photo by Eoghan Olionnain

The European Commission has taken the initiative to a project entitled “Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on Innovation Procurement under Horizon 2020 Policy Support Facility”. This MLE focusses on three kinds of Innovation-enhancing public procurement (direct innovation procurement, catalytic innovation procurement and functional regular procurement) and on Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) of R&D results. The project will run during January – November 2017. The objectives of the project are:

• To create a strategic framework,
• To analyse the need for capacity building,
• To investigate the required financial incentives, and
• To develop a measurement, evaluation and monitoring system.

Charles Edquist has been asked by the European Commission to be the Chairman of this MLE, which is administered by the ‘Technopolis Consulting Group Belgium”. The other experts are: Jon Mikel Zabala-Iturriagagoitia (rapporteur), Eva Buchinger (expert) and Gaynor Whyles (expert). The project manager is Viola Peter and Xavier Vanden Bosch is in charge for the European Commission. The following 16 Member States are participating: PT, ES, EL AT, DE, FR BE, NO, SE, SL, LV, EE, LT, TK, IE and NL. The Kick-off meeting was held in Brussels on January 19, 2017.