Co-creation of the European Commission´s Matchmaking Event “Towards COVID-19 vaccines upscale production”

The European Clusters Alliance played a very active role in the organisation of the European Commission’s first pan-European matchmaking event to scale up production of COVID-19 vaccines, which took place on 29 and 31 March 2021. More than 300 companies from 25 Member States took part to address production and supply chain bottlenecks. The event sought to promote new collaborations between companies based in or having facilities in the European Union to produce vaccines by offering them a shared platform and a meeting space to explore possibilities to ramp up production. European Commissioner Thierry Breton stated: “The ramp-up of vaccine production in Europe is unprecedented, both for our immediate and medium-term vaccination needs. We are working with industry to make better use of existing capacity and build new capability all around Europe.”

The European Clusters Alliance and the Council of European BioRegions (CEBR) advised the Commission on the design of the event and the registration process and gave continued support in its implementation. One of the cornerstones of this matchmaking events were the results of the survey “European capacities for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing and distribution” distributed in February and March by the European Clusters Alliance and its members and collaborators, which showed that there is potential in the European Union to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines.

We continue to collaborate with the “Task Force for Industrial Scale-up of COVID-19 vaccines” set up in DG GROW, European Commission, on next steps after this event.

Read about the event: Vaccines: Commission hosts first EU matchmaking event to mobilise Europe’s full potential for the production of COVID-19 vaccines