#CETEF24 – Meet Our Partners! - European Clusters Alliance (ECA)
The European Clusters Alliance is an international non-profit association born in 2019. Its mission is to be the common voice of the European cluster community, facilitating inputs, connections, and opportunities to meet our common challenges. The association’s activities are led by the vision to position industrial clusters as key agent in the European innovative ecosystem for the development and growth of our economy and competitiveness.
The association joins 22 national associations of clusters and ambassadors from countries without national cluster networks. Through the networks, ECA unites more than 900 cluster organisations on European level.
The association has as its main objectives:
- Promote fast and agile inter-cluster collaboration at European level and reinforce the activities of the cluster network
- Foster the internationalisation of the cluster members and promote a better knowledge of the European clusters
- Build joint recommendations to public administrations in cooperation with national associations
- Cooperate with other networks and organisations that support clusters at European and global level
- Study, promote and defend collective interests of the cluster community
The European Clusters Alliance is member of these high-level expert groups:
- EU Industrial Forum and curator of two task forces
- Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Expert Group
- Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) Expert Group
- Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA)
- European Economic Social Committee – CCMI group
- High Level Working Group European Digital Innovation Hubs (HLWG eDIH)
- Industry 5.0 Community of Practice (I5.0 CoP)
The association has been very active to support the cluster community in times of crisis and provide a communication channel to the European Commission. It is a contractor for the European Cluster Collaboration Platform, the central cluster platform provided by the European Commission. The alliance provides support to Ukraine by close collaboration with the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance, which was accepted as member, and created the European Alliance Against Coronavirus, a two-year exchange platform and network to detect and address disruptions due to the crisis.
More information: https://clustersalliance.eu/