Innovation for Active and Healthy Ageing

Speaking today at the first European Summit on Innovation for Active and Healthy Ageing, the President of the European Committee of the Regions, Markku Markkula, pointed out that promoting healthy and active ageing is crucial for sustainable social, economic and territorial cohesion in the EU. The President highlighted that local and regional authorities often take the lead in developing new innovative and ICT-based tools for an ageing population and announced that Europe needs more pioneering regions. He also insisted that national and EU investments, including through the European Structural and Investment Funds, are crucially needed to move those local initiatives to a larger scale and to ensure Europe can benefit from the growing silver economy.

Seizing the opportunities arising from demographic change through innovation and enhanced cooperation was the focus of this two day Summit, which was organised by the European Commission and gathered more than 1.000 participants, including EU representatives, business leaders, national and regional authorities and leading global innovators and start-ups. The event was complemented by an exhibition of 20 real-life projects and innovative solutions for the challenges that come with ageing.

Providing the opening speech on the second day of the event, President Markkula stressed: " Local and regional authorities are at the forefront of citizens’ needs and are responsible for providing most of the services that older people need to live active lives. But, we need a change of mind set towards entrepreneurship and innovation. Thanks to smart specialisation we can drive this change and together, we can achieve the objectives of the EU's Growth Strategy and increase social, economic and territorial cohesion ".

In its opinion on the European Fund for Regional Development for 2014-2020, the CoR has called for the operational programmes to take greater account of the challenges many EU regions are facing because of demographic change. The President therefore underlined that ageing populations create economic and social challenges at the local and regional level and as such they need more support from the European Union and national governments. " Many examples of innovative measures and social incubators in support of healthy and active ageing can be found at the local level. However, to move from pilot projects to large scale models that can be deployed at national or EU level, cities and regions need the right supportive legal, financial and structural environment which requires action at national and EU level ", said the President.