AAVIT advocated the interests of the IT sector at an innovative entrepreneurship seminar

On 2 March, a seminar entitled Virtual Enterprise in the Innovative Environment (not only) of the City of Prague took place at the Prague City Hall. The seminar was moderated by AAVIT Director Jaromír Hanzal and featured several interesting speakers from the public administration and financial sector.

The opening speech was delivered by the Prague City Councillor Jan Chabr, who took the patronage of the event. He mentioned the importance of promoting innovative entrepreneurship in Prague and described the activities that the city’s administration is undertaking to strengthen its innovative position in competition with other major cities in the Central European region. Among them, the ambitious project of converting Strahov Stadium into a modern technology centre, which will serve as a giant innovation and startup hub, is certainly worth mentioning.

Petr Filipi, Director of the MIT Department of Digitisation and Internet, then spoke, introducing the participants to the practical aspects of submitting projects and providing subsidies under the MIT’s support instruments. He shared his experience gained from the Virtual Enterprise call from last year and explained how the new call will differ from the previous one. His contribution aroused considerable interest among the participants and a stimulating discussion followed.

The presentation on the MIT subsidy programmes to support the digitalisation of business was followed by representatives of J&T Leasing Oldřich Freidinger and Kamila Jungová. They presented their company’s financial products used not only to finance the implementation of digital innovations. They can be used both independently and as a complementary source for co-financing grant projects.

A broader view on the issue of subsidy support for Czech companies was provided by Marian Piecha, Senior Director of the Funds Section. In addition to digitalisation, he also addressed the topic of support for science and research and answered several questions from the audience. He also presented some interesting legislative proposals that should motivate Czech companies to implement digital solutions through subsidy instruments.

A very positive outcome of the seminar was the mention that the European Commission is reportedly considering further use of the National Recovery Plan mechanism in the post-2023 period. Compared to the Structural and Investment Funds, the Commission sees advantages in the fact that the funds provided are linked to the implementation of specific reforms, which better enables the subsidy instruments to push policy priorities.

In the Czech context, this means that it could be possible to announce further subsidy calls to support the implementation of digital measures, not only for businesses from the capital city of Prague, as was the case in the first Virtual Enterprise call in 2022. The call, which is planned for the following months of 2023, will be part of the Operational Programme Technology and Applications for Competitiveness. Unfortunately, the latter does not allow support for entrepreneurship in the territory of the capital city of Prague through a similar call.