With its main focus on the Western Balkans (WB), the conference “Strengthening technology transfer in Europe” could not have come at a more appropriate time, i.e. just a few weeks after the EU Enlargement Summit of October 6th 2021 in Brdo, Slovenia, where the Prime Ministers of the EU countries and WB have reaffirmed that the European perspective for the WB remains the shared strategic choice. In the Summit’s final declaration, the Prime Ministers also launched an “Agenda for Innovation for the WB” to be developed under the aegis of the European Commission. With this declaration, the EU confirms the strategic importance of building up innovation capacities in the WB, where similarly to other Eastern European countries formerly under communist regimes, science was regarded more as an instrument for intellectual leadership rather than a requirement for economic competitiveness. The European Innovation scoreboard provides evidence about the important innovation gap still existing today between the Western and Eastern sides of Europe.