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Good morning and welcome to
Cyprus! It is a pleasure of having you here with us today. Thank you all for
joining us at this high-level discussion
on EU Missions under the Horizon Europe Programme.
I would like to take this
opportunity to express my appreciation to
all our distinguished colleagues from the European Commission who are with us
today, physically, and remotely, and contributed to the curation of an
insightful and interesting agenda to exchange information and views aiming to
facilitate the coordination of EU and national initiatives directly related
to Missions.
It is true that the EU Missions
are a new way to
tackle some of our greatest challenges. They constitute an innovative concept
of bringing together a multitude of stakeholders, such as research
organizations, municipalities, universities and industrial partners, to implement comprehensive
policies related to the five Mission areas.
Dear Friends,
Cyprus is, undoubtedly, a
country with significant potential
in Research & Innovation, a fact which is demonstrated through an impressive and fast-growing R&I
ecosystem, featuring high quality academic and research institutions, and a
flourishing entrepreneurship community.
Cyprus has already
achieved notable progress
towards a knowledge-based economy, which is reflected in improved scores in
innovation performance and digital readiness at European and global level:
- Cyprus
ranks 20th among 27 EU Member States in the 2022 edition
of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), moving up 4 places in
the last 2 years.
- Also,
Cyprus has entered the “Strong Innovators” category in the European
Innovation Scoreboard 2022 climbing at the 10th place in
the overall ranking of EU Member States.
Nevertheless, there is still a
long way to go to achieve a fundamental transformation of our economy and
society, capitalizing on a well-tuned and powerful R&I ecosystem. Our
efforts focus on enabling researchers, entrepreneurs, and all creative minds
to gain access to resources that include state-of-the art research
infrastructure and facilities, knowledge, finance and human capital, with the
aim of building innovative enterprises that are able to thrive in the
international market with innovative products and services.
Access to funding is amongst
our highest priorities.
In this regard, tapping on the opportunities offered by EU Framework
Programmes for Research and Innovation is crucial to our
efforts.
Our country’s participation in
EU activities has been significantly beneficial
in developing our national research and innovation ecosystem, providing us -
in addition to the funding platforms - the right framework, the connectivity
and networking, as well as the knowhow on the crafting and implementation of
our national R&I policies.
Horizon Europe serves as
a unique opportunity
to reaffirm our R&I investment targets given the constraints on national
budgets. Thus, we plan to exploit synergies with other EU Programmes
particularly ESIF funds and the Recovery and Resilience Facility and, in
particular, in the framework of its EU Missions and Partnerships.
At the same time, we are trying
to create coordination structures at national level that will enable the
creation of synergies with national and regional initiatives and will
contribute to the achievement of the EU Missions' objectives. Such effort is
already taking place in the context of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities
mission and the EU mission for Cancer.
Thus, today’s event is an
important step towards achieving the highest possible level of
collaboration between our local actors first, and then with the European
Commission relevant agencies, for a coordinated effort to pool the necessary resources
in terms of funding programmes, and to mobilise and activate public and
private actors, to create a real and lasting impact.
To conclude, strengthening Cyprus’ participation
in the Horizon Europe Programme and taking advantage of synergy tools provided to leverage direct and
indirect R&I funding in the context of implementing activities relevant
to the EU missions targets will be our top priorities.
Ensuring maximum benefit
in areas of strategic importance not only to our country but to Europe as
well, is a key driver
in our efforts.
Once again, allow me to thank
everyone for their contribution to today’s event, and wish everyone a
fruitful discussion.
(MH)
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