As enhancement of international cooperation requires a holistic approach encompassing a broad range of interventions, MERID presented a set of inter-related objectives, on two complementary levels: strategic and operational.
Strategic objectives, activities and outcomes:
• Promotion of a comprehensive STI policy dialogue framework through
- Setting up pre-conditions for policy dialogue in Iran and Iraq (policy dialogue meetings, workshops, roundtable discussions, interviews, bilateral exchanges, etc.)
- Identifying and agreeing on key obstacles and common priorities/actions in the region (project meetings, regional events, literature review, etc.)
- Transferring mechanisms for formulation of input (bilateral policy dialogue meetings)
- Agreeing on a policy dialogue roadmap
Main outcomes and their potential for exploitation:
• Policy paper - Recommendations for the EU-Middle East cooperation: The report itself addresses targeted ME countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran and Iraq) but it can be also used for planning future cooperation mechanisms by EU experts.
• Practical framework strengthening the enabling factors for STI Cooperation: Recommendations for tackling four main obstacles can be used for going beyond the “performance” of research and into ameliorating the asymmetry between regions
• Bilateral Policy Dialogue meetings: A set of short-term and immediate recommendations to sustain and capitalize on the excitement and eagerness to establish research and academic collaborations
Operational objectives, activities and outcomes
• Building capacity, raising awareness and improving networking opportunities via
- Enhancing intermediary organisations’ capacity (trainings and info days in the Middle East)
- Enhancing research stakeholders’ capacity (individual one-to-one coaching sessions)
- Transferring information for research constituency (trainings, info days and participation in other relevant events)
- Establishing networking and contacts for researchers (brokerage events, web-based matchmaking platform, information webinars)
Main outcomes and their potential for exploitation:
• Training and capacity building material on Horizon 2020: openly accessible for stakeholders
• Coaching programme and online support service: The guidelines for organisation and implementation of coaching sessions, as well as templates are openly available
All project results are available on the project website and were promoted through communication channels/tools set up by MERID (i.e. Facebook page, Twitter, quarterly publications, etc.)
