The European Commission is composed of 27 Commissioners, of which ten already had a mandate in the Barroso I Commission. For us the most familiar face is Commissioner Janez PotoËnik who is now responsible for Environment. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Commissioner PotoËnik for all the support we received from him in strengthening research cooperation in and among the Western Balkan countries. His commitment to the region has been instrumental in what has been achieved. We are also confident that with him our environment and thus our lives, including those of the Balkan citizens, are in safe hands. Thank you and congratulations on this new challenge. We are fully aware that a lot of research efforts will be necessary to comply with the EU acquis on Environment, so we hope that in the very near future we can continue to rely on you.

As to the new faces, we would like to welcome Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is now responsible for Research, Innovation and Science. We hope that she will continue to support research cooperation with the Western Balkan countries and see them as privileged partners, given the EU perspective. This brings us to Commissioner Štefan Füle, on whom we very much rely on to continue the close cooperation between research and the enlargement process, not least to ensure a good synergy between the Research Framework Programmes and the Pre-Accession Instrument (IPA).

After less than a month in office, the new Commission adopted the so-called Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Some consider this strategy as re-packaging the Lisbon strategy, others qualify it as being too ambitious and not concrete enough.

But whatever the judgement, the attention and importance attached to research and innovation in the strategy is impressive: five targets, to achieve by 2020, have been identified. Research and innovation is one of them and in fact one could argue that to achieve the other targets on employment, climate change and energy, education and combating poverty, and increased research efforts are also necessary. Research and innovation has thus become a real cross-cutting issue.

WBC-INCO.NET welcomes very much, as identified in one of its Work Packages, that innovation should receive much more attention and be closely associated to research efforts. Since the Commission proposed its EU 2020 Strategy,
some concrete proposals have been worked out. At the Spring Council in March 2010 the Commission proposed an “Innovation Union” flagship initiative refocusing R&D and innovation policy on the major societal challenges, which is expected to be adopted by the European Council in June.

We should therefore not lose any time and take the new focuses afforded by this new Commission and new Commissioner as an occasion to seek further research opportunities in the Balkan region with the EU and see how we can contribute to the “Innovation Union”.