82 million euros of funding innovations

Strong demand for regional government programmes in current EU funding period

Willingmann: “Lubricant for the economy”      

There is demand for the regional programmes for promotion of innovation: In the current EU structural fund period (2014-2020), around 82 million euros have been approved for a total of more than 600 projects (date: End of March 2018). The invest volume triggered by this amounts to 141 million euros, due to the funding recipients own contributions. “Innovations are the lubricant of the economy. If someone has the lead technologically or is offering a new kind of service, they will be successful in the future. This makes it all the more important that many companies are currently investing in innovations. We can continue like this. After all, our funding pools are still well filled with just under 70 million euros”, says Economy Minister Prof. Dr. Armin Willingmann.

The majority of the innovation funding flowed into projects for the Research and Development (R&D) by companies and scientific institutions: Around 58.2 million euros have been approved for 267 projects. There is also a particularly strong demand for the programme “Innovation Assistant” – the region is here paying personnel costs contributions of up to 50 percent for two years, in cases where companies employ graduates to implement innovations. By March 2018, 212 innovation assistants had been funded – the grant amounted to around 9.3 million euros.

In addition, approx. 7.3 million euros were granted for 121 projects intended to foster the transfer of science and technology from science to business, and 7.1 million euros for seven investments in business-related research institutions.