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Saving electricity costs and cutting greenhouse gas emissions is the main goal of Promoeener. The EU-funded project encourages municipalities and local councils to set up energy efficiency measures while using renewable sources of power. It focused on getting public administrations to use technologies harnessing local, natural resources such as geothermal, solar and biomass energies.

On 7 September 2016, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) organised a workshop on "Crowdfunding Opportunities and Best Practices in the EU" in Graz, Austria. The purpose of the workshop was to exchange views on the current state of crowdfunding across Europe with leading experts from all EU countries. They shared best practices on how to fully exploit the potential of this fast-growing form of alternative finance for SMEs.

The European MSP Platform is an information and communication gateway designed to offer support to all EU Member States in their efforts to implement Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) in the years to come. With the adoption of the EU Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning (2014/89/EU), all coastal EU Member States are required to prepare cross-sectoral maritime spatial plans by 2021. 

The list of evaluators who select the most promising projects for the SME Instrument has been published today. The list contains more than 1200 experts that have worked for us in 2015. Evaluators are categorised by nationality and topic. Publishing the list is meant to increase transparency and avoid conflicts of interest. This is of course part of a set of measures taken to ensure funds are distributed in an equal way. So how does the system work? 

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.