BLACK SEA HORIZON has been designed to sustainably enhance bi-regional STI cooperation between the EU and the Black Sea region. The result of the project’s STI dialogue support will be an improved knowledge base about EU’s external environment and of the current framework for STI cooperation as well as an increased awareness to contribute to the elimination of remaining obstacles and to further intensify the bi-regional STI cooperation based on a jointly developed EU-Black Sea STI Cooperation Programme. To facilitate the pooling of resources the project will establish a group of committed funding parties, endowed with a functional call infrastructure and a clear set of rules and regulations, ready to implement a joint call for proposals. The participation of Black Sea researchers in HORIZON 2020 will be operationally facilitated through (i) identified common research topics taken-up in future calls for proposals, (ii) provision of up-to-date relevant information and good practices to participate in HORIZON 2020 to a large group of researchers, (iii) an increased number of joint research proposals through direct face-to-face meetings of, (iv) a young generation of social scientists trained in HORIZON 2020 and ready to promote and back up future RTI cooperation and (v) an increased readiness of programme owners both from the EU and Black Sea countries to engage jointly in JPIs and future COFUND ERA-NETs. Furthermore, the project will increase understanding of cluster policies and cluster management, establish direct business contacts between cluster managers from the EU and target countries and raise awareness on the programming of as well as on the advantages of inclusive, sustainable and social innovation. The project’s results will be broadly disseminated to increase awareness on bi-region STI cooperation activities and opportunities and will be exploited towards an enhanced introduction of the Black Sea region to the ERA.

The project 'STI International Cooperation Network for EaP Countries Plus (EaP PLUS)' aims to stimulate cooperation between researchers from the EaP countries and EU MS and enhance the active participation of the Eastern Partnership countries in Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. Building on the results of the predecessor FP7 project 'IncoNet EaP', the project will eliminate remaining obstacles to EU-EaP STI cooperation through a number of innovative and targeted actions: (a) strategic priority setting through supporting EU-EaP policy dialogue and through maximizing the impact of the association to Horizon 2020; (b) stronger interaction between researchers & participation in H2020, i.e. Info days, cooperation with scientific diaspora, and grants for networking; (c) promotion of the research-innovation interface supporting communities of excellence, i.e. co-patenting analyses, clustering schemes, promotion of the technology platforms concept to EaP countries; (d) optimal framework conditions and increasing coordination in policies and programmes through training seminars for STI policymakers, increased coordination and synergies between policies and programmes of EU/MS and EaP, i.e. JPIs, COST, national programmes; (e) communication and outreach through innovative actions