Réunion Region, France

The Regional Council of Reunion Island is a public local authority created in 1982. In addition to its main fields of competences (i.e. land development, training and education, and economic development), it has integrated into its responsibilities other fields like research and innovation, international cooperation, environment and energy. Research and innovation are linked to international cooperation programmes within a dedicated Vice-Presidency of the Regional Council. Region Reunion was the managing authority of ERDF-Territorial cooperation Operational Programme 2007-2013 and will be the managing authority of ERDF Operational Programme 2014-2020.

Region Reunion aims to support research carried out in relation with actors, structures, companies, and clusters for the development of the territory and job creation. Since 2010, it launches local calls for research projects implemented by the research teams from the University of La Reunion in different fields (environment, energy,...) in order to reach specific research objectives, to give structure to the innovation chain and develop clusters (e.g. 29 projects funded from call launched in 2010 for a total amount of 1,1 M€). Financial support from Region Reunion includes assistance for research set-up in cooperation with other countries in the Indian ocean with financial backing from the French Government.

The regional Council of Reunion was the Coordinator of the ERA-Net Net-Biome (2007-2012), acting as the chair of the Executive and Governing Board and promoting unprecedented relations between ORs and OCTs, also with different DGs of the EC (DG RDT, DG REGIO, DG DEV, DG ENV, DG MARE and DG AGRI). This first regional ERA-Net has fostered networking of regional research policies for biodiversity management in support of sustainable development. RR has actively participated in the ERA-Net Net-Biome first joint call design and implementation. It is the co-funder of 6/7 projects under implementation (2012-2015).Region Reunion is also a participant of NetBiome-CSA (2013-2016) and has joined BiodivERsA in 2015.