"Under the high patronage of the Committee of the Regions, the already traditional Nova Gorica Forum – addressing pertinent issues of implementing Lisbon Agenda in European regions – takes place this year between May 31 – June 02, 2007. ASO Ljubljana financially supports the participation of experts form the West Balkan Countries.

The focus of EREF-2007 is public RTD funding and communication, as well as the role of structural funding in support of knowledge-based competitiveness.
Besides stakeholders from business and RTD, representatives of regional and local authorities, as well as those of EU institutions, European associations and networks will exchange views on good practice in creating conditions for successful Lisbon-type reforms and making RTD the backbone of their development effort.

Benefiting from analytical reports being prepared within the project "Building and Improving Support for RTD Policy and Public Spending" (BIS-RTD), which is being funded by the European Commission, the participants of the Forum will acquire a good insight into the experience, successes, good instruments and challenges of European regions in building knowledge societies and linking research with economic operators to enhance and support the creation of new technologies and other innovations.
Participation at the Forum will also provide opportunities for meeting potential business and RTD partners, for inter-regional networking at EU-27 level, as well as with potential partners from the Candidate and Potential Candidate countries. Having shared the common state for over 70 years, Slovenia as a whole, along with the border region of Gorisko, traditionally plays the role of natural gateway to the countries of the former Yugoslavia. For that reason this region contributes about a third of Forum participants.
Croatia, Flanders, Lombardia, and Turkey have been invited to be the guest regions of EREF-2007.
Besides the various plenary sessions, in the afternoon of the second day we have scheduled four workshops which will allow participants to elaborate on the selected topics and present in detail their relevant experiences.

Forum participants will receive the Proceedings, as well as two interesting overviews:
1. EU Pre-Accession assistance priorities for Candidate and Potential Candidate countries
2. EU-27 national priorities for cohesion and structural funding

In addition, a day prior to EREF-2007, SBRA – as secretariat of the Research, Innovation and Business Network for Central and South-eastern Europe (RIBN) – is organizing the RIBN Business Forum (May 30, 2007), which will introduce the activities of SEE-ERA.NET, the Canadian support for international research cooperation, and the EU Financial Advisory Service.
The RIBN Business Forum will also include a match-making event, where companies from EU-27 will have a chance to meet companies from Candidate and Potential Candidate Countries, as well as to discuss possible support with respective regional and/or national authorities and banks. In order to assist us with the match-making process, please fill out the Project Fiche that you will find on the left handside menu of this site.

Working Languages
The EREF-2007 Forum will be held in English, Slovenian, Italian, Serbian and Croatian. The RIBN annual meeting and Business Forum will be conducted in English.

Registration Fee
Thanks to a subsidy from the Slovenian government there will be no participation fee for EREF-2007. Likewise, the RIBN Business Forum has no participation fee.

Contact
For more information about the forum agenda, registration ect., please visit the EREF homepage - http://www.eref.si/

Source: Homepage ASO Ljubljana