POLICY ANSWERS facilitates policy dialogue among the European Commission, EU Member States, and the Western Balkans (WB), primarily focusing on Research and Innovation (R&I), and additionally encompassing Education, Culture, Youth, and Sports.
Key priorities of the European Union (EU) include integrating the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) into the European Research Area (ERA) to promote stability, prosperity, and strengthen the region's European perspective.
The main objectives of POLICY ANSWERS are to monitor and support the policy coordination between the EU-WB cooperation and coordination, to support the WB in strengthening their potential for successful participation in regional and multilateral R&I activities, to promote regional cooperation and to support networking and access to information.
POLICY ANSWERS addresses these objectives through targeted project activities:
1) Organising policy dialogue events, i.e. Ministerial and Steering Platform meetings; ad-hoc policy coordination meetings (reflected in WP1).
2) Carrying out analytical activities such as mapping of relevant institutions, programmes, initiatives, needs and common priorities in the WB; monitoring ongoing activities related to the implementation of the WB Agenda and to progress made related to ERA integration; providing recommendations for policy making and agenda setting e.g. through foresight activities and policy briefs (WP2).
3) Providing and coordinating capacity building and pilot actions in the WB to contribute to the region’s EU integration process and to strengthen their innovation ecosystems (WP3).
4) Designing informed policy recommendations to decision makers in the region in the areas of R&I, Education, Culture, Youth and Sport in addressing the EU’s key priorities such as digitalisation, green economy, health, and aligning them (WP4).
5) Implementing regional pilot activities, which reach out directly to academia, industry and civil society, creating new initiatives and initiating success stories at programme level: Western Balkans Mobility Scheme, Western Balkans Innovation Vouchers, Western Balkans R&I Youth Award, Western Balkans Research Infrastructure Ambassadors, Western Balkans Research and Innovation Academy (WP5).
6) Providing strategic communication, dissemination and stakeholder engagement through coordinated media relations, multimedia production, infographics, inclusive policy promotion, and management of the Western Balkans Information Hub to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration among EU and Western Balkans stakeholders (WP6).
These objectives are achieved with professional project management, quality assurance and active stakeholder engagement (WP7).
* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.
