Three BATMASS partners – CTA, Politecnico di Milano, and ISMC – took part in a high-level dialogue convened by the European Commission in Brussels to explore how EU regional funding can better foster innovation and competitiveness across Europe.
The meeting, chaired by Raffaele Fitto, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, gathered a select group of stakeholders within the Implementation Dialogue on EU funding and regional competitiveness.
- Marcello Colledani, Professor at Politecnico di Milano and Coordinator of BATMASS
- David Páez, Director of Consultancy and International Projects at CTA
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Santiago Cuesta, Executive Director at ISMC Cluster.
All three contributed insights on how innovation funding instruments – such as the Interregional Innovation Investments (i3) instrument – can be further optimized to enhance cohesion, scale up innovation, and accelerate the deployment of breakthrough technologies.
The debate also featured the participation of Hugo Sobral, Deputy Director-General of DG REGIO, and focused on practical recommendations to improve the impact of European funding in supporting sustainable growth, industrial transformation, and business competitiveness.
BATMASS: an ecosystem for innovation and regional cohesion
As part of BATMASS, CTA, Politecnico di Milano, and ISMC are working together with more than 20 European partners to establish the first Circular Battery Valley in the EU. By aligning regional innovation strategies and scaling up technological solutions through four large-scale demonstrators, BATMASS aims to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable, circular battery value chain.
The active involvement of our partners in policy dialogues such as this one illustrates BATMASS’s commitment to bridging the gap between policy, research, and industry. It also reinforces the project’s ambition to mobilize a truly interregional innovation ecosystem, capable of transforming Europe’s competitiveness and sustainability goals into concrete impact.
