About IncoNet EECA

The partnership between the countries of the European Union and Eastern Europe/Central Asia (EECA) is of utmost importance for the political, economic and social development of both regions. Linking the scientific potential and resources has a huge impact on economic growth, social prosperity and welfare as well as public stability. The EU and EECA countries have significant potentials both in terms of the strong academic community and of worldwide leading S&T institutes in a variety of scientific disciplines.

In order to make optimum use of each others academic strengths, to share respective resources and to prepare the ground for a joint transfer of academic results to national, regional and worldwide markets there is a strong bi-regional interest in enhancing S&T cooperation. Although the S&T cooperation between the EU Member States, Associated Countries and the EECA partner countries is quite developed, there is still much room for its further development addressing each others priorities as well as global challenges and building on national, bilateral and Community instruments. The IncoNet EECA project will facilitate a coordination of S&T policies building on common interest and aiming at mutual benefit in order to strengthen the cooperation between EU and EECA.

The main objectives of IncoNet EECA are:

• To support and facilitate a bi-regional EU – EECA S&T policy dialogue and, in the case of Russia and the Ukraine, a complementary bilateral S&T policy dialogue 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 in order to strengthen the S&T cooperation. During this project, three S&T Policy Dialogue Platforms will be established and supported through the creation of a knowledge base and a variety of other concrete activities.
• To address other EU policies and their Instruments from which S&T cooperation with EECA could benefit. Emphasis will be given to the European Neighbourhood Policy – ENP and the Four Common Spaces with Russia (External Relations), the Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation (DCEC), the Education Policy (Life Long Learning Programme - LLL) and the Innovation policy (Competitiveness and Innovation Programme – CIP) 
• To strengthen the participation of EECA in FP7 with emphasis on the 'Cooperation'  Programme but addressing other Specific Programmes, such as 'Peoples', 'Ideas', 'Capacities – SMEs', as well. In parallel, concrete recommendation for future Specific International Cooperation Activities (SICAs) will be presented to the European Commission and to the responsible Programme Committees.
• To raise the capacities of the EECA countries, through particular activities that will address the institution building and human potential development of the existing National Information Points/National Contact Points.
• To implement strategic analyses that will provide a knowledge base and scientific evidence for the bi-regional/ bilateral dialogue.
• To monitor and review the activities performed in the context of IncoNet EECA in order to assess the quality of the overall process (SWOT analysis) and to ensure the sustainability of these activities beyond the 4-year duration of this project.
• To build a public ´EU-EECA S&T Web Portal` and to setup a Central Information Office to widely disseminate information and to raise awareness of the potential of and the framework for enhanced EU-EECA S&T cooperation.

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  topic IncoNet EECA

  Project structure

  The project will address policy stakeholders from the EU/AC and EECA countries. The aim is to establish and sustain three dedicated S&T Policy Dialogue Platforms: one biregional EU/AC with all Eastern European and Central Asian countries, and two bilateral platforms for the respective dialogues of EU/AC with Russia and with Ukraine. The existing policy framework for cooperation will hereby be highlighted and improved. Special focus is the field of S&T to develop new opportunities and links between the scientific and research communities of the countries involved.
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  topic INCO-NETs

  The IncoNet Family

  FP7 places a new emphasis on international research collaboration and provides a wider range of opportunities for international collaboration. In the Capacities programme there will be support for a range of activities to strengthen research capacity in the European scientific community and other regions of the world. Three initiatives will be supported: INCO-NETs, Bilateral Coordination and ERA-NETs. INCO-NETs will support international collaborations across FP7 with partner regions: Western Balkans; Mediterranean; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Latin America; Subsahara-Africa and South East Asia.
  [more] (URL: http://www.inco-eeca.net/en/113.php)