Southwest Finland of sustainable partnerships

The priorities of Southwest Finland’s regional programme 2022–2025 and smart specialisation strategy 2021–2027 build on the policies up to 2040 and beyond laid out in Southwest Finland’s regional strategy. The regional strategy builds a Southwest Finland of sustainable partnerships by serving as a reactive and proactive tool for change. It helps:

  • Speed up the region’s green and just transition, for example by linking innovators and investors to test new operating models
  • Strengthen the joint commitment of the region’s operators to the growth objectives set for the region’s priorities – blue economy, food chains, and pharmaceutical and health technologies – through cooperation in the fields of research, development and innovation, and by building test platforms for promising new ideas, for example
  • Provide experts and specialists with new options for arriving and establishing themselves in the region, for example through location independent recruiting, cooperation in cutting-edge competence and international visibility
  • Build wellbeing and collaboration across the region’s sectors and population groups with the help of true partnership, inclusion and interaction.

Thanks to its success, in 2040 Southwest Finland will be 

  • A carbon neutral front runner in clean solutions, innovations and sustainable growth
  • A collaborative region that offers everyone opportunities for wellbeing
  • A region where decisions are based on cooperation and knowledge, and a growth-oriented digital region that anticipates changes.

Priorities in smart specialisation

The smart specialisation strategy that deepens and supplements the regional programme identifies the following three priorities for Southwest Finland:

  • Blue economy and industrial modernisation (the maritime industry and electrified transport)
  • Innovative food chains (e.g. developing the blue and green food industry)
  • Pharmaceutical and health technology (e.g. pharmaceutical development, diagnostics, imaging and health technology).

Smart specialisation supports especially the development of identified priority areas, but also the research and innovation capacity of Southwest Finland more widely, for example by introducing a wide range of advanced technologies and digitalisation, as well as by improving the competitiveness and growth of SMEs. It also promotes Finland’s goal of carbon neutrality, especially from the perspective of energy efficiency, adaptation to climate change and the transition to a circular economy. If these areas progress as planned, they will also promote success in the region’s priority areas.
Southwest Finland’s regional strategy 2040+ comprises three documents: the regional plan, regional programme and smart specialisation strategy.

> Read more about Southwest Finland’s regional strategy 
 

Inquiries
Salla-Maria Lauttamäki
Development Manager
Regional Council of Southwest Finland
tel. +358 40 520 0761
firstname.lastname(at)varsinais-suomi.fi