In January 2023 the European Commission published a Communication on Harnessing Talent in Europe’s Regions,

with a focus on the undergoing significant demographic changes in EU, marked by an ageing population, declining birth rates, and an exodus of young, skilled workers from several regions. In order to help regions address demographic challenges, the Communication announced the launch of the Talent Booster Mechanism, which is a dedicated eight-pillar mechanism that seeks to boost talent in regions facing or at risk of facing a talent development trap. The Mechanism will support EU regions affected by the accelerated decline of their working age population to train, retain and attract the people, the skills and the competences needed to address the impact of the demographic transition.

As part of the Talent Booster Mechanism, Pillar 1 – Technical Assistance – will direct assistance to the regions selected out of 46 eligible EU regions with a view to support regional and local authorities in developing strategic thinking and actionable frameworks to address the untapped potential of their tertiary educated labour force and to mitigate the challenges linked to demographic change and brain drain, supporting the identification of needs and priorities and providing advice and methodological support.

To receive this support, a Call for Expression of Interest for Technical Assistance will be opened from September 11th to October 20th, 2023.

For this call, there are eligible regions across 11 Member States (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania), respectively the target group of 46 regions identified by the European Commission as being in a talent development trap - experiencing an accelerated decline of their working age population and lagging levels of tertiary education. In Croatia, eligable regions: HR02 (Panonska Hrvatska), HR05 (Grad Zagreb), HR06 (Sjeverna Hrvatska). All 3 of these regions are therefore invited to apply for technical assistance via Pillar 1 of the Talent Booster Mechanism.

From these regions, the eligible applicants are the regional public administrations with implementing powers at NUTS 2 level, in the countries where these are in place: Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal.

As an exception, it is proposed that in the Member States where there are no NUTS 2 regional administrative bodies, the eligible stakeholders could be regional development agencies, managing authorities of Regional Operational Programmes, other regional public administrations or national Ministries responsible for selecting one region and submitting its application within the set deadline.

For Croatia: Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds with a pilot for one of the regions, to be preselected at national level. For the particular case of Hungary and Croatia, the Ministry would be proposing the region they would like to represent. They would need to submit the application form within the same deadline.

Application

Call document

Source: European Commission