Western Balkans

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

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News archive - Italy’s S&T Relations to the Western Balkan Countries

Italy’s relations with the countries of the Balkans are a natural priority in the panorama of Italian foreign policy as a result of political tradi-tion, geographic location, and cultural affinity. Our geographic proximity, interdependence regarding security and migration, and common in-terest in redefining the map of cooperation, are all reasons that make the Western Balkans an area of crucial importance for Italy.

In the Western Balkans, Italy is also one of the most active countries in the sector of Development Cooperation, seen as a support for the proc-ess of economic transition and political democratisation in the region with the goal of encouraging stabilisation.

Italian Cooperation is concentrated in the sectors of infrastructure, energy, environment, health, education, public administration, support for the private sector (SMEs in particular) and protection of cultural heritage.

===Implemented projects

Italy, through various organisations (universities, research centres etc.), participated in several projects with the WBC, funded by the 6th Framework Programme. The main goal of the projects was reinforcement of the research capacities, improvement of knowledge, research, methodologies, financial support, human resources etc. A successful collaboration in this field was carried out with the Macedonian Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy on the RECAPO project.

The Italian Agency for the Promotion of European Research (APRE) is currently participating in several projects involving the Western Balkan countries. The project EU BALKAN FABNET has the objective of encouraging and facilitating the participation of research centres and SMEs of the WBC in innovation and research activities regarding Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology in FP7. The objectives of the FOOD-N-CO project are similar, as they are also oriented to facilitating FP7 participation in this field. Furthermore, APRE is involved in the preparation of an FP7 WBC-INCO.NET project proposal.

===Italy’s aims

Our expectations are to expand the front of excellence to the West Balkan countries, with emphasis on keeping experts in the region and broadening perspectives for high level education, research and employability of young people. This will also provide a significant contribution to preventing the brain drain, realised through new job opportunities in the scientific field and permanent personal development by network-ing with leading European research centres. It is in our interest to build a solid basis for further integration of the Western Balkan countries into European projects and international collaboration.