On Wednesday 14 February and Thursday 15 February, European research and innovation ministers came together for an informal meeting. The end of the day on Wednesday 14 February was devoted to a visit by the delegations to IBA, in Louvain-la-Neuve, a Walloon company that designs and manufactures medical devices and software solutions for medical applications, and to a gala dinner at Château de La Hulpe.
Ministers will begin their working sessions on Thursday 15 February in La Hulpe, under the leadership of Willy Borsus, the Minister for Research and Innovation, on behalf of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU, and in the presence of Iliana Ivanova, the European Commissioner for Research and Innovation.
The first working session will be devoted to the future of European research and innovation framework programmes and the growing significance of transformative innovation policies. Ministers will discuss the role of these framework programmes in supporting Europe's ability to meet societal challenges.
The working lunch will be devoted to ways to support cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration, an approach that connects a large number of stakeholders and includes, among others, decision-makers and citizens, universities and research centres, and businesses.
The second working session will be devoted to supporting technological development aimed at accelerating industrial decarbonisation and strengthening European competitiveness. The Presidency wished, on the one hand, to stress the need to guarantee the efficiency and accessibility of these technological processes, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, and, on the other, to emphasise the role of trans-European projects in this approach.
Link to the meeting page: https://aeur.eu/f/av2 (recherche%20et%20innovation) (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)