About S3P Space

The Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms (S3P) are an initiative of the European Commission that encourage regions and their innovation actors across the EU to build strategic partnerships and promoting complementarity of regional funding for innovation in specific smart specialisation areas.

S3P Space was starting to form in 2021 with the aim to build regional coalitions to strengthen the value chain "Access to space". The S3P Space partnership will work to create involvement, interaction, and collaboration among different actors within the regions (such as academia, large corporations, SMEs, start-ups, and clusters).

The partnership will facilitate the collaborative efforts by:

  • Providing this digital B2Match tool for space actors to interact
  • Bringing space actors together to exchange knowledge and identify collaboration projects
  • Identifying capabilities (e.g., instruments, competencies, infrastructure, initiatives, funding) on a
    regional, national, and European level to enhance collaboration
  • Boosting innovation through sharing experience


In 2015, the European Commission services launched three thematic smart specialisation (S3) platforms to support the goal of strengthening European value chains. These platforms have been put in place to support interregional cooperation in the context of smart specialisation areas related to Agri-Food, Energy and  Industrial Modernisation. S3P Space lies under the Industrial Modernisation area. 

In particular, S3P Space have the ultimate goal of establishing a European ecosystem for transnational and interregional collaboration in regions and countries with the smart specialisation area of Space. Together, we will strive to form collaborations that will lead to new paths of development and a better position in global value chains and to transnational joint strategies of innovation.

The thematic platforms offer a structure to exploit synergies across partnerships and across sectors. These platforms are joint initiatives, managed and coordinated by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), with the support of several EC's Directorates-General  including Regional and Urban Policy (REGIO), Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI); Energy (ENER); Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW) and Research and Innovation (RTD). In addition, to get a wider view for cooperation, interactions with other EU initiatives (such as the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform, European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) and the KICs) are also developed.



Organised by
Participants
Sweden 17
Germany 14
Netherlands 6
Italy 4
Poland 3
Finland 3
Belgium 3
Greece 1
Total 51