24. Jul. 2007

Through the first Southeast European Era-Net (SEE-ERA.NET) "Pilot Joint Call for Research Proposals" 161 research teams from all participating countries in 32 selected projects will receive funding for cross-national research and networking.

The projects involve three thematic areas:
o Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology; sub area: Sustainable production and management of biological resources from land, forest and aquatic environments
o Information and Communication Technologies; sub area: Applications Research
o Environment; sub area: Environmental Technologies

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

321 eligible project proposals involving 1437 research teams were submitted until 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 please take a look at: http://www.see-era.net/pjc/index.html

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: www.see-era.net

SEE-ERA.NET is supported by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme.

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
Web: http://www.see-era.net