26.09.2008 [News]

BILAT-RUS: Enhancing the bilateral S&T Partnership with the Russian Federation

BILAT-RUS was officially launched during an opening session in Brussels on 25th September 2008. Its principal goal lies in the enhancement of the bilateral S&T part-nership between the Russian Federation and the EU Member States, Candidate Countries and other Associated Countries. It focuses on contributing to the sustain-able implementation of the Common Space on Research, Education and Culture be-tween the EU and Russia and on further strengthening the participation of Russia in Community programmes – most prominently the 7th Framework Programme for Re-search and Technological Development (FP7).

The major objectives of BILAT-RUS are:

• to collect and to provide information about bilateral S&T cooperation pro-grammes.
• to analyse and to optimise the framework and the instruments for enhanced future EU-Russian cooperation across all S&T themes.
• to appraise and to analyse all relevant national and international mobility pro-grammes between Russia and the EU.
• to meet the short and medium term needs of existing and upcoming joint the-matic EU-Russian Working Groups on S&T cooperation (for instance the fol-lowing groups: food /agriculture/ biotechnology, health, nanotechnology, en-ergy and mobility).

The project concept of BILAT-RUS builds on the following main pillars:

• setting up a dialogue and collaborating with the major stakeholders in Russia and the EU, responsible for setting the frame for S&T cooperation (Russia: Ministry of Education and Science, Federal Agency for Science and Innovations, FP7 National Contact Points (NCPs); EU: Member State Ministries and NCPs, Commission Services; EU-Russia Policy Dialogue Platform to be set-up through the project Inco-Net EECA).
• building on and complementing previous, ongoing and future coordination and support activities aiming at enhancing the cooperation between the EU and the Russian Federation.
• making optimum use of synergies with ongoing activities (Inco-Net EECA, SCOPE-EAST, etc.).
• assuring coherence and consistency across the priority fields of cooperation, particularly with regard to the support of bilateral Working Groups between Russia and the EU.
• adding particular value through addressing the optimisation of the framework for S&T cooperation between Russia and the EU.

Partners

• Germany (coordinator):
  International Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research at the Project Management Agency c/o German Aerospace Center (DLR)
  Centre for Innovation and Technology in NRW (ZENIT)
• Russia:
  State University Higher School of Economics (HSE)
  Russian Research Centre ‚Kurchatov Institute’ (KIAE)
  State Technological University ‘Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys’ (MISIS)
  Analytical Centre for S&T and Educational Programmes (ICISTE)
• France:
  National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
• Austria:
  Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)
  Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)

Contact

International Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research at the Project Management Agency c/o German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Heinrich-Konen-Str. 1
53227 Bonn, Germany

Stefan Klumpp
Phone: +49 228 3821-457
Fax:   +49 228 3821-444
E-Mail: stefan.klumpp@dlr.de