Workshop on regional cooperation in the North Sea

The European Commission (DG MARE) is organising a workshop in the context of the preparatory action on regional cooperation in the North Sea, on 20-21 June in The Hague (hosted by the Province of Zuid - Holland and an associated event of the Dutch Presidency).

The workshop will explore ways to facilitate and accelerate strategic public-private initiatives harnessing Blue Growth economic opportunities in the North Sea, including possible consortia for the DG MARE Blue Tech call. It will also help identify DG MARE how to use available funds for thematic support actions for the North Sea and start discussions on possible investment platforms.

The workshop will be organised in a participative and inclusive way, as to identify the collective ideas and needs of the stakeholders. The main aim of this interactive workshop is to address the interconnected challenges of funding and synergies, cooperation tools and assistance (other than finance) to support and accelerate strategic cooperation.

Based on the responses to a stakeholder survey, topics selected to ‘focus’ the discussions are:

• Marine aquatic / food products
• Short sea shipping (ship building, shipping technologies, port infrastructure, and logistics)
• Blue biotechnology (including marine - pharmaceutical products)

The three topics will be used to structure the discussions with the aim of arriving at operational recommendations for future co-operation. However, the workshop will be organised as an open discussion and participants are encouraged to propose alternative topics or cross-cutting themes of relevance to their region or organisation.

The workshop is targeted in particular to national and regional governments, management authorities, local authorities, (maritime) clusters and business organisations, port authorities, SME's, finance and investment institutions, research and innovation institutes, universities, etc.

The agenda and workshop background paper, including the survey results are available on the website http://thehague.maritimecooperation.eu/.

Registrations for the workshop are now open at http://thehague.maritimecooperation.eu/

We look forward to your active participation at the workshop.