Slovenians to Chair European Research Network

EUREKA, the pan-European network for encouraging market-led, collaborative research and development projects, will hand over its chairmanship from Italy to Slovenia in July.

Created as an intergovernmental initiative in 1985, EUREKA exists to enhance European competitiveness through its support to businesses, research centres and universities which conduct pan-European projects to develop innovative products, processes and services.

The new chairmanship team will be headed by Ales Mihelic, who is part of the Directorate for Technology at the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology in Ljubljana. He explained that the team's first priorities will be to further strengthen EUREKA's position with the European Research Area (ERA), expand the network towards the Western Balkans and provide better support to small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Under the Slovenian chairmanship EUREKA also plans to further contribute to the shaping of the ERA, particularly in the area of industrial research. This was also a priority during the Italian tenure of the network, and according to outgoing Chair, Fabio Pistella, in that time, the network took a leading role in converting the ERA 'from words into actions, especially in the area of support and funding for close-to-market research activity'.

In addition, Slovenia plans to expand the network's cooperation with representatives from industrial research in the Western Balkans, and design a new communications strategy to promote the results of EUREKA projects.

The organisation is online at www.eureka.be .