COSME

The overall objective of this action is to strengthen cluster management excellence and facilitate exchanges and strategic partnering between clusters and specialised eco-systems across Europe, including through implementing a new “ClusterXchange” pilot scheme. As high quality cluster management and strategic connections between clusters are key elements of world-class clusters, the action aims to foster SME competitiveness and assist companies to successfully access global markets by exploiting the innovation and growth potential that clusters can offer.

The specific objective is to enhance the collaboration, networking and learning of cluster organisations and their members towards the professionalization of specialised and customised business support services provided or channelled to SMEs. This shall further contribute to strengthen ties between European ecosystems across regional and sectoral silos with the view to support a sustainable inter-regional partnering process and joint actions for strategic collaboration in various industrial specialisation areas linked to industrial modernisation and improving their business environment.

The aim is to foster cluster excellence capacity-building and to promote cross-cluster learning in order to help cluster organisations and their members to acquire the necessary skills and take actions to explore and take up new solutions. This shall address training and business needs along the value chain that require SMEs and cluster managers to adapt to trends, challenges and opportunities that come along with industrial change. This shall also include the development of strategic approaches and plans for a better cooperation at regional, national and EU level to address innovation, growth and globalisation challenges that SMEs face.

This measure shall further enable groups of specialised enterprises, notably SMEs, together with other innovation actors in clusters, to find partners with complementary competences, to access value chains that cut across national, regional and sectoral boundaries as well as facilitate their access to technology centres and other scaling-up support organisations. This shall focus on engaging actors from regions with different levels of economic development – including from less developed and transition regions – and, likewise, cluster organisations with distinct stages of development and experience.

Eligibility of applicants

Applicants must be legal entities forming a consortium. Each legal entity must:

1. be established in EU Member States and countries participating in the COSME programme pursuant to Article 6 of the COSME Regulation

2. be a cluster organisations or a business network organisation involved in supporting the enhancement of collaboration, networking and learning in innovation clusters to stimulate innovative activities:

- by promoting or channelling specialised and customised business support services especially to SMEs

- and/or promoting the sharing of facilities and exchange of knowledge and expertise, in compliance with the coverage of   'innovation clusters' as described in the sections 1.2 and 1.3 and Annex I of the "EU Framework for State Aid for Research and Development and Innovation" and

3. be registered or have requested to be registered on the European Cluster Collaboration Platform

The applicant must be a legal entity with a legal personality. This may include both profit-making or non-for-profit legal entities as well as fully or partly public or private bodies. In the case of private bodies, they must be properly constituted and registered under national law.

This programme has run from 2014 to 2020 with a budget worth €2.3B