Sweden strongly increases the EUREKA Clusters budget
Sweden has been an active member country in ITEA since its beginning in 1998. Over the past few years, the participation has been increasing very fast with Sweden 9th in terms of effort per country of the ITEA 3 Call 4 PO submission of 2 November 2017. To support this growth for the future, Vinnova increased its budget for all EUREKA Clusters by 50% in 2017. For 2018 another €1 m has been added to the Swedish EUREKA Cluster budget and the dedicated budget is now set at €7 m. The ambition is to add another €1 m for 2019, which would mean a 100% increase in the total budget for EUREKA Clusters from 2016 to 2019.
The Swedish Public Authorities and ITEA have taken a number of initiatives to achieve this growth, e.g. hosting several events like the 2016 EUREKA Innovation Week, the pre-PO Days event in May 2016, the ITEA Digital Transition masterclass in October 2016 and the SSF – Vinnova conference on Software for Competitiveness in November 2017.
On 4 and 5 September 2018, ITEA will organise the Project Outline Days, the annual brokerage event, in Stockholm, facilitating even more Swedish participation in the upcoming ITEA Call.