Consortium

The EUROPEER SME Consortium comprises partners from old and new EU Member States as well as Norway who have complementary know-how and skills regarding the development and implementation of research support programme specifically targeting SMEs. Coming from various backgrounds the consortium gives a comprehensive overview of potential actors of RTD research programmes and allows clustering, drawing of comparisons and exchange of experiences on several levels. The consortium partners are geographically distributed all over Europe and represent a wide variety of regions from urban centres to rural areas. Ministries of regional and national level along with their implementing bodies representing political stakeholders of different size and legal forms are included. Partners directly working with SME’s act in their countries as catalyst between the business and political world and provide the policy makers with implementable project ideas and initiatives that meet business needs and help to meet political goals effectively. Institutions focusing on different thematic priorities in their support programmes give an overview of future technologies identified in the respective countries.

Organisations with regional and international outreach as GTZ add expertise on sustainable development to the project consortium.

All partners share a common and strong interest in making progress in further developing these instruments in order to meet the challenge of the Lisbon strategy. The participation of international institutions and geographical networks is guaranteed through the project’s Advisory Board.

Further interested partners involved in the formulation of policies are welcome to share the insights gained within EUROPEER SME and will be involved in the kick-off and final conference to incorporate a maximum of experiences already gained and to optimize the dissemination of results.