New “Stairway to Excellence” (S2E) webpages are now available as part of the re-designed Smart Specialisation Platform (S3P) website.

The Commission launched in 2014 the “Cohesion Policy and the synergies with the research and development funds: the Stairway to Excellence (S2E)” project, managed by the Joint Research Centre within the Smart Specialisation Platform.


The main focus is put on supporting post 2004 EU countries and regions in order to develop the synergies between Horizon 2020 and European Structural and Investment Funds.

The activities of the S2E project include:
National policy events
National and Regional Fact & Figures
S2E Country Reports
• Practical Synergies Examples between different innovation-related EU funding
• Fiches on a selection of European Instruments/ Platforms/ Concepts

Should you need more information please visit the S2E website:

https://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/stairway-to-excellence or contact [email protected]