The SEE-IFA network is a network of South East European national and regional innovation & finance agencies (IFAs), authorities and universities, which collaborate within an EU-funded project. Lead-managed by Austria-based aws, it unites eleven partner organizations from ten SEE countries, joining forces to strengthen the capacity of IFA project partners to effectively provide innovation and technology support to micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs). The project has a budget of EUR 2.7 million and is being implemented between March 2009 and December 2011. A project prolongation until March 2012 is currently being prepared.

The next steps of the SEE-IFA network focus on action planning for new instruments and institutions in Croatia, Serbia, FYROM, Romania and Bulgaria as well as a funding assessment and the selection of pilot technologies for the patent fund.

More inormation on past activities, project progress etc. is provided in the newsletter attached below.

Source: Andrea Waclik, aws