Reblogged from Science on the Net

Although the scientific performance of the Western Balkan countries (WBC) has improved in recent years, the lack of human resources, research funding and facilities, as well as a weak regulatory regime, are the main obstacles to an improvement of the situation. At the same time, in 2012 the Western Balkans have required 38 patents in the United States, compared to an average of 25 patents for universities and leading research institutes in the U.S.

The conference “Towards 2020: New Horizons for RTD and Innovation in the Western Balkan Region”, which will take place on 27 and 28 March 2014 in Vienna, is the final step of a huge project named WBC – INCO.NET. This project is funded by the Seventh Framework Programme and supports international cooperation activities through bi-regional platforms, for instance providing a database of all the calls of proposals (400 calls in the database covering 2009-2014). Balkan countries involved are 10: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Slovenia and Turkey. The final cost of the project was EUR 3,496,584, with EUR 3,048,470 of UE contribution.

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