The ceremony will mark the culmination of this year's competition to find innovative ideas for integrated futures of refugees and migrants in Europe. As well as hearing from European Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska, guests will hear the 10 finalists' solutions of how to support the successful integration of refugees and migrants. After which this year's 3 winners of the €50,000 prizes are announced.

The Innovation Radar (IR) is a European Commission initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation ICT projects. Using the radar, 40 of the best EU-funded innovators have been identified to compete with their EU-funded innovation for the Innovation Radar Prize 2016.

The European Innovation Scoreboard – previously Innovation Union Scoreboard – provides a comparative analysis of innovation performance in EU Member States, other European countries, and regional neighbours. It assesses relative strengths and weaknesses of national innovation systems and helps countries identify areas they need to address.

The European Investment Fund (EIF) and the National Bank of Greece S.A. (NBG) have signed the first COSME guarantee agreement in Greece, benefiting from the support of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the heart of the Investment Plan for Europe. The EU support will allow the NBG to provide EUR 100 million to over 350 small businesses in Greece, through the Investment Plan for Europe.

The importance of SMEs for the growing of EU economy is an undeniable fact, they are the backbone of the EU economy. Thus, boosting the competitiveness of the SMEs is a key to fostering growth and job creation. The main objective of the study will be to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU policies for SMEs as to draw conclusions with regard to the results achieved and the ways the effectiveness can be improved and to outline the opportunities and challenges for enhancing a better and more efficient policy making in the future.

This note provides a brief summary of the latest developments as regards the implementation of the third macro-economic adjustment programme for Greece. A fully-fledged update of the EGOV note on Greece’s third financial assistance programme will be provided in September 2016.

The purpose of this report is to describe the methodology used to develop a comprehensive dataset, denominated INNOREG, which provides information on several potential drivers and barriers to firms’ innovation activity. All the examined drivers and barriers depend, in a more or less direct way, upon the decisions taken by national policy makers.

The 7th Balkan & Black Sea Conference “DofC 2016” is a definitely grown into a leading cluster-based economic development event in the SEE. The DofC on the topic “Creating Cluster-Based Economic Development for a Sustainable Region“ will be held from 22th to 24th September, 2016 in Ohrid in Hotel “Inex Gorica”.

With the rise of ever more advanced, digital technologies, policy makers and high-level management in both the public and private sectors, need to fully understand the effects and social, economic and regulatory implications brought about by these technologies. Policy makers need to move from traditional, fixed policy designs, towards more flexible, technology-neutral designs that would allow developing future-proof policies adapted to a changing environment.