Enhancing and focusing research and innovation cooperation with the Union’s key international partner countries - proposals targeting Australia, USA, Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine

TOPIC : Enhancing and focusing research and innovation cooperation with the Union’s key international partner countries - proposals targeting Australia, USA, Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine

Topic Description

Please note that this topic is for proposals targeting Australia, USA, Brazil, South Africa and Ukraine ONLY. Proposals targeting Russia and China were the subject of the topic INT-01-2014.

Specific Challenge:  The aim is to get the best value out of the Union’s cooperation with its most important international partners and to generate more impact by enhancing and focusing international cooperation activities, by:

−      Stimulating research actors from the Union and its international partners towards increased cooperation, notably through Horizon 2020 and through the partner's funding programmes;

−      Supporting the identification and implementation of targeted international cooperation activities with sufficient scale and scope;

−      Contributing to eliminating remaining obstacles to cooperation between actors from the Union and its international partners;

Scope:  Proposals should support the main objective of the Union's strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation (COM(2012) 497) to enhance and focus the Union's cooperation activities, by:

−      Supporting the policy dialogue on research and innovation between the Union and the partner in question by identifying areas where targeted international cooperation activities would be of mutual benefit (notably by taking a forward looking approach) and where there is the potential to generate sufficient scale and scope. This should be based on existing objective information and analysis and in particular that provided through previous actions supported through Union funding with the partner in question;

−      Supporting in a flexible manner the implementation of activities agreed within the policy dialogues between the Union and the partner in question, as well as contributing to increasing the coordination and strengthening of the synergies between the activities and programmes of the Member States, the Associated Countries and the international partner in question. Where appropriate, this should include seeking complementarity and coherence with on-going activities of the Strategic Forum for International Cooperation (SFIC);

−      Encouraging cooperation between research and innovation actors from the Union and the partner in question, by promoting the opportunities offered by Horizon 2020 towards the international partner. This should include notably the setting up of web-based information systems, but it can also involve the organisation of awareness raising and information dissemination activities or the organisation of brokerage events, conferences or workshops;

−      Ensuring that progress is made towards establishing appropriate framework conditions for international cooperation between the Union and the partner in question, notably by identifying remaining obstacles for cooperation and by supporting the development of solutions to eliminate these, while jointly promoting measures which facilitate international cooperation (e.g. on open access, scientific visa, IPR, peer review, research integrity etc).;

−      This should be underpinned by an analysis of the cooperation patterns between the Union and the partner in question, notably through Horizon 2020 and previous Framework Programmes. This should also provide information on the type of participants (including their position in the partner's research and innovation system) wishing to engage with European researchers through the Union's funding programmes and their reasons for doing so.

In this work programme, the following international partners are:  Australia, USA, Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa, and also Ukraine.

Proposals should be made by consortia consisting of balanced partnerships between European and international partners, ensuring adequate involvement of public authorities and other stakeholders (e.g. funding agencies, research organisations, industry, civil society) of the participating countries. On the European side, broad involvement across all Member States and Associated Countries is expected, either within the consortium or through appropriate outreach activities by the consortium to other Member States and Associated States. Proposals should build on the results of existing cooperation initiatives, and in particular those funded through the Seventh Framework Programme Capacities part 'Activities of International Cooperation'.

Type of action: Coordination and support actions

A maximum of one proposal will be supported per international partner from the list provided above. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a Union contribution of EUR 1.95 million per proposal for a duration of three years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately for the proposals targeting USA, China, Brazil and Russia. For the proposals targeting Australia, Ukraine and South Africa, the Commission considers that proposals requesting a Union contribution of EUR 1 million per proposal for a duration of three years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.