIC) ecosystem. The EIC plays a crucial role in nurturing innovation and advancing state-of-the-art technologies. However, many regions face challenges such as limited funding, inadequate infrastructure, and underdeveloped innovation policies. RInnoValleys aims to overcome these obstacles by strengthening capabilities and fostering inclusive, gender-diverse, and interconnected innovation ecosystems. This endeavor sets the groundwork for sustainable change, necessitating the implementation of an action plan to establish new methodologies and ensure ongoing advancement.

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EUTeens4Green – A new Generation of youth Ambassadors for an inclusive green transition 

An open call to fund youth-led actions advancing the green transition in EU carbon-intensive regions covered by the Just Transition Fund.

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RAISE – Regions’ Alliances for Interconnected Start-up Ecosystems 

RAISE contributes to the development of a new and sustainable integrated support framework for startups. This framework will foster startup growth and scale-up within and across Europe in all its dimensions, from initial funding, research support to public incentives and internationalization. 

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ARTeCHÓ – Art, Economy & Technology

ARTeCHÓ was two-year Creative Europe project that created a peer-to-peer learning community for artists to learn more about the technical side of the art-making process and its intersection with new technologies, Crypto Art, blockchain, and NFT marketplaces. The underlying approach of the project is to explore these decentralised technologies while being critical towards their economic and ecological implications.

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Financial Instruments for Innovation

InnovaFI was a five-year Interreg Europe project that took action to improve the design and implementation of financial instruments for innovation as a delivery mode for Structural Funds. Through policy learnings, good practices, and the elaboration and implementation of action plans, the project succeed in improving regional development policies that disbursed €20 mil to innovative businesses in 7 countries.

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RegionArts – Enhancing SME growth by the integration of Artists in ICT projects

RegionArts was a five-year Interreg Europe project that supported regions to design and implement an Action Plan, backed by structural or other funds, that promoted a sustainable and collaborative environment between artists and technologists. This project offered a learning journey across the worlds of ICT & Arts, through the exchange of experiences and study visits, boosting creativity and competitiveness in ICT SMEs.

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Building a community of local public authorities on improving circular procurement practices

CircLocal was a COSME project aimed at supporting local authorities to evolve their procurement processes towards circular and social tender processes. The project disseminated best practices on circular procurements and used these learnings to create roadmaps with local stakeholders and build an international community on circular economy.

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Self-reflection Tools for Smart Universities Acting Regionally

RE-ACT was an Erasmus+ project that supported Higher Education Institutions and other regional strakeholders to rethink and position their strategies, structures and actions to become more involved in their regional ecosystems. A self-reflection tool, SUNAR, is available to explore Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation (RIS3).

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Start-at-Best – Workplace Innovation for Business Competitivity

Start-at-Best was a two-year Horizon 2020 project that supported startups and SMEs to become better places to work by funding small-scale, high-impact workplace innovation initiatives. With the support of three national and regional agencies, the project gave grants to more than 30 small businesses across Europe. Beyond funding, the project created a knowledge base of real-life cases and delivered workshops and awareness activities, helping SMEs experiment with new solutions and embrace workplace innovation as a driver of growth.

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