A sustainable Blue Economy requires support to promote and uptake innovation, knowledge, skills as well as access to finance, which is effective and locally-grounded. This is possible through joint actions promoted by socio-economic and institutional actors at local, national and subregional level.
In this respect, maritime clusters (a network of companies, organizations, and institutions involved in the maritime industry) play a crucial role to support local stakeholders active in the Blue Economy.
According to a study of the Union for the Mediterranean in 2019, the large majority of Maritime Clusters across the Mediterranean is based in EU countries: Italy, Spain, France. The western Mediterranean seems to be more prone to the promotion of innovation in the Blue Economy through the set-up of clusters: in the EU (mostly regional-level clusters) but also in African countries (mostly national-level clusters).
MedBAN
The European MedBAN project, short for Mediterranean Blue Acceleration Network,
is an initiative to empower small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the
blue economy.
It was co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement nº 101074763) through the Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS) for Europe’s recovery (SMP-COSME-2021-CLUSTER) under the Single Market Programme with a total budget of 1.4 Million euro. The MedBAN project is therefore closely aligned with the Euroclusters’ specific objectives regarding networks, innovation, adoption of processes and technologies for the twin (digital & sustainable) transition, training for the up and re-skilling of the workforce and internationalisation of European SMEs.
MedBAN was managed by a consortium of six maritime cluster organizations from five different Mediterranean countries: Portugal, Italy, France, Greece and Spain. Its common mission: to drive innovation, accelerate sustainability and internationalise blue SMEs, to support the transition towards a thriving, resilient and sustainable blue economy.