More participation of new Member States and candidate countries in Global Change and Ecosystems research is needed

The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 gives also the opportunity to enlarge the scientific cooperation. In fact, cooperation with East and Southeast European countries is essential to tackle topics in environmental research with a wider regional dimension such as climate change, biodiversity and water.

Although Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey have very good research capacities at their disposal, the building up of collaborations has not yet reached a sufficient level. Part of the problem is believed to be the lack of sufficient knowledge in the research community. Closing this knowledge gap can help EU researchers to achieve a better integration with research capacities in the new Member States during the preparation phase for the next call

For this reason the European Commission is offering a " Find-a-Partner Service ", which allows to better identify other researchers with complementary interests and also to advertise the own collaboration interests to others. More information can be obtained from the National Contact Points of these countries.

In order to help consortia to better understand research capacities in the new Member States and candidate countries we have started creating a library with presentations, which have kindly been made available to the Commission. For the time being the library includes the following presentations:

• Jana Cejkova: Czech RTD landscape: Environmental issues.(PDF)
• Eduardas Budrys: Environmental research in Lithuania: Priority topics, infrastructures, trans-national collaborations.(ZIP/PowerPoint, ~3.3Mb)
• Moira Dillon: Environmental research capacity in Malta.
• Joanna Basztura: Polish environment and research: Present state and enlargement challenges.(PDF)
• Viorel Vulturescu: Romanian RTD system and environmental research in Romania..(PDF)
• Ales Gnamus: Environmental and sustainable development research capacity in Slovenia.(PDF)

National contact points from other candidate countries are encouraged to send us similar material.