The Danube Transnational Programme

The Danube Transnational Programme is a financing instrument of the European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) with the goals of promoting economic, social and territorial cohesion in the Danube Region through policy integration in selected fields. The Programme finances development projects, practical implementation of legal framework, tools, services and specific small-scale pilot investments.

RAS participates with the implementation of two projects within the Programme: Embeddedness of high quality research infrastructure in the Danube Region (RI2integrate) and Developing accelerators to provide better access to innovation finance for SMEs (Accelerator).

Embeddedness of high quality research infrastructure in the Danube Region (RI2integrate)

Main objective of the project is to exploit the economic development potential and to better the integration of the operation of the EU’s excellent R&D Infrastructure (RI) investment projects through devising and implementing innovative tools for policy learning on macro-regional embeddedness in the Danube Region. The embeddedness builds upon three main pillars – business ecosystem development for SMEs, public procurement of innovation with the involvement of the government for boosting innovation, and wider community involvement by dissemination

Beneficiaries and so called target groups are higher education and research institutions, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, students (secondary school and university), business support organisations and national, regional and local public authorities.

The project, which will be implemented until June 2019, includes 17 partners from 7 Danube countries: Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia.

Developing accelerators to provide better access to innovation finance for SMEs (Accelerator)

Accelerator Project, with the duration until June 2019, engages on exploring and piloting the innovative path of acceleration programmes, towards improved business support in the Danube Region. The main objective is to enhance access to innovation finance through improving the institutional framework conditions and related policy instruments by developing the practical solution of acceleration services and influencing the concerned strategic framework at partners’ regions and programme level.

Beneficiaries and so called target groups are micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, business support organizations, regional institutions and equity financing institutions. The project partnerships actively integrate public institutions to channel joint policy recommendations on facilitating the spread of acceleration services and works out a joint strategy on the promotion of acceleration services and on their integration in ESIF measures in the Danube Region

Project participant countries are Hungary, Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia.