Cooperation landscape

Central Europe – A significant part of the European research landscape

The Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) is the European Union's chief instrument for funding research over the 2007-2013 period. It unites all research-related EU initiatives under a common roof, contributing to the construction of the European Research Area. But is there also a CENTROPEAN Research Area?

The somewhat ambivalent answer in a nutshell: yes, definitely. And no, not really! At least, this is what emerged from a social network analysis conducted within the framework of the project centrope_tt. The study asked about involvement in the 7^th Framework Programme, which was then taken as an indicator for both the competitiveness of research institutions and the “geography” of collaborative research endeavours. To depict the position of Central European science, the analysis also included institutions from Prague and Budapest, in order not to “cut out” crucial parts of the R&D systems of two of the four countries taking part in CENTROPE. The results show that the region is strongly involved in Europe-wide research but also that only a comparatively small number of projects include research institutions from more than one CENTROPE country at the same time.

In detail: until September 2009, a total of 1,563 projects were implemented within the specific programme Cooperation (which makes up approximately two thirds of the overall FP7 budget). In 459 of these projects, there was at least one actor from one of the four CENTROPE countries. The majority of the 276 organisations involved in the analysed R&D projects are located within the Austrian part (124), followed by Hungarian organisations (77), Czech organisations (50) and organisations from Slovakia (25). In other words: a Central European research area as defined in this study is involved in one out of three transnational R&D projects and thus seems to be very well positioned within the European co-operation landscape.

However, closer inspection shows that the bulk of R&D co-operation is clearly oriented towards Western European countries. There are no significant differences between the various national sub-regions in this regard, with Germany as the most important co-operation partner, followed by France, the UK and Italy. While this shows that Central European research institutions are attractive partners in European core countries with strong R&D sectors, one cannot yet speak of a “common”, i.e. closely interlinked and integrated, research area within Central Europe.

Networks to be enlarged: the intra-regional co-operation landscape

Yet a look at the landscape of cross-border research relations is still worthwhile. Here, Austrian organisations are the most important partners for all three neighbouring states. This might have historical reasons: over the years, Austria has established a remarkable amount of agencies and programmes for innovation and research support. Currently, the other three countries are in the process of setting up or strengthening an equivalent, manifold support system, so this distribution might well change in the future.

Already now, there are a number of institutions acting as hubs for collaborative research: Vienna University of Technology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences or Slovak Academy of Sciences. These hubs connect a large number of actors and are well interlinked among each other. They represent the backbone of a growing network of research co-operation in the Central European area, in which CENTROPE can act as a pivot.

If you want to learn more about drivers of co-operation and the thematic priorities of R&D co-operation in CENTROPE, please download the full report “The CENTROPE R&D Cooperation Network – A Social Network Analysis”.