COIN contributes to the advancement of Austria's innovation performance by  the better and broader transposition of knowledge into innovation within two programme lines.

The “Structure” line focused on application-oriented research and technology organisations should lead to an increase in the overall number of qualified R&D partners, particularly competent for the requirements of SMEs. The “Cooperation and Network” line (COIN-Net) encourages technology transfer within entrepreneurial cooperation schemes, thus, raising the level of innovation within businesses and strengthening their cooperation capacities. It focuses on output-oriented cooperation projects to develop and improve innovative products, processes and services. COIN is not restricted to any research area or technological field; projects are funded by grants of up to 70% of the total eligible costs. The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) launches two or three COIN calls per year with an annual funding budget of approximately € 20 million. COIN also contains transnational cooperation opportunities; strategic co-operation projects between Austria and South East/Eastern Europe are particularly addressed. This regional cooperation focus lies with the responsibility of the BMWFJ.

The COIN-Net call in 2009 included this specific regional co-operation focus. All WBCs, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, and all European and Caucasian CIS states including Russia were addressed as partner countries. Every project has to be coordinated from Austria, but at the same time between 15 and 50% of the project funds mandatorily have to be foreseen for the partner countries.

In fact, the special focus is a continuation of a previously independent programme known as CIR-CE (Cooperation in Innovation and Research with Central and Eastern Europe). The countries of South East and Eastern Europe are very important for the Austrian economy and vice versa. For SEE, Austria acts as a beacon economy.

Medium and long-term sustainable solutions cannot be sought in low-wage/ low-tech production in Europe. This also holds true for the WBC region. This is why the situation offers a clear win-win potential. A strategically planned joint axis between players in Austria and in the South East and Eastern European states can be the basis for competitive advantages in a global context, from which all parties involved will benefit. Austrian enterprises can offer, on the one hand, an impetus, and, on the other hand, participate in the accelerated growth thus induced. Due to geographic proximity, these win-win effects can particularly be exploited by technology-oriented SMEs from both, Austria and the partner countries. To obtain state aid, the main beneficiaries of a given project must be SMEs.

The results of the COIN-Net call 2009 meanwhile available, it is very interesting to notice the clear predominance of cooperation with SEE; collaboration with Eastern Europe, in contrast, seems to be quite underdeveloped. In total, 17 cooperation projects with South East/Eastern Europe have been filed, and more than 90 % of the foreign projects partners involved stemmed from SEE.

Only the very best five projects have been selected for funding, and these projects receive grants of around € 1.9 million in total (average grant per project close to € 400,000; in total, more than € 500,000 is foreseen for the partner countries). All selected projects deal either with energy-related issues or with information technologies – or both.