Clust-ER Health connects for a competitive Europe at the SME & Clusters Assembly 2026

On 3–4 November, Clust-ER Health took part in the SME & Clusters Assembly 2026 in Dublin, the first edition to merge the SME Assembly and the European Cluster Conference into a single event around the theme “Connecting for a Competitive Europe”.

For the first time, the SME Assembly and the European Cluster Conference, which we also attended in Brussels in 2024, came together as one flagship event, organised by the European Commission with the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU. Held at the Convention Centre Dublin, it brought together around 600 entrepreneurs, policymakers and cluster leaders for 45 sessions with more than 100 speakers, alongside an exhibition of 30 stands. Clémence Foltz represented Clust-ER Health.

Opening: a simpler Europe for business

Irish Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke opened the Assembly by calling for a Europe that is faster and simpler for business. A small company may have a great idea, a skilled team and ambitious plans, he said, but to grow it also needs finance, new markets, technology and the right partners, and this is where clusters make a difference: they turn connections into collaboration and help businesses achieve what they could not achieve alone. Outi Slotboom, Director for Supply Chains and Business Analysis at the European Commission’s DG GROW added that policy should never be made in isolation from the businesses it affects.

Scaling up: keeping our best start-ups in Europe

Europe produces plenty of promising start-ups, but far fewer grow into global players. The session on scaling up looked at why. Access to capital came top of the list, but it was not the only obstacle. Speakers also pointed to the mindset of innovators and to a lack of training, and therefore of skills, in entrepreneurship: founders often focus on their idea at the expense of the business case. Other obstacles were a Single Market still fragmented into national markets and regulatory complexity that can stall companies in sectors such as biotech and health even before funding becomes an issue. The only cluster representative on the panel, Stamatiki Krita from HBio, was also from a health cluster, and highlighted that in this sector the main challenges before access to funding are clinical validation and the regulatory pathway, something very familiar to the life sciences ecosystem we work with.

New EU instruments such as the Scaleup Europe Fund, the 28th regime and EU Inc. were presented as part of the answer, with calls to keep them ambitious, simple to access and open to learning from national experience. The goal is to help companies not only start in Europe, but stay and grow here.

Skills to collaborate across borders

The session on cluster management skills focused on what it takes to work together across borders. Giovanni Emma of DG GROW pointed to the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP) Cluster Booster Academy and to Erasmus+ as tools to strengthen skills and cooperation. Thomas Vyzikas presented the opportunities offered by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), including Doctoral Networks and Staff Exchanges.

Alain Tubiana, a former professor at the Université de Strasbourg and an expert in clusters and networking, strongly underlined the importance of cultural awareness: to build connections and start collaborations or business partnerships in other regions and countries, one must understand that attitudes and expectations differ, and that this can create problems if we are not aware of it. The European Railway Clusters Initiative (ERCI), presented by Veronica Elena Bocci, offered a concrete example of cross-border work: a bottom-up partnership of 18 clusters from 17 countries and around 3,000 companies, giving SMEs trusted advice, technical expertise and access to international markets.

The Schumpeter lecture: from creative destruction to creative reconstruction

At the end of the first day, the Assembly moved to Dublin Castle for the Schumpeter “Innovation in Enterprise” Lecture, followed by the European SME Week Reception. Professor Johanna Mair, Director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, opened by asking what exactly we are celebrating when we call something innovative. Novelty, commercial potential and the ability to disrupt each tell us something, she suggested, but none tells us enough.

Her answer was “creative reconstruction”: not a return to the past, but the deliberate work of renewing some arrangements, replacing others and building capabilities that do not yet exist. Europe, she argued, needs both distributed agency, which lets many actors experiment and take initiative, and collective agency, which lets them take on responsibilities none can carry alone.

Her remarks on clusters were particularly relevant for this first joint edition. A cluster does not gain the power to act together simply because its members share a location or a membership list: someone has to translate knowledge into forms that companies can use, secure resources and make sure smaller members are not crowded out. How a cluster is governed, she added, is part of its strategy, not something to settle afterwards. She proposed four conditions for judging whether change is working (capability, connection, voice and care) and invited policymakers to focus on what policy enables firms to do. The goal, in line with the Assembly’s motto, is to build the capacity to shape change collaboratively.

Matchmaking and a shared stand at the EXPO

As in 2024, the Assembly was above all an opportunity to meet. We shared a stand with our colleagues from Clust-ER Mech, Clust-ER Greentech, Clust-ER Innovate and ART-ER, presenting the Emilia-Romagna cluster network to visitors from across Europe and beyond. The ECCP matchmaking, organised through the B2Match platform, enabled pre-arranged one-to-one meetings between cluster organisations, a way to explore shared interests and lay the groundwork for new cross-border partnerships.

Between the stand and the matchmaking meetings, we caught up with partners we already know: the Council of European BioRegions (CEBR), HBio and bioPmed, and met many new organisations. From Ireland, we talked with Cyber Ireland, ATIM Cluster, the Connected Health & Wellbeing Cluster and the All-Island Cancer Research Institute. We also met Minalogic (France), Mirbest Cluster (Hungary), Mobility|Medical goes Additive e.V. (Germany), the Latvian Food Cluster, the Transylvanian Furniture Cluster, the National Cluster Association of the Czech Republic, the European Association of Development Agencies (EURADA), Next Generation Canada, the Organization of Women Entrepreneurs (OFA) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

The conversations ranged from manufacturing, furniture and cybersecurity to oncology, IT, digital health, Application-Specific Integrated Circuit chips and surgical robots. We exchanged views on shared interests and strategies, explored common challenges and began discussions on possible cooperation between our ecosystems. These informal exchanges are what allow trusted relationships to grow, and trusted relationships are the foundation for partnerships that benefit our members and the regional health ecosystem.

Closing: from policy to implementation

The policy conclusions session, moderated by Ciara Doherty, brought together Anna Athanasopoulou (European Commission, Director for Simplification and Networks), Ross Church (Ireland’s SME Envoy) and Sandra Parthie (European Economic and Social Committee). They agreed that Europe’s policy direction is broadly right, but that SMEs are not yet feeling the difference on the ground. Ross Church urged policymakers to think “smallest first”, remembering the micro-enterprises that make up most of Europe’s businesses.

Three messages sum up the Assembly:

• Simplification must deliver for businesses on the ground, with action at EU, national and regional levels. Delegates’ priorities were to remove rules that are no longer fit for purpose before adding new ones, and to build one coherent set of rules for SMEs instead of 27 different versions. The Commission pointed to its 12 omnibus simplification proposals and its target of cutting recurring administrative costs for SMEs by 35% by 2029, while Member States and regions must tackle the “gold-plating” of EU rules.
• Access to investment, markets and skills is essential, from late-stage financing to AI adoption and access to new markets. Only 17% of SMEs use AI, against 55% of large companies, and the proposed European Competitiveness Fund aims to de-risk investment and bring innovation to market faster.
• Clusters are key delivery vehicles for competitiveness, but they need policy attention beyond one-off interventions. Cluster productivity is estimated at 25% above the EU average, and SMEs in clusters grow faster and find it easier to access finance: SMEs and clusters are stronger together.