On 27 June 2019, the Pôle automobile européen (PAE) was officially launched. Led by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Grand Est (in France), this cluster brings together 12 partners (9 operational and 3 technical) from France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg.
This project, with a total budget of €2.2 million, is co-financed for €1.2 million by the European Interreg V A programme. It began in July 2018 and will end in December 2021.
The objective of the Pôle automobile européen (PAE) is to set up and develop cooperation between the automotive clusters of the Greater Region, in order to promote the internationalisation of their 800 member organisations.
This will result, among other things, in the cross-border opening of these different clusters’ services to their respective members, the organisation of joint B2B events or the creation of a cross-border database containing the technological skills of SMEs in the Greater Region.
“Excellent cross-border collaboration”
The automotive industry in the Greater Region (Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lorraine, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Wallonia), the Grand East Region and its adjacent territories in France includes no less than 2,500 companies employing 450,000 people. Nearly 2 million vehicles are produced there, supported by the dynamism of several automotive clusters.
“This project is the result of the excellent cross-border collaboration initiated since 2013 within Autoregion, the automotive meta-cluster of the Greater Region,” says Anthony Auert, manager of the Luxembourg AutoMobility Cluster, the Luxembourg partner of the PAE. “Thanks to the support provided by Europe, we will increase the cross-border and international visibility of our companies and contribute to their development on the international scene. These are high-performance and interconnected companies in the automotive sector that will continue to support the success of our Greater Region!
One of the next PAE initatives will be the organisation, on 24 September, of an Automotive Day in Liège, centred around life cycle analysis and recycling.