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The POLICY ANSWERS project which is powering the Western Balkans Info Hub is also responsible for the logisics and co-organisation of the Policy Dialogue meetings of the Steering Platforms for the Western Balkans. In this context, part of the project team was in Podgorica this week for the Ministerial Meeting of the Steering Platform on Research and Innovation, 20-21 October. The event was supervised by Desiree Pecarz from the Centre for Social Innovation, leader of the respective Work Package, with the support of the project coordinator Elke Dall (Centre for Social Innovation), Ulrike Kunze (PT-DLR, Germany), and Milica Bozovic (STP-ME, local partner in Montenegro). Technical and administrative arrangements were provided by Congress Travel Agency in cooperation with the Hotel Hilton Crna Gora, the event venue.
The representatives from the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation and DG Joint Research Centre, who were responsible for the content and preparation of the event, together with the local hosts from the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation of Montenegro, expressed their satisfaction with the support provided by POLICY ANSWERS.
The event started with a welcome dinner on Sunday 19 October. POLICY ANSWERS materials were made available for the participants at the registration, for example our updated project brochure POLICY ANSWERS Achievements up to September 2025 and the Western Balkans Agenda Monitoring Cards in six different fields released in July 2025. We also distributed our Policy Brief WB Monitoring and Reporting Challenges.
Despite some necessary last-minute changes in the opening of the event on 20 October, our POLICY ANSWERS colleague Andrijana Tasevska (INOVA) facilitated the hand-over ceremony of innovation vouchers to six project representatives out of the 15 initiatives funded under the “Western Balkans Innovation Voucher” pilot scheme by POLICY ANSWERS. We also shared the document Policy Lessons from Innovation Vouchers with the audience.
Side events supported by our team included presentations by the Regional Cooperation Council, the Joint Research Centre as well as COST. On 21 October, a series of bilateral meetings were organised, with the European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekatarina Zaharieva, with the Montenegrin ministers as well as with COST.
POLICY ANSWERS eventually also contributed to the event of ScienceBusiness which was organised after the Ministerial Meeting at the University of Montenegro.