On the 12th October 2023, ForMare had the chance to present the newly EMFAF funded project CALLMEBLUE in occasion of the Kick-Off Meeting organized by CINEA – European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency in Brussels.
The role of maritime clusters is increasingly important in the process of connecting public and private entities working in all transversal sectors related to blue economy at both national and Mediterranean level. Maritime clusters are indeed crucial facilitators of networking, technology transfer, internationalisation and innovation between SMEs, large companies, research centres, universities etc., and they act as key actors to promote sustainable investments of the blue economy.
In this context, the CALLMEBLUE project aims to strengthen existing clusters alliances in the Mediterranean area in order to accelerate north-south regional cooperation processes towards the emerging of strategic maritime clusters in North Africa area (south-south cooperation) and to create a strategic vision and trasnsferable models of interregional cooperation.
In particular, the project will aim to implement concrete actions at both local and regional level in order to raise awareness on the relevance of Maritime clusters as key actors for a sustainable blue economy policies. Moreover, it will indeed promote exchange of best practices and knowledge transfer between north and southern area, including piloting learning activities aimed at offering a transferable training “Toolkit” , addressed to future maritime clusters in the southern area in order to be prepared on the legal, structural, administrative and management aspects for a concrete creation of future maritime clusters.
The project ambition is to set-up and strengthen maritime clusters alliances (North-South cooperation) – particularly targeting southern Mediterranean countries (South-South cooperation) but also allowing to enhance regional dialogue and more advanced services offered to Cluster Mediterranean ecosystem. At this aim, CALLMEBLUE offers its role as an accelerator for the policy goals set by relevant regional initiatives such as the UfM Ministerial Declaration for sustainable blue economy and the WestMED Initiative.
The event was attended by ForMare Managing Director Lidia Rossi and the Project Manager Elisa Van Engelenhoven.
ForMare takes the opportunity to thank CINEA – European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency staff for the warm welcome and the interesting and useful session.
And now, CALLMEBLUE Project is officially ready to start.