BELGRADE – 25 May 2018 – Representatives of the Development Agency of Serbia (RAS) and 16 accredited regional agencies (АRDA), have announced today that they will be committed to improving the research and development infrastructure on the local level.

In the meeting held at the RAS premises, within the promotional activities on the project Embeddedness of high quality research infrastructure in the Danube Region (RI2integrate) , project objectives, previous results and the plan of activities to be implemented by the end of the year have been presented.

After project presentation, what followed was a discussion on the topic of the current state of research and development infrastructure, cooperation with the SMEs and local experiences, where the need for mutual cooperation in the field was recognised. 

Accredited regional development agencies are the RAS partners on the local level. They cover almost the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia with their activities and jointly with the RAS participate in realisation of programmes and projects intended for SMEs.

The Project RI2integrate is part of the Transnational Programme Danube and has for its objective research of potentials for economic growth and improvement of integration of EU investment projects functioning  dealing with development of research and development infrastructure, through realisation of innovative instruments for learning public policies on macroregional strengthening of the infrastructure in the Danube Region.

Service beneficiaries and target groups are higher education and research institutions, micro, small and medium enterprises, students (secondary school and university), organisations for business support and national, regional and local public institutions.

The total of 17 partners are included in project realisation: Hungary, Romania, Czechia, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Slovakia. RAS is the only Serbian partner on the project.