The specific objectives of the workshop are:

• to analyse the state of progress in both EU countries and in non-EU countries regarding the level of competition in research and innovation funding and usage of performance indicators as criteria for R&D funding;
• to discuss key issues in the Danube countries in this regard from the national perspectives, focusing on the non-EU Danube region countries; (this may include, wherever relevant, the exchange of arguments regarding data availability, robustness and / harmonization towards the Innovation Union Scoreboard and the EU innovation indicator);
• to transfer good practices from Danube countries with well-functioning R&I systems to those with identified deficiencies in this regard; and
• to identify concrete measures to be recommended to policy-makers and funding agencies in the countries with ongoing reformation processes of R&I systems for enhancing progress towards catching-up to international excellence standards.

The target audience includes policy-makers, programme owners and, as well as, research administrators and managers who are involved in the design or negotiation or implementation of reforms of the national, regional or institutional systems; involved in developing or managing the statistical systems on R&I and linking them to the EU R&I monitoring system or subjects to the assessments of R&I performance or funding procedures at the institutional or project level.

The participation to the workhop is upon invitation.