The European Commission (EC) will organise the EU – South MED Matchmaking Event in the frame of ACHEMA expo which will be held on 10-14 June 2024.

The EU – South MED Matchmaking Event itself will take place on-site in Frankfurt, Germany 11-13 June 2024.

The event will be jointly organised by the European Commission through the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP), in collaboration with ANIMA Investment Network, Euromed Clusters Forward, Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) and Chamber of Commerce and Industry Frankfurt am Main.

The EU – South MED Matchmaking Event will bring together cluster organisations and SMEs from the European Union (EU), non-EU countries participating in the Single Market Programme/COSME Strand, and South MED countries: Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia. It will provide participants an excellent chance to promote Cluster to Cluster (C2C), Cluster to Business (C2B), and Business to Business (B2B) collaborations.

Objectives

The objectives for the participants included:

• Strengthening EU-South MED cluster cooperation for the benefit of their members, including a seminar, a cluster matchmaking event, and site visits.
• Identifying potential areas of common interest for cooperation and synergies, in terms of the sectoral, value chain, and market focus of their SMEs and other companies.
• Improving, through clusters, the EU-South MED industry and academia-industry collaboration in research, development, and innovation. For its members, the clusters will identify possible areas of RDI collaboration (academia, research organisations, industries…).

Agenda and Activities

The EU – South MED Matchmaking Event will include the following activities:

• Preparatory Webinar – an opportunity to receive information on undertaking business with South MED and guidance on how to participate successfully in the planned event. (date tbc)
• Technical Webinar – a session helping future participants of the matchmaking event to make the most of their profiling in the B2Match tool and explain the procedures to optimise the booking of meetings. (date tbc)
• Site visits (date tbc)
• Seminar on knowledge exchange to foster EU- South MED cooperation. (11 June 2024)
• Pitching and Matchmaking meetings between cluster organisations and SMEs from EU (and non-EU countries participating in SMP/COSME Strand) countries and South MED Countries. All preselected South MED organisations are listed here.  (11 June 2024)
• Debriefing session to collect feedback and testimonials from cluster participants. (11 June 2024)
• Participation at the global leading digital summit ACHEMA expo – 12 – 13 June 2024

Focus areas

• Green techs and energy
• Digital techs and ICT
• Mechanical engineering and manufacturing
• Pharma and biotechs