Call: Towards EU Regional Economic Convergence (TREC) - Pilot Projects to reinforce collaboration among clusters and technology centres

COSME is the EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) running from 2014 to 2020 with a planned budget of 2.3 bn. €.

Accessing finance

COSME aims to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to access finance in all phases of their lifecycle – creation, expansion, or business transfer. Thanks to EU support, businesses have easier access to guarantees, loans and equity capital. EU ‘financial instruments’ are channelled through local financial institutions in EU countries. To find a financial institution in your country, visit the Access to Finance portal.

Opening markets

COSME helps businesses to access markets in the EU and beyond. It funds the Enterprise Europe Network that helps SMEs find business and technology partners, and understand EU legislation; the Your Europe Business portal that provides practical information on doing business within Europe; and the SME Internationalisation Portal for companies who want to develop their activities outside Europe. It also finances a number of IPR (intellectual property rights) SME Helpdesks.

Supporting entrepreneurs

COSME supports entrepreneurs by strengthening entrepreneurship education, mentoring, guidance and other support services. Actions support specific groups who may find it difficult to reach their full potential, such as young people, women and senior entrepreneurs. The programme also aims to help businesses access opportunities offered by digital technologies.

Improving business conditions

COSME aims to reduce the administrative and regulatory burden on SMEs by creating a business-friendly environment. COSME also supports businesses to be competitive by encouraging them to adopt new business models and innovative practices. This complements actions in areas with high growth potential such as the tourism sector.  

The main objective of this call is to launch pilot projects reinforcing cooperation among clusters and related technology centres. These pilot projects should be in line with regional smart specialisation priorities, exploit growth opportunities and accelerate regional economic convergence across the EU.

This call aims to maximise the innovation uptake and productivity increases by identifying:

• R&D and innovation solutions and challenges;
• value-chain linkages;
• business opportunities for collaboration across borders and sectors, notably between SMEs from less and more economically advanced regions.

The proposed pilot projects shall specifically contribute to:

• the undertaking of a benchmarking exercise of the growth potential of the participating regional clusters and the identifation of bottlenecks and opportunities for collaboration;
• the exploration of concrete collaboration opportunities between clusters, technology centres and their SMEs with the goal of improving industrial competences, exploiting available innovation and R&D results, and adding value to existing industrial sectors and value chains;
• developing a cluster partnership strategy for joint activities and related regional smart specialisation investment plans for organisational, skills and industrial development improvements to foster sustained growth across the participating regions. 

The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) manages COSME on behalf of the European Commission.