18.06.2008 [News]

IncoNet EECA-meeting for Coordinators of projects targeting Eastern European and Central Asian countries (Bonn)

One main task of the IncoNet EECA is to establish and run Policy Dialogue Platforms with Eastern European and Central Asian countries (EECA) involving stakeholders from policy making, science community and industry. The dialogue will address national S&T potential, policy goals and demands in order to define common priorities and to develop respective joint scenarios and implementation strategies. These activities are to contribute to a strengthened S&T cooperation and participation of EECA countries in the 7th EU Framework Programme.

Regarding the work within IncoNet EECA it is an essential to adjust activities with several other EU-financed projects which already deal with the enhancement of cross-border R&D cooperation between EU Member States, Associated States and countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), with capacity building and with knowledge transfer to markets. But first of all the exchange of information and experiences on cooperation with EECA countries seems to be worthwhile and helpful for future activities of all stakeholders engaged in these regions.

Intention is silver, but action is golden... Therefore in the forefront of an intended “project coordinators meeting” DLR assembled all potential ongoing projects funded within FP6 and FP7 which deal with EECA countries and contacted the coordinators of 28 relevant projects in order to enlist them to participate in the workshop. Finally 18 project coordinators from nine countries (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Turkey) accepted the invitation for the meeting in Bonn.

The overall goal of the event was to start a discussion of important questions regarding thematic and/or regional synergies between several co-ordination initiatives and to identify possible benefits arising from the IncoNet EECA project for other activities concerning R&D cooperation with EECA countries. Furthermore the meeting should be the starting shot for a continuous dialogue about factors for success/ causes for possible barriers identified during research co-operations between EU, Associated States and EECA countries, solutions found for such problems etc.

In the beginning of the workshop the following projects were presented (speaker in brackets):

  • ASCABOS (Nikolay Valchev, Bulgaria)
  • BLACK SEA-Interconnection (Murat Soysal, Turkey)
  • Black Sea-ERA.Net (Serban Panaitescu, Speranta Rasan, Romania)
  • ADAGIO (Josef Eitzinger, Austria)
  • RUSERA-EXE (Olga Gashuk, Russia)
  • INCOMAT (Elke Römhild, Germany)
  • RegionERA (Alla Akulshina, Russia)
  • SCOPE-EAST (Anja Köhler, Germany)
  • NIS-Nest (Maria Samara, Greece)
  • INCONTACT (Vangelis Argoudelis, Greece)
  • NET4SOCIETY (Christa Engel, Germany)
  • BS-RESPOT (George Bonas, Greece)
  • IncoNet EECA (George Bonas, Greece)
  • BONUS/BONUS PLUS (Sif Johansson, Sweden)
  • Idealistfp7 (Mohsine Chefki, replaced by Erich Rathske, Germany)

Furthermore the coordinators of the following intended projects which currently are under negotiations took part in the meeting:

  • BILAT-Russia (Stefan Klumpp, Germany)
  • BILAT-Ukraine (Jean-Luc Teffo, France)
  • ERA-Net RUS (Markus Albertini, Germany)


The presentations were followed by an open minded discussion along these issues:

  1. What synergies/ what benefits could the IncoNet EECA project create for other coordination and support activities targeting EECA countries – How can IncoNet EECA support other initiatives?
  2. How could ongoing EU-financed coordination and support activities develop closer interactions and synergies among each other on behalf of a higher efficiency and optimized efforts - How can several EU funded initiatives can support among each other?
  3. (How) Can EU-financed coordination and support activities with their results and experiences support closer thematic or / and regional cooperation, also as an input e.g. for IncoNet based activities – How can project results contribute to closer co-operations aside from publicly funded initiatives?
  4. Building an EU-EECA Coordinators Board: Estimation of the project coordinators concerning relevance, possible benefits, barriers and sustainability of such a board.

Assisted by DLR the participants brought together the results of the fruitful discussions in a “Conclusion document”. This agreement hopefully forms the first milestone on a worthwhile track of systematic contacts in the future.


Links:

Programme of the meeting

Participants of the meeting

Conclusions of the meeting

Further information on presented projects (zip file)

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