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The European Parliament was the venue for a high-level conference marking the 20th anniversary of the successful EU-Israel innovation partnership on Thursday, 22nd of June. Commissioner MOEDAS opened the conference saying: “Israel's successful & dynamic innovation ecosystem is an inspiration."
Top researchers and investors from Israel and the EU addressed the audience including Prof. Eliezer RABINOVICI, Vice-President of CERN and co-founder of the SESAME project; Prof. Zvia AGUR, EU Women Investor Prize finalist; Prof. Yehuda LINDELL, ECR grantee from Bar-Ilan University; Mr. Yossi VARDI, internet investor and one of the founders of the Israeli "Start-up Nation"; Mr. Martin KERN, Interim Director of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT); and Mr. Angelo RICCABONI, Chair of PRIMA General Assembly. The event was organized by the office of Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Mr. Carlos MOEDAS; leading MEPs from the EPP, S&D and ALDE groups; The Mission of Israel to the EU & NATO; and EU40 organization.
It is important to note that Israel was the first non-European country to become associated to the EU Framework Programme (FP) for Research and Technological Development. Horizon 2020, the most recent FP, is the largest research and innovation programme in the world for scientific-research cooperation with the European Union. Indeed, some 76.400 requests for funding were made in the first 2 years alone since the beginning of Horizon 2020. Mr Aharon AHARON, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority said: “Israel’s participation in H2020 brought great benefits to both sides.”
Israel’s excellence in the programme has been especially notable in the European Research Council grants for outstanding researchers doing ground-breaking research in various fields such as ICT, water and health. Beyond the possibility of winning prestigious research and development grants, the programme enables Israel to become part of the European academic research community, to cooperate with key players in Europe, to have an influence on European regulation, to have access to research infrastructure and to be exposed to European research projects on a tremendous scale.
To illustrate the success of the programme, it is interesting to look at some statistics. Indeed, Israel has invested €1.375 billion in the programme in 20 years and has got €1.7 billion as return in the form of grants. The state is very involved in the programme as 4,1% of Israel’s GPD is spent on R&D. Over 3,000 projects have been submitted by Israeli entities, involving 4.435 participants, which places Israel in a recent interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 as the second country with the highest success rate in the Horizon 2020 project so far.
We are looking forward to many more years of this highly fruitful partnership.
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