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The new World Bank publication ‘From fragmentation to cooperation: tertiary education, research, and development in South Eastern Europe’ has been posted for download in the documents section.

The World Bank’s working paper, published in June 2008, examines the challenges that Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia face in order to have a labour force with a significant pool of people with tertiary education qualification. These people, however, will be needed to meet increasing demand for highly-skilled labour and support economic growth.

The Joint Technology Initiative ARTEMIS (Advanced Research & Technology for EMbedded Intelligence and Systems - http://artemis-sra.eu/) and the EUREKA Cluster Programme ITEA 2 (Information Technology for European Advancement - http://www.itea-office.org/) are organising a Co-Summit on ‘European competitiveness and well-being through ICT-based innovation’.

The conference, which will take place on October 22, 2008 in Rotterdam/NL, is expected to bring together some 500 participants from industry, universities and research institutes and the Public Authorities from all over Europe.

Date and location: December 9 - 10, 2008, Versailles/France

The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the European Commission are organising the 5th European Conference on Research Infrastructures (ECRI2008) under the auspices of the French EU Council Presidency.

The Task Force Fostering and Building Human Capital (BHC) proposes to organise short term placements at key institutions working in the area of cooperation for building human capital. An interesting opportunity to visit three cities within three months (Vienna - Austria, Zagreb - Croatia, Sarajevo - Bosnia and Herzegovina) and to get a grant of 1000 Euro/month. 

A new FP7 funded project (total funding: around € 1 million) called ACTION-Grid brings together a consortium of European researchers along with researchers in the Western Balkans, North Africa and Latin America to strengthen cooperation in the fields of biomedical informatics (BMI), grid technologies and nanoinformatics.

ACTION-Grid started June 1, 2008 and will run for a period of 18 months.

Deadline: September 10, 2008

In March 2007, the European Council commmitted to an integtrated climate and energy policy with ambitious targets for 2002 and beyond.

The EC is inviting all stakeholders (esp. energy companies, project developers, equipment manufacturers, governmental services, the agricultural and forest industry and environmental NGOs) to help identify the need to develop sustainability criteria for biomass for energy purposes, at EU level.

The European Research Council (ERC) has opened the second call for it's Starting Grants, targeting researchers with three to eight years of experience since gaining their PhD. 

The improvement of living conditions in urban communities through trans-national co-operation is the main aim of one of the priority axes of the South East European Transnational Cooperation Programme (SEE). In concrete, the priority axe 4 shall contribute specifically to “future development of South East Europe as a place of sustainable and polycentric development of metropolitan areas and regional settlement systems”.

Although the Programme does not have a clear research focus, it my be of interest for co-operation activities in the field of urban development in the SEE region.

A conference entitled 'Social sciences and humanities facing the climate change challenges' will take place in Paris, France, on September 22 and 23, 2008.

On the occasion of the French Presidency of the European Union, the conference's aim is to discuss the collective challenges associated with climate change in the context of such concepts as sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and the precautionary principle, governance of climate policy and international environmental agreements, and to make policy recommendations.

The French took over the EU Council Presidency from Slovenia on July 1. During their time at the helm, they plan to focus on four main areas: energy and the climate, migration issues, agriculture, and security and defence.

On the field of  research the French have set the construction of the European Research Area (ERA) as the main research priority for their presidency of the EU. Other priorities include boosting Europe's role in space and making progress towards a Community patent.

The IRE (Innovating Regions in Europe) published a guidebook with the focus to introduce innovation policy impact assessment and benchmarking at the regional level.