15 Mar 2023
EC's DG RTD visits Latvia for Enhanced Dialogue on R&I cooperation
DG RTD Deputy Director-General, Signe Ratso and her colleagues met on 9 and 10 March in Riga with their Latvian counterparts, including State Secretary Līga Lejiņa, to discuss Latvia’s R&I state of play and the potential support DG Research & Innovation can offer to help the Latvian R&I become more robust. The meetings were part of the Enhanced Dialogue between DG R&I and the government of Latvia that kicked off on 8 February with a bilateral meeting between Commissioner Mariya Gabriel and the Latvian Minister for Education and Science, Anda Čakša in Stockholm.
The discussions in Riga covered a wide range of topics including the New European Innovation Agenda, research assessment and careers, Open Science, Synergies between Horizon Europe and ERDF, EU Missions as well as recent policy development in Latvia on higher education, innovation and open science. During the Dialogue, the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science expressed its intention to sign the Coalition of Advancing research Assessment (CoARA).
This being the first kick-off discussion touching on several subjects, it was decided to follow it up shortly with technical meetings, namely to go deeper on synergies, EU missions and science communication. DG Research and Innovation will also support Latvia in the design of the upcoming international evaluation of their research institutions.
Enhanced dialogues with EU countries are a new, bottom-up channel of cooperation with the European Commission. The goal of these dialogues is to create 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 depending on the interests of the country. Latvia is the 6th Member State to take part in an Enhanced Dialogue.
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