Due to some organisational issues, the 2^nd strategic workshop for Western Balkan NCPs was not organised in Montenegro (as previously foreseen in DoW) but in Krems, Austria on November 18-19, 2013. The aim of this Workshop was to offer an outline of the European Research Area funding opportunities, with special focus on Horizon 2020 and multilateral programmes and at the same time to offer stimulating and engaging networking opportunities with Austrian NCPs and students of the Master course in Research and Innovation in Higher Educations from the European Countries. WBC NCPs had the opportunity to learn the training methods to present ERA contents in an interactive and playful way and apply those in the trainings with their customers in the respective country.

In order to increase capacities of the WBC NCPs twinning was chosen as the best instrument for additional and tailored learning on the job. The goals of the twinning were to cover specific needs of WBC-NCPs and to deepen relationships between EU and WBC NCPs. Twinning was offered in a competitive way – the NCPs were invited to write the proposal based on their personal needs. The response to this activity was however surprisingly low – only Kosovo* expressed concrete interest for twinning with Austria. During the consultations later on with e.g. Ministries in charge of Science from the region it became obvious that one of the reasons might be the timing of this activity – new contact persons for the Horizon 2020 were not yet appointed to the time of this activity. It was therefore decided to include a special call for NCPs to join the final conference which took place in March 2014 (see below). Further information is provided in Report on strategic NCP seminars and twinnings (D.5.44) which was updated and uploaded to wbc-inco.net website (teamzone). 

In order to offer more practical information and assistance to researchers on different aspects of participation in Horizon 2020, as well as to facilitate contact with European NCPs- a number of NCPs was invited (see Call for NCPs) to join the Final Conference and Brokerage event in Vienna in March 2014. The National Contact Points from the region as well as from EU countries were supported by travel grants. This activity however was undertaken within WP 8 (T8.4).