Bosnia and Herzegovina Becomes a Member of the Digital Europe Program

On the occasion of the ceremonial signing of the Agreement on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Accession to the Digital Europe Program, the Executive Director of INTERA TP, Vedran Šimunović, participated in a panel discussion titled “Status Quo in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the Path to Digital Europe” held at the “Europe House” in Sarajevo on June 4th. In his presentation, Šimunović reflected on digital innovation hubs (DIH), as INTERA is one of them, and presented the main activities in its capacity as a DIH towards small and medium-sized enterprises through the existing system of innovation vouchers.

The agreement, signed on May 16th, 2024, in Brussels by the EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, will be retroactively effective from January 1st of this year.

With a budget of 7.5 billion euros for the period from 2021 to 2027, the program aims to strengthen infrastructure and capacities in key areas such as supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital skills. The signed agreement represents a significant step towards improving working conditions and development for small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of digitalization, and it will enable legal and physical entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to apply for EU grants in the field of digitalization under the same conditions as applicants from all over Europe.

The signing ceremony of the agreement was organized within the framework of the project “Innovation and Digitalization of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina EU4DigitalSME,” co-financed by the European Union (with 5 million euros) and the German government (with 1.1 million euros), and implemented by GIZ.