Commission puts up prizes for public initiatives

The European Commission has named nine winners in the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration, which recognises initiatives that benefit citizens, firms, or research and education.

A project by the Helsinki metropolitan area to make data openly available to citizens was a winner in the citizens category, while a Dutch region’s initiative to help businesses access funding more easily was one of the three winners in the firms category. Meanwhile, a plagiarism detection system from Slovakia was one of the three research and education category winners.

“Innovation is not just something for business,” said European research commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who presented the awards on 6 June during a conference on European innovation in Cork, Ireland.