The Viennese research and innovation waltz begins

Barbara Weitgruber, Director General in the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, and her colleague Director General Elmar Pichl, together with Henriette Spyra, Director General in the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology hosted Marc Lemaitre, Director General in Directorate-General for Research and Innovation and Director Anna Panagopoulou in Vienna yesterday. They discussed the main research and innovation issues and opportunities in Austria.

They covered horizontal topics such as transformative research andinnovation for the green and digital transitions, trust in science and democracy and the role of universities in mission-oriented policy making. To reflect the cross-cutting nature of their meetings, many different government agencies were present including the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy, the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency. Several universities and research organisations, as well as the Austrian Science Centre Network, participated to the event.

The lively discussions were conducted in a good spirit and the Austrians appreciated the update from Directorate-General for Research and Innovation on EU policy instruments for industrial research & innovation towards climate neutrality, on mission-related incentives for higher education institutions and on initiatives at EU level to foster trust in science and democracy. The participants agreed to continue the dialogue and to deepen the discussions at operational level.

Background

Enhanced dialogues with EU countries are a new, bottom-up channel of cooperation with the European Commission. These dialogues aim at creating a country-tailored approach to foster Research and Innovation in the participating EU country. They are organised on a voluntary basis and built around topics matching the interests of the country.

Austria is the 10^th country having an enhanced dialogue with DG research & Innovation.

Μore ιnformation

Enhanced dialogue with EU countries