European Entrepreneurial Region Award 2016

The European Entrepreneurial Region (EER) Award is an initiative of the Committee of the Regions identifying and rewarding EU regions with outstanding, future-oriented entrepreneurial strategies, regardless of their size, wealth or specific competences. The regions with the most credible, visible, forward-looking and promising political strategy are granted the label “European Entrepreneurial Region” (EER) for a specific year.

The aim of this initiative is twofold:

• to contribute to the implementation of the Small Business Act (SBA) in partnership;
• to demonstrate optimal use of EU and other public funds oriented towards the development of an entrepreneurial policy within the region.

Through the EER initiative, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) contributes to mainstreaming the SBA principles at regional and local level and to achieving the Europe 2020 goals. The EER label is an opportunity for local and regional actors to demonstrate the crucial role SMEs and entrepreneurs play in strengthening the resilience of the economy. By harnessing their potential to create growth and jobs, the EER label enables EU regions to advance further on the path out of the economic and financial crisis to recovery and renewed prosperity.

The EER scheme follows a multi-level governance approach by promoting regional EER communities, in which both regional and local actors are represented. For policy makers and stakeholders, the EER provides an opportunity to jointly develop strategies for the implementation of SBA principles such as “Create an environment in which entrepreneurs can thrive”, “Think Small First”, “Make public administrations responsive to SMEs’ needs”, and “Support SMEs to benefit from the growth of markets”. The EER thus helps create entrepreneurial, dynamic and green regions throughout Europe.

The EER label has been set up by the Committee of the Regions in partnership with the European Commission and is supported by the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and EU-level stakeholders such as UEAPME, Eurochambres and Social Economy Europe.

The Committee of the Regions has launched the EER 2016 call for applications on 1 October 2014. The deadline for the submission of applications is 16 March 2015.

More information: www.cor.europa.eu/eer