The Russian invasion and the subsequent outbreak of military hostilities in Ukraine has sent shock waves throughout the international community. The European Commission (DG GROW and EISMEA) invites all to contribute mitigating the adverse effects for European citizens and businesses and supporting Ukrainian people and businesses. Several concrete initiatives in this sense have been launched online and below are information about them and ways you can contribute or get involved in the support efforts.
Humanitarian response
The European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP) launched the EU Clusters Support Ukraine Forum to enhance the ability of European industry to contribute to the delivery of humanitarian aid for Ukraine and to support Ukrainian refugees by the European Commission and by the Member State countries. The forum is actively facilitated by an EU-Ukraine team from clusters and Enterprise Europe Network representatives. Here there are requests of support collected from Ukraine, food, hygiene products, medicines, as well as personal equipment to ensure survivability in war and refugee conditions. You can on this forum make concrete offers of support (i.e. material, technical humanitarian assistance or jobs to people or organizations impacted by the war in Ukraine) as well as provide transport and/or logistics planning capability to transfer humanitarian assistance from EU Member States. For more information or assistance or if – for any reason – you wish to help but you prefer not to make it public, please contact supportukraine@clustercollaboration.eu
Businesses and ecosystems resilience support
Following the disintegration of international trade arrangements and a severe global pandemic, the war in Ukraine is likely to disrupt established international supply chains even further. For this reason, the Enterprise Europe Network has set up the Supply Chain Resilience platform. By promoting the platform, we can together help European companies to retain, restructure or replace existing supply chains from markets now cut from international trade.
The goal of the platform is to supply European companies with the raw materials and/or (semi-)finished goods they need to keep production going. The European Cluster Collaboration Platform, in collaboration with the Enterprise Europe Network, is running a survey to understand our current reality, addressed to all EU stakeholders, in particular, to the business community. The purpose of this survey is to pick up the signals of disrupted supply chains from the ground in order to anticipate and find solutions. The results of the survey will contribute to a European response to these disruptions.
„The feedback collected from you through the survey will be discussed at the next EU Clusters Talks session on “European supply chains and impact of geopolitical situation” on 30 March. More information on the European Commission’s wider response to the situation in Ukraine. I am confident that we together can make a difference by contributing to the well-being of European citizens and local business communities. Do you have any questions, comments and/or suggestions related to the proposed actions? Contact us at EISMEA-COSME-ECCP@ec.europa.eu” – Natalia Martínez Páramo, Head of Unit EISMEA.
