The ERA-NET Cofund BlueBio will act to unlock the potential of aquatic bio-resources to create jobs, economic growth and provide food, nutrition and bio-based products and services. Thus, paving the way for a sustainable and competitive Blue Bioeconomy in Europe. The goal is to identify new and improve existing ways of bringing bio-based products and services to the market and find new ways of creating value in the Blue bioeconomy. The objectives of BlueBio are to establish a coordinated R&D funding scheme that will strengthen Europe’s position in this complex economic field in a global market. This will primarily be achieved by engaging funding agencies to implement a co-funded call focusing on Blue Knowledge and technological developments to respond to needs and gaps for R&I. The consortium has committed budgets making a strong co-funded call leveraging well the Commission's requests. BlueBio builds upon the networks, achievements and strategies obtained in the COFASP and ERA-MBT ERA-NETs and JPI Oceans, and will leverage the JPI Oceans role as a coordination platform. The consortium aims to implement 2-4 additional calls, developed through stakeholder engagement, and identifying new funding initiatives. BlueBio will implement a range of related activities which can add value to the cofounded projects and better address the impact of R&I projects. BlueBio will enhance valorisation from the actors in the Blue Bioeconomy sector, identify and address R&I needs of industry and society. Communications activities will support BlueBio and the funded projects to realise tangible impacts. Emphasis will be placed on the creation of pre-commercial outputs aimed at accelerating commercialisation and competitive deployment. BlueBio's directions and legacy will be informed by strategic forward-looking processes involving all stakeholders in identifying needs and gaps along the value chains.

"Cedefop's European Skills Index 2020 shows wide differences between European countries when it comes to skills matching. Indeed, according to Cedefop’s publication “Insights into Skill Shortages and Skill Mismatch” (January 2018), four out of ten employers in Europe are struggling to find people with the right skills. In a labour market heavily impacted by Industry 4.0 and SDG commitment (2 million employments will be created by the latter), and the rise of soft skills as a new area of interest in terms of qualifications, differences between skills offer and demand have widened. The context of the COVID-19 outbreak must also be noted, affecting the need of resilience as a fundamental skill; as the Commission has already stated, upskilling and reskilling programmes to protect workers from unemployment and loss of income to avoid permanent effect will be an essential tool to mitigate the effects of the crisis, with 59 million jobs at stake and those without university degrees in a higher risk (short-term job risk is highly correlated with level of education, McKinsey & Company, April 2020). Therefore, there is a crucial need for education and training systems to identify, anticipate and teach skills that are suitable for future needs, rather than to catch up with technological, demographic and environmental changes after they have happened. Vocational Education and Training (VET) is crucial to teach students, adults and workers the necessary skills and will therefore have a significant impact on the future of work.For all these reasons and with the objective of aligning the education and training provision with regional smart specialisation strategies (S3), the Stride for Stride project will work on building up the concept of Regional Skills Ecosystems. Six regions (Catalonia, Basque Country, Tuscany, Brittany, Varaždin, and Vestland) in five European countries (including high achievers, such as Croatia, mid-achievers, such as Norway, and low-achievers such as Spain, Italy and France when it comes to skills matching according to the European Skills Index 2020) will improve their capacity to identify skills needs and adapt their training provision accordingly. And this process needs to be done by engaging four main axes: public authorities, education centres (VET in this case), companies and the individual.Four workshops corresponding to the four steps of skills governance (adaptation, anticipation, transmission and use) will be organised in Florence, Rennes, Bergen and Barcelona between 2020 and 2022, with a double European-regional perspective that allow all the previously mentioned actors build together skills intelligence systems by means of exchanging their experiences (both though workshops and study visits) and taking part in multi-stakeholder open discussion hubs. These workshops will be attended by international regional representatives who wish to learn on the ground from each others' success stories and share their own, but also by local/regional stakeholders who will contribute to dialogue to build strong skills ecosystems based on the skills governance process.In this sense, the Stride for Stride project will add an international aspect to regional success stories, with a two-folded innovative aim:1.Tackling skills intelligence and forecasting at regional level to build regional skills ecosystems, and2.involving all relevant actors featured in the quadruple helix interaction system to help building powerful skills intelligence tools, not only as external ""validators"" of the process, but as an intrinsic part of it.A regional perspective for skills challenges mapping and forecast is of utmost importance to tackle the new opportunities that industry 4.0, SDGs and soft skills relevance are already opening in Europe. Regions allow a closer contact with citizens and are in a privileged position to assessterritorial economic, labour and well-being needs, including lifelong and lifewide learning opportunities. This project will also serve as a starting point for the development of exhaustive territorially-aware assessment tools that complement existing ones such as Cedefop’s national skills forecasts and OECD skills outlooks."

Offering the best conditions to postdoctoral fellows for their bottom-up, self-built research projects, within a consortium that gathers all the research units based in Brittany, with training and career development aimed at internationalisation, intersectoriality and interdisciplinarity, and a unique 6-month placement opportunity: such are the ingredients of the BIENVENÜE+ project, that aims at strengthening regional excellence through the recruitment of 75 high-level international postdoctoral fellows (24-month fellowships). BIENVENÜE+ represents a central pillar for the better articulation of funding opportunities for international post-doc fellows at regional level. It ambitions to promote the implantation and integration of new skills in Brittany and to develop excellence and international visibility of regional research in contribution to Région Bretagne Research and innovation smart specialisation strategy (RIS3). With this approach, BIENVENÜE+ is open to any discipline. BIENVENÜE+ is strongly innovation-oriented and, as such, it offers, in addition to non-academic secondments, an optional unique additional 6-month placement in a non-academic institution, at the end of the 24-month fellowship. In terms of training plan, BIENVENÜE+ includes arising key issues for researchers such as Open Science, science outreach and environmental aspects of research. The BIENVENÜE+ consortium, coordinated by Région Bretagne, is composed of 20 complementary Host Institutions (HI). This large consortium, embracing the entire regional R&I academic community, widens research and career development opportunities for the fellows relying, among others, on the participation in 6 European Universities Alliances.

Led by REGION BRETAGNE, the BIENVENÜE Programme is an innovative fellowship programme offering 75 two-year postdoc positions to highly-skilled researchers to work in the thriving and internationally esteemed environment that is France’s Brittany Region. The BIENVENÜE Programme is designed as a building block of the proactive regional initiative to develop a knowledge-driven economy with international recognition and a local identity. It will reinforce the human capital of the region in R&I and maximise impact on the RIS3 implementation by heightening research excellence, cross-sectoral innovation, and collaboration between academic, non-academic and policy makers, thus stimulating regional development. To achieve these objectives, the programme BIENVENÜE is proposing attractive conditions for self-built, bottom-up postdoctoral projects in all scientific fields, to be hosted in 8 highly active research institutions (universities and research centres). To ensure a large diversity of profile and an increase pool of future scientific leader for the region, the project selection will be made through merit-based, fair, international and transparent procedures. Then, BIENVENÜE focuses on enhancing researchers’ career development opportunities in line with MSCA principles. In addition, cooperation with key innovative industrial players and other non-academic partners (public bodies, NGOs, etc.), with international or interdisciplinary partners – through intersectoral secondments and training events – will provide opportunities for postdoctoral fellows to acquire transferable skills and to explore new career opportunities in private or public settings.

OCEANIDS aims at building user-driven applications and tools, which act as an enabling technological layer for regional authorities & stakeholders in order to achieve a more resilient and inclusive systemic pathway to a Blue Economy in coastal regions. Brining spatial and non-spatial data & services under a single-access window platform for Climate-Informed Maritime Spatial Planning (CI-MSP), the project will allow a more integrated seascape management of coastal regions. The project delivers a Decision Support tool (the OCEANIDS Decision Support Platform - O-DSP), with an over-arching target to collect, harmonise and curate existing climate data services, making data accessible, reusable and interoperable for the development of local adaptation strategies. OCEANIDS facilitates access to knowledge, data & digital services critical for better understanding and managing climate risks, enhancing adaptive capacities and sup-porting transformative innovations. In addition, OCEANIDS sees inclusivity as an enabling, and required, factor towards a Blue Economy. The project has a strong focus on behavioural change, both on individual as well as on a systemic level, en-abling participating regions and communities to better understand and use potential social tipping points and systemic leverage points to accelerate transformative changes towards climate resilience. To achieve this, it promotes inclusive and deliberative governance through meaningful engagement and dialogue between citizens and stakeholders. This will be achieved using case-specific tools (i.e. ephemeral social networks) leveraging local citizens assemblies for bot-tom up deliberation, cultivating a culture of civic engagement, thus empowering individuals to take action in their own communities. Finally, the project will contribute to mobilising sustainable finance and resources towards adaptation at scale and closing climate protection gap.