Portugal

Portugal has joined Europe’s “strong innovators”, showing the best performance improvement compared to other EUREKA Member States with an increase of 21.5%. Besides, for the second consecutive year, Portugal is the leader in the “innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises” category.

It is Portugal’s goal to double Portuguese participation in European Union funding programmes between 2021 and 2027, to obtain funding of around two billion euros for research and innovation, and to triple the number of students in higher education compared with 2014-2020. To this end, Portugal has launched a “Strategy to promote national participation in European Union funding programmes 2021-2027 - Research & Innovation, Erasmus+, Space and Digital”.

For the third time since becoming one of Eureka’s 18 founding countries in 1985, Portugal will hold the Eureka chairmanship as of July 2021.

As in past Portuguese Eureka chairmanships, one of Portugal’s main goals is to increase Eureka’s global outreach. The current geographical focus is shifting from Asia to the Atlantic, aiming for collaboration with countries in Africa and South America. Another focus is on fostering breakthrough innovations through international collaboration in a defiant post-COVID-19 world to solve societal challenges. Earth observation systems in space can be technological enablers for tackling climate change, ocean sustainability, health and energy: areas the pandemic has pushed into the background.

The strategy of the Portuguese chairmanship can be summarised as: “Innovation for a greener, digital, and healthier planet through a collaborative approach”.

Once again, the Eureka Portuguese chairmanship wishes to contribute to Eureka’s success as an important network for the promotion of research and innovation by strengthening the bottom-up, open and flexible nature of the network.

Rita Silva
Portuguese EUREKA NPC (ANI - National Innovation Agency)
+351 939 339 003
rita.silva@ani.pt