NEREUS – PEGASE-Breakfast Meeting
Presentation of major recommendations by GRAD set forth within “PEGASE-Guidelines for coordination and
exploitation of regional initiatives”
NEREUS organized a breakfast meeting on Wednesday, 29 September 2010, 09.00 – 11.00 h to present to the network community the major outcomes of a series of meetings by the GNSS Regional Advisory Board (GRAD) in the frame of the PEGASE-project.
Special thanks go to the Piedmont Region for offering their facilities!
The GNSS Regional Advisory Board (GRAD) was set up to contribute to developing guidelines as to how regional initiatives could be better coordinated and exploited to boost the GNSS potential in Europe. The discussion centered around two questions:
- What could be done to help the European GNSS Programme to better capitalise on Regional Initiatives?
- How to increase the efficiency of the Regional Initiatives through a better coordination at European Level?
Chaired by NEREUS-president Alain Bénéteau, the GRAD brought together six representatives from networks identified by PEGASE as major actors in national, regional and local initiatives, amongst which NEREUS, ENCADRE and ESINET. NEREUS, as voice of European regions, gave an informed view of the situation at regional level in Europe. The participants discussed different approaches on how to optimize the use and up-take of GNSS in Europe with the objective to give expert advice to GSA. The complete document regarding the policy recommendations by GRAD can be downloaded here.
Following the welcome by NEREUS-President Bénéteau, Florence Ghiron, Capital High Tech, one of the coordinators of the PEGASE-project and Associate Member of NEREUS, presented 8 major recommendations on how Europe could help increase the impact of regional investments. Florence Ghiron highlighted the elements that make regions an important partner to the European level for optimizing GNSS-programs.
NEREUS-President Alain Bénéteau referring to the use of GNSS applications in the regions highlighted the fact that nowadays is still difficult to bring together the final end-users and stressed the fact that regions should be more active in doing so. Mr Bénéteau pointed out the fact that there are regions with high potential in industrial space and others which do not. However, the use of these applications is for everyone. The PEGASE project addresses every region. It is necessary to support? the development of space applications towards every region and each industrial sector.
Ms. Ayazi, Secretary General NEREUS stressed the impact of communicating the benefits of GNSS effectively to different target groups, towards citizens and different professional groups but also to policy maker and local politicians. Regions are an essential communication forum as they are the closest level to the citizen and unite different user communities.
The chair of the NEREUS-Working Groups GNSS, Pierpaolo Campostrini (CORILA) reported on the experiences of collecting information on existing or emerging regional GNSS-experiences: “We are at the beginning of a long road, but properly addressed; the first milestones have been already successfully been passed”.
Dr.-Ing. Martin Haunschild, ENCADRE-president and representative of NEREUS-member region Bavaria highlighted the importance of continually reconceptionalising innovative approaches to advancing with GNSS. According to Haunschild special tailored business support, responding to today’s economic challenges are needed embedded in cluster structures that help to create growth.
In the discussion that followed the presentation the participants addressed the issue of finance. The mobilization of DG Regio was stressed by various participations. Alex Talacchi, representative of the European Commission, DG Enterprise underlined the importance to connect GNSS with societal challenges such as boosting Innovation (Innovation Action Plan), sustainable mobility or linking Space with other specific industry sectors.
Boris Kennes, representative of GSA took the floor after the discussion and presented the current state of affairs regarding European GNSS-programs and activities and gave a short overview on the 3rd Galileo Call which was published on 20 July 2010.
