Building on ORIGINN partners’ best practices and lessons from project meetings, the Ministry refined its policy framework and designed a dedicated measure – “Investment support for the development of the business environment in rural areas for the period 2023–2027” – under the intervention “8.2 – Investments for the development of the business environment in rural areas.”
To ensure the measure matched local needs, the Ministry held stakeholder meetings in several local counties. These sessions shared ORIGINN-sourced examples of successful business hubs and gathered feedback on the draft support scheme. A particularly valuable exchange was a meeting organized by ORIGINN’s Irish partners with the founders of the Co:worx enterprise hub and representatives of Ireland’s enterprise hub network Connected Hubs.
Further inspired by the lessons learned from ORIGINN – especially experiences its Irish partners gained from the launching of The Ludgate Hub –, a group of Estonian stakeholders undertook a study visit to rural enterprise hubs in Ireland in spring 2025 to strengthen their readiness to establish rural enterprise hubs in the region.
The implementing regulation of the support measure by the Minister of Regional Affairs and Agriculture of Estonia has been approved. The total budget of the measure is 5,000,000 €. The application round will run from 26 January to 16 February 2026.
