The projects involve three thematic areas:

• Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology; sub area: Sustainable Production and Management of Biological Resources from Land, Forest and Aquatic Environments
• Information and Communication Technologies; sub area: Applications
• Research
• Environment; sub area: Environmental Technologies

This call is funded by national contributions from the 14 participating countries: Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.

321 eligible project proposals involving 1,437 research teams were submitted by the deadline for the call on March 31, 2007, including 739 teams from the Western Balkan countries. This clearly shows the need but also the potential for more scientific cooperation with the Western Balkan countries.

For more details and statistics of the call follow the link to the website on the SEE-ERA.NET Pilot Joint Call: /link/2183.html.

A New Programme for Southeast Europe

These encouraging results are one reason for the development of a new research-funding programme - the Regional Programme for Cooperation with South-East Europe - ReP-SEE. This programme will provide several calls for proposals with increased budget for funding scientific cooperation in the EU and the Western Balkan countries.

Please check the SEE-ERA.NET website regularly for more information
and updates: /org/200.html.

Article published in eJournal summer 2007.

Contact:
Florian Gruber
Southeast European Era-Net
Centre for Social Innovation
Linke Wienzeile 246, A-1150 Vienna. Austria.
Tel: 0043-1-49 50 442 56
Fax: 0043-1-49 50 442 40
Email: gruber@zsi.at