The CTA Business Development Consultant Macarena Ureña has participated in the European Cluster Conference 2019, held in Bucharest (Romania) from May 14th to 16th. The 6th edition of the conference brought together more than 400 cluster managers and professionals from all European countries and representatives of public administrations in charge of innovation and competitiveness policies.

The conference had high-level discussions on recent and future priorities for cluster policies and developments to support an innovative and sustainable industrial modernisation of interregional cooperation, with the spotlight on building bridges among the different actors of the cluster community. The discussions focused on issues such as digitisation and lack of skills, circular economy, shared value and social impact.

The event is organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs together with Romania, under the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

The CTA Consultant Macarena Ureña was in charge of presenting the European TRACK project at the meeting of 9 European Strategic Cluster Associations for smart specialization investments, co-organized by EASME (Executive Agency for SMEs managing) and GROW, and restricted to ESCP-S3 project partners funded by the COSME programme.

Ureña explained the project objective and its support for European SMEs, as well as the main challenges and achievements so far. CTA is the only Spanish partner of the TRACK project aimed at increasing the competitiveness of the agri-food sector in Europe.

The aim of TRACK is to create an interregional ecosystem that stimulates innovative solutions for the agri-food chain and joint investments for the development of agribusiness 4.0 (smart agrifood).