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Scotland Europa

Scotland Europa is a membership-based organisation that promotes Scotland's interests across the institutions of the European Union and to the representatives of Europe’s regions and Member States.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Alina-Stefania Ujupan (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu), Annukka Ojala (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu), Vanessa Debiais-Sainton (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu)

14 Oct 2025 · Scottish Higher Education sector visit

Meeting with Terry Reintke (Member of the European Parliament)

10 Dec 2024 · EU-Scotland Relations

Response to A New European Innovation Agenda

10 May 2022

Scotland Europa promotes Scotland’s interests across Europe. We are part of Scottish Enterprise innovation and investment agency. We take an innovation systems approach at different geographic levels and share the EU’s focus on green and digital transitions. Scotland’s new National Strategy for Economic Transformation and upcoming innovation strategy are our strategic framework. We have organised our response around some of the bottlenecks in the call for evidence. The attached file is a slightly longer version of our response and includes hyperlinks. 1. Access to finance, support for scale-ups Opportunity-driven innovation is one of our three main types of innovation support, focusing on early-stage and growing companies. Our 7 National Programmes reflect our best opportunities: Digital Scale Up Level Up, Scotland in Space, Health for Wealth, Future Medicines Manufacturing; Decarbonising Heat; the Hydrogen Economy, and Zero Emissions Heavy Duty Vehicles. Horizon Europe is well aligned with these, enabling us to collaborate internationally. We welcome the growth of Pillars 2 and 3 and strongly urge the UK associates. The new Missions approach is of great interest - how it will coordinate Horizon funding with wider deployment funding at different geographic levels. Glasgow has been chosen to join the Smart Cities Mission. 2. Innovation ecosystems Place-based innovation is the second of our three main types of innovation support: innovation districts that connect talent, finance, technology, and networks. Scotland has invested in a network of Innovation Centres to connect our research institutes with industry on Digital Health and Care, Precision Medicine, Sensor and Imaging Systems, Industrial Biotechnology, Aquaculture, Construction, and Data. Our innovation districts or opportunity-driven ecosystems include: Glasgow City Innovation District (quantum, space, 5G, health technologies, industrial informatics and fintech) including the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics; Glasgow Riverside Innovation District on precision medicine; Edinburgh BioQuarter on healthcare and life sciences; the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland, including the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre and the National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland; Aberdeen Energy Transition Zone; Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc on low carbon transport; SPIRIT Aerospace Innovation Centre; various assets within University of Strathclyde around net-zero transport and hydrogen; Orkney Islands renewables ecosystem. Scotland Europa links our ecosystems with others across Europe via the ERRIN R&I regions network and the Vanguard Initiative. Under the ‘Vanguard Pilots’ we and other regions pool resources to foster innovation in shared priority sectors. 3. Innovation performance Scotland is closing its productivity gap but needs to go further and has long-standing regional inequalities. Scotland's Regional Economic Partnerships bring together key economic actors in our different regions. These focus on regional sector strengths with the strongest innovation potential. This exemplifies our commitment to Smart Specialisation, on which we got on board early and will continue to engage with the EU. A pervasive EU innovation divide was observed in the last Cohesion Report. UK R&I funding has gone disproportionately to already high-performing regions. ESIF helped to redress this and fund different types of innovation action - its loss post-Brexit is keenly felt. 4. Talent Missing from the call for evidence is workplace innovation, which is the last of our three main types of innovation support. Scottish Enterprise Workplace Innovation Service works to drive employee innovation. Upskilling and reskilling are also key to innovation, and the green and digital transition. Skills Development Scotland has developed a plan for our low-carbon sector’s skills needs. Our universities are also developing skills accelerators.
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Meeting with Diederik Samsom (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

4 Feb 2020 · Speech on Just Transition

Meeting with Christian Linder (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič)

12 Nov 2015 · Energy Jobs Task Force in Scotland

Meeting with Lowri Evans (Director-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs)

12 Nov 2015 · Investment, SME and skills policies