The paper prepared by a group of specialist of the Institut für Technologie- und Regionalpolitik addresses the priority-setting in the RTD-policy offering case-studies of 6 countries: Canada, Ireland, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand and United Kingdom.The priority-setting in RTD-policy has become an issue of major concern in most OECD countries, and in particular in EU where the emergence of the European Research Area has triggered a debate on the (re-)focusing on national research and technology portfolios.However the practices in terms of policies, instruments and institutions may differ considerably due to national cultures and historically grown characteristics, and the rigidities of the institutional framework and of organizational settings are of such nature, that path-dependencies can hardly be avoided. Still, one can observe an overall convergence of guiding concepts underlying research and technology policy, concentrating on the approach of National Innovation Systems (NIS), and these common grounds in terms of understanding of and dealing with research and innovation facilitate the mutual learning from other countries’ experience. Therefore, and in view of importance of the debate on priority-setting in Austria, a comparative analysis of current practices of priority-setting in key OECD countries was commissioned by the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development in order to strengthen foundations of the debate in Austria. The case studies of Canada, Ireland, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand and United Kingdom have been thoroughly reviewed with the outcomes presented hereunder. The choice of the countries in question was grounded on the desire to avoid focusing on the “usual suspects” and at the same time achieve a good balance between different models of priority-setting.