Joan Romero, CEO of ACCIÓ, emphasized on Friday that “the Next Generation EU funds are a huge opportunity, a vast amount of resources to accelerate a transformation that was already necessary.” Romero made this statement during the ‘European Funds for Digital and Ecological Transformation’ event organized by ACCIÓ – the agency for business competitiveness under the Department of Business and Knowledge – and the 29 Catalan clusters that are members of the Catalunya Clústers program by ACCIÓ.

During the event, attending companies were provided with available information regarding the Next Generation EU funds. However, the ACCIÓ CEO also warned that “there is still no published call for funding,” indicating that “there is still time to move forward with the country’s transformative initiatives.” “So far, we have received and identified over 500 projects, and we continue to receive more every day: highly interesting and transformative projects that align perfectly with the philosophy of the Next Generation EU,” he explained. According to Romero, “the most important thing is that they are transformative projects in the fields of digitalization and sustainability.”

In this context, Romero pointed out that ACCIÓ “will act as a decoder to help guide business projects toward the most appropriate calls when they are open or even outside of the Next Generation EU”. ACCIÓ will offer support to find the best calls, assess if the projects are suitable, search for potential partners for other received projects, and propose other funding programs. Companies interested in submitting their projects can do so through this link.

Out of the projects received so far, the Catalan government has identified 27 projects – featured in the Next Generation Catalonia report – that are considered emblematic as they are expected to act as catalysts for the economic recovery of Catalonia. These projects, with a total budget of €41 billion, cover sectors such as decarbonization, future mobility, automotive batteries, hydrogen, alternative proteins, urban technology hubs, bioeconomy, and the European chip, among others.

The event also featured the participation of Natàlia Mas, Secretary of Economy for the Government of Catalonia, and Jordi Llinares, Deputy Director-General of Industrial Digitalization and Collaborative Environments at the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Tourism. Joan Martí, Director of Clusters at ACCIÓ, also took part.