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M. Horvat:
"Strengthening the coordination of Community and Member States' policies and programmes for international S&T cooperation: Synthesis Report";
Talk: Strengthening the coordination of Community and Member States' policies and programmes for international S&T cooperation, Brussels; 2008-09-19 - 2008-09-20; in: "Workshop Proceedings", European Commission, Directorate General for Research - International Cooperation, Eur 23613 En 8 (2008), 106 - 126.

The initiative taken in 2000 to create a European Research Area (ERA) further underlined the
importance of coordinating research and technology policies and programmes in Europe.
According to Art. 165 of the Treaty of Nice, "the Community and the Member States shall
coordinate their research and technological development activities". Such coordination has
also been part of the mandate of CREST (Comité de la Recherche Scientifique & Technique)
since 1974 and has become even stronger since 1995. However, prior to the publication of the
ERA Communication in 200065, coordination of S&T policies and programmes had never
been high on the agenda of Member States.
Also in 2000, the European Council in Lisbon agreed that "The Union has today set itself a
new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic
knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more
and better jobs and greater social cohesion."66 In order to implement the Lisbon strategy, the
Open Method of Coordination (OMC) was introduced.
The ERA Green Paper67 of 2007 provides a further significant opportunity to stimulate the
process of creating an "internal market" for research in Europe. At the same time, the ERA
Green Paper underlines the relevance of the international dimension of S&T activities in
Europe by defining "Opening to the world: international cooperation in S&T" as one of the
six core features of the initiative.
The ERA Expert Workshop on 19-20 September 2007 addressed three groups of issues and
underlying questions in relation to coordinating international S&T policies:
64 Workshop Rapporteur.
65 COM (2000) 6 final, "Towards a European Research Area", 18 January 2000.
66 Presidency Conclusions, European Council, Lisbon, 23-24 March 2000, p. 2.
67 COM (2007) 161 final, "The European Research Area: New Perspectives", 4 April 2007.
Synthesis and recommendations
107
. Why coordinate international S&T policies and programmes between the Community
and Member States?
. How are these policies and programmes to be coordinated?
. What are the conditions that favour coordination?
For the workshop, a group of experts in policy research and practitioners from different policy
areas, including from outside S&T, was convened. This report provides a summary of the
presentations and the discussions during that workshop

ERA

http://ec.europa.eu/research/iscp/pdf/workshop_proceedings_coordination_en.pdf