E.U. Allots $345 Million for Analysis Throughout the Mediterranean Area
The European Union has devoted 320 million euros ($345 million) this yr to assist analysis and innovation initiatives throughout the Mediterranean area, together with in Arab nations, on subjects within the fields of well being, local weather, and renewable vitality sources.
Researchers eligible to compete for funding embrace these in nations which are members of the Union for the Mediterranean, an intergovernmental organisation that brings collectively all nations of the European Union and 16 nations of the Southern and Jap Mediterranean. Arab member nations embrace Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine.
The funding for 2023-24 can be offered via a brand new Mediterranean Initiative created below the continuing Horizon Europe programme, the European Union’s flagship analysis and innovation programme.
Maria Cristina Russo, the European Fee’s director of world strategy and worldwide cooperation, was among the many officers who attended an occasion in Cairo to launch the Mediterranean Initiative.
Data Economies
In an interview with Al-Fanar Media, Russo stated that the European Union seeks to cooperate with Mediterranean nations to strengthen their economies and remodel them into economies primarily based on information and innovation. This can assist promote their sustainable improvement and enhance their productiveness, she added, in addition to encourage fruitful cooperation amongst Center Jap and African nations bordering the Mediterranean.
“This system focuses on analysis in local weather change, well being, and renewable vitality. It seeks to supply revolutionary outcomes that contribute to enhancing scientific work in these areas carried out by researchers from Mediterranean nations, selling a tradition of innovation, and creating plans associated to those points.”
Maria Cristina Russo, director of world strategy and worldwide cooperation on the European Fee
“The programme focuses on analysis in local weather change, well being, and renewable vitality,” Russo stated. “It seeks to supply revolutionary outcomes that contribute to enhancing scientific work in these areas carried out by researchers from Mediterranean nations, selling a tradition of innovation, and creating plans associated to those points.”
There isn’t a particular variety of beneficiaries of this programme, Russo stated. The choice of the initiatives to be supported will depend upon the analysis and comparability between the competing analysis proposals. “We hope that the most important doable variety of researchers will take part on this programme to develop scientific analysis within the aforementioned fields,” she added.
A webinar set for March 22 will spotlight funding alternatives and supply sensible info on easy methods to reply successfully to requires proposals. Russo stated such occasions are designed in order that researchers can higher perceive the programme’s necessities earlier than submitting proposals for initiatives they want to fund.
Whereas Russo hopes that every one college professors and college students within the Mediterranean nations will take part within the Mediterranean Initiative, she says that Horizon Europe offers researchers an awesome alternative to trade experiences with their counterparts in different nations, by presenting widespread concepts and establishing areas of analysis cooperation to supply outcomes that may assist handle urgent world considerations, the foremost of which is local weather change.
Others attending the launch occasion in Cairo included Ayman Ashour, Egypt’s minister of upper schooling and scientific analysis; Nasser Kamel, secretary normal of the Union for the Mediterranean; Christian Berger, head of the European Union delegation to Egypt; and a lot of students.
Sensible Functions
Ambassador Kamel described the launch of the Mediterranean Initiative as “a real-life implementation” of agreements reached throughout COP27, the United Nations local weather convention that Egypt hosted in November, to advertise nations’ sustainable improvement and renewable vitality within the coming years.
“Horizon Europe’s analysis programme will contribute to selling expertise and improvement in Mediterranean nations via the financing alternatives it affords to researchers and thru reworking analysis outcomes into sensible purposes to confront challenges in areas like local weather, vitality, and well being.”
– Nasser Kamel, secretary normal of the Union for the Mediterranean
“Horizon Europe’s analysis programme will contribute to selling expertise and improvement in Mediterranean nations via the financing alternatives it affords to researchers and thru reworking analysis outcomes into sensible purposes to confront challenges in areas like local weather, vitality, and well being, benefiting completely different nations and enhancing folks’s lives,” Kamel informed Al-Fanar Media.
Ambassador Berger stated the programme’s launch got here after years of strategic cooperation between the European Union and nations of the Mediterranean on the trade scientific experience.
Launching a programme that depends on scientific analysis in different nations enhances the power of these nations to face numerous challenges, Berger stated. “We hope this program will create an environment to use scientific analysis in strengthening the financial system normally, apart from contributing to sustainable improvement of varied nations.”