IncoNet EaP PLUS

‘EaP PLUS’ (STI International Cooperation Network for Eastern Partnership Countries – PLUS) is a new coordination and support action funded under Horizon 2020, which was launched on 1 September 2016.

The EaP PLUS project, building on the results of the predecessor FP7 project ‘IncoNet EaP’, aims to address this challenging context by providing support and by developing concrete actions both in the fields of research and innovation, while working closely with the policy stakeholders and the respective policy dialogue fora.

The strategic objective of the EaP – PLUS project is to encourage the research and innovation cooperation between the EU and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries and to address effectively current opportunities and remaining obstacles. This will be achieved through a coherent set of activities addressing, in parallel, research and innovation, as well as policy dialogue in a strongly interlinked and complementary way.

In particular, the specific objectives of the project can be summarized as follows:

To actively support the policy dialogue in STI between the EU and the EaP countries with a particular emphasis on the Association to H2020 process and dedicated actions to maximize the benefits from it;

To boost interactions between researchers in the context of H2020 and beyond;

To promote innovation in the EaP countries, in a coherent and complementary way with major EU’s initiatives;

To improve the framework conditions and efficiency of the cooperation between EU and its individual Member States with the EaP countries aiming in particular to remove remaining obstacles and to create opportunities.

In parallel, the project will implement a coherent and state-of-the-art set of communication, dissemination and outreach activities in order to increase its visibility and impact.

Building on the results of the predecessor FP7 project ‘IncoNet EaP’, EaP PLUS will eliminate remaining obstacles to EU-EaP STI cooperation through a number of innovative and targeted actions:

strategic priority-setting through supporting EU-EaP policy dialogue and through maximising the impact of the association to Horizon 2020;
stronger interaction between researchers & participation in H2020, i.e. info days, cooperation with scientific diaspora, and grants for networking;
promotion of the research-innovation interface supporting communities of excellence, through co-patenting analyses, clustering schemes, promotion of the technology platforms concept to EaP countries;
optimal framework conditions and increasing coordination in policies and programmes through training seminars for STI policymakers, increased coordination and synergies between policies and programmes of EU/MS and EaP, i.e. JPIs, COST, and national programmes.

Lisf of participants :

Participant organisation name	Country
CeRISS - KENTRO PERIFERIAKON KAI DIETHNON MELETON KAI YPOSTIRIXIS E.E	Greece
BELARUSIAN INSTITUTE OF SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND INFORMATION SUPPORT OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL SPHERE	Belarus
CENTRUL PROIECTE INTERNATIONALE	Moldova
DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUER LUFT- UND RAUMFAHRT E.V.	Germany
EUROPEAN BUSINESS AND INNOVATION CENTRE NETWORK	Belgium
INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION	Georgia
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR BLACK SEA STUDIES	Greece
INNO TSD	France
INSTYTUT PODSTAWOWYCH PROBLEMOW TECHNIKI POLSKIEJ AKADEMII NAUK	Poland
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA	Armenia
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF UKRAINE	Ukraine
REGIONAL CENTRE FOR INFORMATION AND SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT LTD.	Hungary
AZERBAYCAN RESPUBLIKASININ PREZIDENTI YANINDA ELMIN İNKIŞAFI FONDU	Azerbaijan
SHOTA RUSTAVELI NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION	Georgia
SOCIEDADE PORTUGUESA DE INOVAÇÃO	Portugal
CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION AND INNOVATION PROMOTION OF UKRAINE (NATIONAL INFORMATION CENTRE FOR UKRAINE-EU S&T COOPERATION)	Ukraine
ZENTRUM FUER SOZIALE INNOVATION GMBH	Austria