POLICY ANSWERS Webinar: Implementation of the European Research Area in the Western Balkans

POLICY ANSWERS organises an online webinar on 25 June 2024 at 10.00 CET (one hour).

The recording of the event is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBDCmu9WEkE

The speaker of this POLICY ANSWERS webinar is Malte Schrage-Veltins, Scientific Officer at the Project Management Agency of the German Aero Space Center (DLR). He is leading the project’s task to monitor Western Balkans ERA progress with the drafting of annual Western Balkans ERA Country Reports.

The objective of the European Research Area is to inspire the best talents to enter research careers, incite industry to invest more in European research and strongly contribute to the creation of sustainable growth and jobs. The Framework Programmes are instruments to achieve ERA objectives.

In 2000, the European Union decided to create the European Research Area, an “internal market” for research, an area of free movement of knowledge, researchers and technology; structuring and coordinating national research policies and activities and developing a common European research policy. In 2009, the ERA was incorporated into the EU Treaties, setting out the objective of the EU to achieve a European Research Area in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely. In 2018, the Council of the EU and the European Commission initiated a process to renew the ERA, and establish a new ERA narrative, new objectives and a more effective ERA governance. In late 2021, the Council of the EU adopted a Pact for Research and Innovation with values and principles guiding research and innovation and priority areas for joint action as a first key achievement. In addition to this new governance framework, an ERA Policy Agenda 2022-2024 with 20 voluntary actions to contribute to the priority areas of the Pact for R&I has been defined.

The ERA Actions are supposed to be implemented by the European Member States and the countries associated to ERA in support of the first key achievement of the new ERA, the Pact for Research and Innovation, and are therefore grouped into the four priority areas:

1. Deepening a truly functioning internal market for knowledge
2. Taking up together the green transition and digital transformation and other challenges with impact on society, and increasing society’s participation in the ERA
3. Enhancing access to research and innovation excellence and enhancing interconnections between innovation ecosystems across the EU
4. Advancing concerted research and innovation investments and reforms

More information is available on the Western Balkans Information Hub: https://www.westernbalkans-infohub.eu/glossary/european-research-area/

The European Commission has also set the goal with its Pact for Research & Innovation to prepare annual ERA Country Reports for each Member State and for the economies associated to Horizon Europe. Therefore, the ERA Country Reports have also been prepared for the Western Balkans’ economies (with the POLICY ANSWERS directly contributing four of them) and present a qualitative assessment of each economy’s progress in implementing the ERA policy agenda as well as a quantitative analysis of its progress towards achieving the ERA priorities.

This webinar will deal with two topics:

It will generally introduce into

• the new ERA with its policy framework,
• the ERA Policy Agenda and its 20 actions, and
• the current approach of the European Commission to monitor and report ERA progress.

It will specifically

• provide an overview of drivers and barriers of the Western Balkans with regard to ERA integration based on the ERA Country Reports,
• give insights into the involvement of POLICY ANSWERS in drafting the reports.

The POLICY ANSWERS consortium warmly invites your participation and encourages you to share this invitation with those who might be interested in attending the webinar.

Agenda