December 17 (SeeNews) - The European Commission and Albania on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding that allows Albania to seek money from European Union research programme funds from January next year.
“Working with EU scientists and companies, and other scientists and companies in their own region, can bring many benefits – scientific, commercial and political,” the EU’s research commissioner, Janez Potocnik, said in a statement published on the EU website.
The memorandum allows Albania to participate fully in the EU’s Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7), which has a budget of 50 billion euro ($72 billion) over the seven years up to 2013. FP7 allows for funding of collaborative research in strategic areas such as health, energy, information technologies, nanotechnology or transport.
Association with FP7 means that these countries compete for the funding on the same basis as EU member states. It opens up research opportunities for the European scientific community, the statement said. Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia are also associated with FP7.
Albania signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the gateway for eventual membership of the bloc, in June last year.
($=0.6948 euro)