BLACK SEA HORIZON

Forschungspolitik & Entwicklung

BLACK SEA HORIZON

S&T biregional cooperation EU - Black Sea Countries 2015-2018

The three main objectives of the BLACK SEA HORIZON were:

to support the EU’s external relations with the target region by significantly contributing to ongoing bi-regional and regional STI policy dialogues, and by increasing the knowledge base about the EU’s external environment.
to stimulate bi-regional STI cooperation and to strengthen the EU’s economic competitiveness.
to contribute to the establishment of supportive framework conditions by facilitating the pooling of resources and by identifying challenging thematic areas for mutual STI cooperation.

The BSH project, like most of the INCO actions, had a dual objective: it contributed to the policy dialogue between the EU and the target regions, and implemented a series of concrete activities to address the specific goals set in the call for proposals. These two objectives were implemented in parallel, with the policy dialogue level providing guidance, support, and endorsement of the project’s results, and with the operational level feeding the policy dialogue with analytical evidence and implementing the recommendations.

In terms of policy dialogue, BSH aimed to address all the relevant policy dialogue fora from the beginning of the project in order to establish a two-way communication: to inform the policy makers about the objectives, results, and achievements of the project and, vice-versa, to receive guidance and support for a successful implementation and/or follow-up of its actions.

In terms of concrete actions (the ‘operational level’), the project implemented a series of activities requested by the call (and beyond):

BSH promoted the participation in HORIZON 2020 (identification of topics for cooperation, implementing grants to increase networking, promoting participation in co-fund schemes, etc.);
BSH promoted innovation (cluster policies, business contacts among clusters, other forms of innovation).

The above actions were implemented in a synergetic and complementary way with the IncoNet EaP project, which also addressed the broad goal of cooperation in HORIZON 2020 and innovation.

Moreover, BSH built on the achievements of the BS-ERANET that successfully launched a joint call in the region, by paving the ground for a Regional Funding Platform able to sustainably implement joint research funding activities in the Black Sea region.

Ultimately, and as a result and synthesis of all its activities and achievements, the BSH project developed a sustainable “EU-Black Sea Cooperation Programme in STI (BSCP)” supported by the afore-mentioned policy dialogues. In that respect, the project constituted a good practice example, and contributed towards the direction of an ‘EU Strategy for the Black Sea region’.

The partnership consisted of 19 partners also involved in other cooperation and support actions targeting the countries covered by BSH, a fact that stimulated cooperation and synergies with the parallel running initiatives and projects.

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