The Mediterranean Science, Policy, Research & Innovation Gateway is an INCO-Net Coordination Action financed by the International Cooperation - Capacities Program of the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. The main aim of the Project is to contribute to the quality of the Euro-Mediterranean research area, with a particular focus on the bi-regional Euro-Mediterranean S&T cooperation, research & innovation, policy dialogue and cooperation monitoring.

The Mediterranean Science, Policy, Research & Innovation Gateway (MedSpring) is a dialogue and action platform encouraging scientific and technological collaboration between the Mediterranean Partner Courtries (MPCs) and European Countries since 2013. MedSpring is an INCO-Net type project funded by the 7th EU Framework Programme for RTD supported by the Monitoring Committee for the Euro-Mediterranean S&T Cooperation in RTD (MoCo). Bringing together senior official representatives from the Mediterrean Partner Countries, EU Member states and Associated Countries, The MoCo Forum acts as Steering Committee for MIRA and enhances ability to access expert communities.

With a Network involving 28 partners, the MedSpring platform gathers expert voices including leading scientific communities as well as policy makers and stakeholders, bridging policy and research. The proposal aims at tackling the key issues and policy objectives outlined in the Work Programme by creating a dialogue and coordination platform of governmental institutions, research organizations, associations and NGOs helping integrate society in the institutional dialogue. To this end, the Project foresees a comprehensive analysis of selected societal challenges and will address capacity building to increase research capacity, shared knowledge and cooperation.

It will also support synergies and networking to strengthen joint activities and EU- MS-MPCs cooperation in EU programmes, as well as a monitoring of regional RTD cooperation and policies. In particular, the proposal is structured to address three societal challenges: energy, high quality affordable food, scarcity of resources. These challenges have been selected on the basis of the result of the long-standing and ongoing EU-MPCs policy dialogue and represent the most significant areas of common interest in current Euro-Mediterranean cooperation.

The specific objectives of the Project are thus: enhancing EU-MPCs co-ownership in research cooperation; creating synergies in order to reduce fragmentation of research actions; involving the civil society in the institutional dialogue on research and innovation; developing cooperation instruments to tackle societal challenges with a view to sustainability; supporting research and innovation capacity building through comprehensive training and contributing build an Euro-Mediterranean shared knowledge space in order to develop common EU-MPCs planning capacity and a sustainable regional RDT policy and cooperation. The principal objectives of the MedSpring project are:

• to develop and support the dialogue between EU - MPCs by bringing together policymakers and stakeholders from each MPC and EU Member states to create a dialogue and action platform to identify common interest in research areas,
• to set up S&T priorities,
• to support capacity building activities and enhance the interaction between different cooperation instruments of the EC to promote actions in order to monitor, develop and contribute to creating synergies among the various S&T cooperation programmes between MPCs/EU and foster the participation of the MPCs in the Framework Programme.

CyI researcher responsible:

Dr. Anastasia Constantinou

+35722208754

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