German Aerospace Center, Project Management Agency
The Project Management Agency at the German Aerospace Center (PT-DLR) is a research funding organisation supporting the implementation of programme-related project funding. The Department of European and International Cooperation at PT-DLR is assisting the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in implementing its internationalisation strategy.
Organisation
The International Bureau (IB) as a BMBF mandate (among other things) of the Department “European and International Cooperation” supports (on behalf of BMBF) the bilateral and multilateral cooperation in science, technology and education with about 50 countries around the world. Having a strong background in R&D strategy and policy implementation with particular emphasis on international relations, the IB advises German institutions on the subject of international research cooperation and provides financial support for the development of new contacts and collaborations. The EaP countries are of highest priority in this context, with well implemented bilateral cooperation schemes partly active for more than two decades.
Laying special emphasis on the development of the European Research Area and its international dimension the IB provides strategic and operational assistance to the BMBF with respect to the international dimension of the European Research Area (ERA). In this context, the IB supports the BMBF especially in its participation in the Strategic Forum for International Cooperation (SFIC), a high-level political advisory body of Member States and the Commission. Germany has a very active role in this forum, which defines a strategy towards more coherent STI activities and policies within Europe towards third countries. Furthermore, the IB has a wide experience in coordinating and participating in EU-funded projects, focussing on international ERA-NETs, INCONETs, BILATs and ACCESS4EU-activities.
Through its long-standing experience with the S&T cooperation of Germany (among other things with the EaP countries) and with the implementation of bilateral governmental programmes, through the active involvement in the planning and implementation of the international dimension of the European Framework Programmes and the active participation in a number of EU Coordination and Support Activities (in many cases as coordinator), IB/PT-DLR has developed specific expertise to contribute to the proposed actions with the EaP region.
As a policy developer and international STI cooperation specialist, DLR brings in the project already established links with relevant regional policy dialogue fora and national authorities in the target geographic region. In addition to this, DLR disposes valuable expertise in high-standard analytical work, and in drafting and promoting the adoption of policy documents.
In detail, DLR, based on its capacity, is going to contribute in the following tasks:
Work Package 1
Strategic Policy Dialogue & Strategic Priority Setting: preparation of Annual Policy brief(s), Training for Programme Committee members from Associated EaP countries, supporting the Association to H2020 (AM, GE), review the status of the cooperation, preparation of STI policy recommendations ‘EU-EaP beyond 2020’
Work Package 3
Enhancing EU-EaP research and innovation partnership: providing of best practices and supporting training activities, establishment of a Clustering Grant scheme, promoting the ETPs concept in EaP
Work Package 5
Communication, dissemination, outreach and exploitation
Linkage with incrEAST (see http://www.increast.eu/), a meta-platform designed to inform about STI cooperation opportunities between the EU and the Eastern European, Central Asian and South- Caucasian countries