The Draghi report and wider debates on competitiveness and security have placed the coordination of European, national, and regional efforts at the heart of the EU’s future strategic agenda. The next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034) seeks to organise this coordination through two new instruments: the National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPs) and a European Competitiveness Fund, both intended to integrate industrial and innovation policies more effectively.
This evolving landscape raises a key question: what role will Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3), the EU’s decade-old regional innovation framework, play in the future? This central question guided a workshop organised by EURADA, in collaboration with Friends of Smart Specialisation (FSS) and CDTI SOST, during the European Week of Regions and Cities. As EURADA Director Francesco Molica noted in his opening remarks, the stable, globalised, and predictable world in which S3 was conceived has given way to one marked by fragmentation, intense competition and rapid technological change. In this context, can S3, designed in and for a different era, still serve Europe’s needs today?
In this sense, Pierre-Alexandre Balland (CEPS, Harvard University) argued that while S3 remains a valuable and underused framework, Europe has yet to realise its full potential. Using artificial intelligence as an example, he contrasted Europe’s fragmented investments with China’s focused industrial strategy. Balland suggested that S3 could serve as the data-driven compass Europe needs to identify regional strengths, make strategic bets and foster scalable innovation through collaboration. Drawing on the ‘economic complexity theory’, he highlighted that regions building on existing capabilities are better placed for long-term growth, while less-diversified regions risk falling further behind.
A central tension emerged throughout the discussion: how to reconcile Europe’s top-down competitiveness goals with the bottom-up diversity of regional capacities? Although the upcoming MFF no longer makes S3 a formal funding requirement, participants widely agreed that it remains vital for regional innovation, ecosystem building and cross-border collaboration. However, they stressed that S3 must evolve and move beyond cohesion policy, to become a core component of European competitiveness linking national priorities with regional strengths, reinforcing value chains, and deepening multi-level governance.
Concerns persist, however. Indeed, as EU funding becomes more centralised, can S3 retain its local relevance? And can less-developed regions keep pace if competitiveness becomes the main criteria for support? The 2025 Regional Innovation Scoreboard highlights Europe’s continuing innovation divide despite widespread S3 adoption. To address this, participants advocated for stronger interregional cooperation through mechanisms such as Regional Innovation Valleys and the Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) programme, which help regions complement rather than duplicate one another. As one participant noted, “Europe does not need every region to do everything, but every region must be part of something.”
From the workshop emerged a shared vision for a renewed S3: a learning and governance system guided by data and complexity analysis, fostering long-term collaboration and integrated across a multitude of EU policies (industrial, digital and research policies) while maintaining its place-based focus. Embedded within the upcoming MFF and NRPs, S3 could bridge Europe’s diverse regional realities with its shared strategic ambitions.
Ultimately, participants agreed that Smart Specialisation must evolve from a technical planning tool into a transformative model of governance, thereby empowering regions to shape Europe’s competitiveness in an inclusive, sustainable, and coordinated way. In a time of decarbonisation, digitalisation, and geopolitical uncertainty, S3 may yet become Europe’s key to turning regional diversity into collective strength, proving that, amid fragmentation, Europe’s power lies in acting together.
You can check the picture of this eventby clicking on this album.
