We are glad to announce that OPEN ENLoCC joined the Scandria Alliance as Associated Member.
The ceremony was hosted by Nordic Embassies in Berlin with the introduction from Per Thöresson, Ambassador of Sweden to Germany in a mix version (virtual/physical).
Guido Beermann, Minister of Infrastructure and Federal State Planning of Land Brandenburg, was the chairman of the Alliance’s General Assembly.
OPEN ENLoCC aims to create new synergies with new Organizations with the same objectives. And Scandria Alliance is for sure one of them.
Mr. Guido Beermann underlined also the role of cross-border rail transport and promoted the expansion of European rail infrastructure for sustainable regional growth and climate protection. Here a brief extract of his speech: “In view of the ambitious European and national climate targets, cross-border rail transport plays an important role here. To consolidate it, the members of the Scandria®Alliance want to work together even more intensively within the framework of their strategic partnership and together unlock the potential of rail as a sustainable, innovative and safe means of transport.“
The cooperation has started, we hope it will contribute to guide Regions to adopt sustainable and green solutions also thanks to the cross-border and transnational cooperation.
What is the Scandria®Alliance
from http://www.scandria-corridor.eu
The Scandinavian-Adriatic Corridor, or Scandria®Corridor for short, is the name given to a geographical corridor stretching from the north of Scandinavia via Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Berlin and Vienna to the northern Adriatic Sea, comprising more than a dozen metropolitan regions. It is largely part of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network. The Scandria®Alliance is a cooperation platform for cities and regions between Scandinavia and the Adriatic for climate-friendly, multimodal mobility and transport solutions at the interface with regional development. The aim of strategic cooperation in the alliance is to consolidate the shortest geographical connection between Scandinavia and the Adriatic as a regional development and transport axis. For the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region, the development of the Scandria®Corridor represents an opportunity to generate impulses for economic and spatial development. The capital region initiated the Scandria®Alliance in 2019 and has since chaired the cooperation platform.
The speech of the President of OPEN ENLoCC
Dear Minister Guido Bermann,
Dear General Assembly,
Dear Colleagues,
I am Giuseppe Luppino and I am representing today 2 organizations: The first, together with my Director Mr. Andrea Bardi, the Institute for Transport and Logistics, the organization for which I work as Head of European Projects department, based in Bologna,
and the second, which is the associate membership candidate in Scandria Alliance, OPEN ENLoCC, the European Network of Logistics Competence Centres at Regional Level, based in Brussels, for which I hold the presidency from 2016.
I am bringing here the greetings from all the Members of the Network, among them Valencia in Spain, Maribor in Slovenia, Verona and Rome in Italy, Thessaloniki in Greece, Stuttgart and Nordhessen in Germany, Liege in Belgium, Le Havre in France, Malmoe in Sweden, Turku in Finland, Oslo in Norway, Poznan in Poland, Newcastle in UK.
OPEN ENLoCC is active as legal entity from 2019, but it carries out activities from 2006 as a de facto association and as follow up of an Interreg Project.
We work on institutional level, usually in and for Regions, partly also across our nations and sometimes as Europe as a whole, but not along national borders,
Logistics by its nature includes interregional flows, and involves many actors, we approach it from a regional point of view – which supplements and complete the industrial one.
This is the main reason why our members are mainly public and semi-public bodies.
The main task of the network is international exchange of experience and knowledge between its participants, and promotion of a higher level of cooperation among European institutions.
Its members work together on common projects with the aim to develop the regional economy by solving infrastructural, organisational and technological problems of logistics and transport. Dissemination of results from network activities and of the best practices takes place on a wide scale.
OPEN ENLoCC is working side by side with its members in order to support the composition of new consortiums in INTERREG and Horizon Europe Programmes, sometimes participating itself with the role to exploitat the results of the projects.
During the INTERREG 21-27 negotiation phase OPEN ENLoCC had a role in the promotion of the Priority 3 on Transport, which was not included by the DG Regio at the Commission.
Recently OPEN ENLoCC launched the “Friends of OPEN ENLoCC” initiative, an open and parallel free of charge community aiming at keeping the contacts among all the organizations working in freight and logistics. This is particularly useful to build new consortiums or to keep contacts also beyond the projects end.
We also activated some specific activities and working groups, for example the collaborative regional logistics working group, a topic not covered at EU level where it is important to connect the regional nodes, regional transport operators and regional industrial sectors to make freight transport sustainable and efficient. This is also important for the definition of an IT system safe and interoperable.
Joining the Scandria alliance as a Network we are supporting the initiative with the voice of 17 Regions from the Europe and with many different competencies.
It is my intention as president of the network to create the conditions to activate a stable dialogue between the Members of OPEN ENLoCC and Scandria Alliance which are supporting similar objectives at different level and in different tables.
I really hope that this cooperation will be strengthened in the future creating the conditions to work together with all of you. Indeed, the opportunity of development in the logistics sector is unique in this period with a lot of funds available on research, innovation and development.
Thank you for the invitation to this interesting initiative
Giuseppe
Photo credits: Tina Merkau.