A pilot action on Regions in Industrial Transition was launched in 2018 to help test new approaches to industrial transition and provide evidence to underpin post-2020 policies and programmes. Regions in industrial transition face specific challenges, notably where this is associated with a lack of an appropriate skills-base, high unit labour costs and deindustrialisation.
These regions may be unable to attract sufficient extra-regional investment to encourage broad industrial modernisation or make full use of the opportunities offered by European programmes. Hauts-de-France was one of 12 region selected to identify “high impact” pilot actions.

REID acted as an advisor to the Regional Council in developing a pilot action that was awarded €300,000 in support by the European Commission. The pilot action reinforced the team of the regional innovation agency (HDFID) by making available a specialist in digitalisation to conduct a series of targeted ‘digital innovation audits’ in selected ‘traditional manufacturing firms (between 80-100 firms were expected to benefit from the audit). In addition, the pilot action will test a ‘digital transition voucher’ to support selected firms to recruit and train a young or previously unemployed specialist (vocational or engineering/ICT qualifications). A key element of the process will be to ensure that the application of digital technologies is done in a way to reinforce competitiveness of the firm and avoid job losses (employment rich industrial transition).