Article 5

Under the Regional competitiveness and employment objective, the ERDF shall focus its assistance in the context of sustainable development strategies, while promoting employment, primarily on the following three priorities: innovation and the knowledge economy, including through the creation and strengthening of efficient regional innovation economies, systemic relations between the private and public sectors, universities and technology centres which take into account local needs, and in particular: enhancing regional R&TD and innovation capacities directly linked to regional economic development objectives by supporting industry or technology-specific competence centres, promoting industrial R&TD, SMEs and technology transfer, developing technology forecasting and international benchmarking of policies to promote innovation and supporting inter-firm collaboration and joint R&TD and innovation policies; stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship in all sectors of the regional and local economy by supporting the introduction of new or improved products, processes and services onto the market by SMEs, supporting business networks and clusters, improving access to finance by SMEs, promoting cooperation networks between enterprises and appropriate tertiary education and research institutions, facilitating SMEs' access to business support services and supporting the integration of cleaner and innovative technologies in SMEs; promoting entrepreneurship, in particular by facilitating the economic exploitation of new ideas and fostering the creation of new firms by appropriate tertiary education and research institutions and existing firms; creating financial engineering instruments and incubation facilities that are conducive to the research and technological development capacity of SMEs and to encouraging entrepreneurship and the formation of new businesses, especially knowledge-intensive SMEs; environment and risk prevention, and in particular: stimulating investment for the rehabilitation of the physical environment, including contaminated, desertified and brownfield sites and land; promoting the development of infrastructure linked to biodiversity and investments in NATURA 2000 sites, where this contributes to sustainable economic development and/or diversification of rural areas; stimulating energy efficiency and renewable energy production and the development of efficient energy management systems; promoting clean and sustainable public transport, particularly in urban areas; developing plans and measures to prevent and cope with natural risks (e.g. desertification, droughts, fires and floods) and technological risks; protection and enhancement of the natural and cultural heritage in support of socio-economic development and the promotion of natural and cultural assets as potential for the development of sustainable tourism; access to transport and telecommunication services of general economic interest, and in particular: strengthening secondary transport networks by improving links to TEN-T networks, regional railway hubs, airports and ports or multimodal platforms, providing radial links to main railway lines and promoting regional and local inland waterways and short-sea shipping; promoting access to, take up, and efficient use of ICTs by SMEs by supporting access to networks, the establishment of public Internet access points, equipment, and the development of services and applications, including, in particular, the development of action plans for very small and craft enterprises. In addition, for operational programmes supported by the ERDF in the regions eligible for the specific and transitional financing referred to in Article 8(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006, the Member States and the Commission may decide to extend support to the priorities referred to in Article 4 of this Regulation.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-02 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.