6 regions selected for the European Entrepreneurial Region Award 2021-2022

“Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Recovery” is this year's theme

Today, 18 March 2021, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) held an award ceremony to announce the European Entrepreneurial Regions. The award is an initiative to reward EU cities and regions with outstanding and future-oriented entrepreneurial strategies.

The award of excellence goes to regions that have displayed excellent entrepreneurial foresight and an insightful development plan that takes into account wider social problems into account. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EER 2021-2022 edition covers a period of two years. The 2021-22 merged version is centred around the theme of “Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Recovery”. The idea behind bringing the two years together is to enable winning cities to have more time to set and develop targets for the regions.

6 winning regions and cities

The 6 regions and cities that have been awarded by the CoR are:

• Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (France)
• Community of Madrid (Spain)
• Silesian Voivodeship (Poland)
• Helsinki-Uusimaa (Finaland)
• Gabrovo Municipality (Bulgaria)
• Castelo Branco (Portugal)

“During the Covid-19 crisis, we witnessed the agility, resilience and entrepreneurial spirit of many European regions. I am sure that our entrepreneurial regions will be the driving force for the Europe’s economic recovery. We need to support them with investments and resources in the months and years to come,” shared Eva Maydell, Member of the European Parliament, who presented two of the awardees.

The award ceremony was chaired by the President of CoR Apostolos Tzitzikostas. The EER jury, which includes CoR members, EU institutions leaders, social partners, and territorial associations, will oversee the progress of the prize-winning regional strategies during 2021 and 2022.

Since 2009, the award has honoured more than 30 cities and regions, including smaller, rural, less developed and peripheral areas from 16 EU countries. The role of the award and EU authorities is to stimulate SMEs and regions to develop and build long-standing sustainability.