Supporting coordination tasks and participation in international agricultural policy relevant research, development and innovation projects (AGROECOLOGY Partnership, BIOEAST)
The European Commission operates the world’s largest grant-based research and development programme, the Horizon Europe framework programme. In order to achieve the key policy objective of enhancing the sustainability of agriculture, Horizon allocates significant resources to research on agroecology transition and organic farming. In the frame of the so-called AGROECOLOGY Partnership, as new research funding mechanism, in-cash and in-kind contributions from Member States will be complemented by 50% co-funding from Horizon, creating a budget of nearly €300 million for the next seven years until 2031. The Partnership calls for proposals are open to international research consortia from any EU Member State. It is particularly important that Hungarian agricultural RDI actors also benefit from the Partnership’s resources and participate as actively as possible in international scientific activities.
The Central and Eastern European Initiative for Knowledge-based Agriculture, Forestry and Aquaculture in the Bioeconomy, in short BIOEAST Initiative, provides a common research and innovation strategic framework for the development of sustainable bioeconomy systems in Central and Eastern European countries. The open initiative includes Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania and Slovenia. In the frame of BIOEAST, 7 specific thematic areas have been identified at macro-regional level where thematic working groups (forestry, sustainable food systems, bioenergy, freshwater management, biomaterials, agroecology and education) have been set up to identify common research and innovation priorities and to develop a strategic research and innovation agenda. ÖMKi has been tasked with the coordination of the Agroecology and Sustainable Yields Thematic Working Group (TWG) together with the Ministry of Agriculture since 2019. The thematic working group successfully developed and presented its macro-regional strategic research and innovation agenda on agroecology (SRIA) at the end of 2021, which became part of the BIOEAST-level framework in early 2023. The Initiative, and thus the thematic working group, will have the opportunity to improve and continue its work between 2024-2027 in form of an EU-funded project called BOOST4BIOEAST. The project, coordinated by ÖMKi, will focus on the development of national bioeconomy action plans, the creation and mobilization of related networks of stakeholders (HUBs) and the update of the agroecology SRIA.
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