Events, News

The Policy Mix Peer Review of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina Successfully Kicked Off

In the frame of the Danube-INCO.NET project, the kick-off meeting for the policy mix peer review (PMPR) exercises of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina took place in Budapest on 16 July 2015. The meeting was organized by the Regional Centre for Information and Scientific Development (RCISD) and hosted by the Institute for Foreing Affairs and Trade (IFAT) providing the opportunity for senior governmental experts and policy-makers from the EU Member States and Associated Countries to discuss the potential areas of the review process and set the time schedule for the country visits of the expert panels.

For the benefit of the target countries, the Danube-INCO.NET project aims to conduct two peer review visits in countries covered by the EU Strategy for the Danube Region in which no such exercise has taken place previously and which raised its interest in such an exercise. Conversation during the meeting relied on the baseline study prepared by RCISD provided the rationale for selecting the potential target countries and described the methodology of the R&I policy mix peer review.

The peer review of Bosnia and Herzegovina is scheduled this autumn whereas that of Serbia is planned to take place in June 2016. The peer review team consists of experienced senior governmental experts, so-called peers, from Estonia, Norway, France, Italy and Romania and lead by an independent expert from Hungary.

 

Background: What is a PMPR about?

A policy mix peer review (PMPR) is a systematic examination and assessment of the national R&I system by international experts. It aims at improving the design and the implementation of national R&I policies. It is not a sole evaluation but rather a mutual learning process based on a critical friends approach. Special attention is put on the individual national challenges (and the policy response to these) regarding human resources in R&I, the public science base, industry or company driven research and innovation, and economic/market development as well as the interconnections among these fields.

DSCF2219