BIOEAST Initiative organised a clustering workshop for freshwater related projects in Brussels on 19th March 2024 to show the importance of the freshwater related issue, deepen collaboration among projects and initiatives, support the involvement of policy makers in scaling up activities and to present the upcoming Hungarian EU Presidency priorities in this subject. Freshwater is important for the BIOEAST countries as the production lines have been built based on freshwater, the implementation is however facing a lot of challenges as there are several ministries and entities engaged. The BIOEAST Initiative and its Thematic Working Group Freshwater Based Bioeconomy wants to further enhance the discussion, engage a wide range of relevant stakeholders and cluster freshwater related projects to support the implementation of the EU Mission, engage public administration, citizens societies and businesses.
The main goals of this envisaged event were: to highlight the importance of freshwater topics and support the involvement of policy makers in replication and scaling up of the project results, to highlight the BIOEAST macro‐regional strategic priorities for the upcoming years, including commitments and emerging needs ‐ enlighten the priorities of upcoming Hungarian Presidency related to freshwater related issues and preparation of new European Partnership, to exhibit innovative projects and solutions for solving the emerging environmental and societal issues, to share good practice of the involvement of central and regional government to inspire further engagement of wider public bodies & discuss collaboration and a common approach to stakeholder engagement activities, to discuss synergies among projects and act as brokerage event to facilitate networking between project partners that was inspired by the very successful clustering event in Project2Project Event organised by EuBioNet in 2022. The main aim is to show the importance of the “freshwater” topic and to highlight the need for focusing research and innovation investments in this thematic area. Moreover, to connect freshwater related projects and to build bridges between different funds: Horizon Europe, Life, InterREG, different experts in the freshwater related topics,it also aims to enhance common efforts whilst engaging stakeholders, shared experience, and challenges in the replicability of project results and join forces in the open calls. The event is targeted towards project coordinators and teams developing international projects financed by the Danube Lighthouse of the EU Water Mission, by the Water4All partnership, INTERREG Danube and national programmer and organisations from the BIOEAST macro‐region to support their involvement in the international collaboration.
The EDUCIRC2022 project, its goals, activities, past results and plans for further work were presented by Assoc.Prof. Gordana Racić.
Assoc.Prof. Gordana Racic (Educons University) presenting the project main goals
Opening of the event, Barna Kovach, BIOEAST General Secretary
