National-regional governance of STI

In Italy, since the major change to the constitution, in 2001, research and innovation policies are subject to concurrent legislative competence, meaning that they are shared between regions and the state. In particular, regions have legislative powers, except for the determination of fundamental principles, which are reserved for the legislation of the State. Italian regions have traditionally used such competences to foster knowledge-based economic development, also before the concept of Smart Specialisation was established. At the national level, two ministries are critical for STI, MUR (Ministry for University and Research) and MIMIT (ministry for firms and made in Italy), formerly known as MISE (Ministry for Economic Development). MUR is tasked with promoting and developing the activity of Italian scientific and technological research, in connection with other state administrations, both central and regional, which have similar competencies in the field. The objective is to enhance, among the entities engaged in research, the ability to generate new knowledge and create new high-value-added knowledge products and production processes. MIMIT (formerly MISE) is responsible, among the others, for Industrial Policy, including aspects such as competitiveness, industrial research and innovation, technology transfer, patents and trademarks, support for SMEs.

National and regional S3s: organisation and governance

Italy has one national Smart Specialisation strategy, as well as 19 regional ones and 2 for the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano. In Italy, the coordination between regional and national level of S3 has traditionally revolved around two aspects, namely the development and understanding of different S3s in the country through a monitoring system, as well as the exploitation of synergies between regionally managed Operational Programmes and nationally managed ones. Up until 2023, the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion defined instruments to support regional strategy coordination and promoting synergies between national and regional Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation. Since 2023, the competences of the Agency have been moved under the Department of Cohesion, directly located under ""Presidency of the Council of Ministers". In the current programming period, the coordination between the National and Regional level falls under the responsibilities of an inter-ministerial protocol, involving MIMIT (the former Ministry for Economic Development) and MUR (MInistry of University and Research) as well as a "Subcommittee for National Smart Specialisation Strategy (SNSI) with functions of monitoring and support the implementation of the national strategy.

For information on regional S3s, please return to the homepage: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/assets/s3-observatory/index_en.html