Minister Damjanović: Government passes the new Strategy of Scientific Research Activity

The Government of Montenegro has passed the new Strategy of Scientific Research Activity, which is an important document setting the guidelines for work of the Ministry of Science in the next four years, the Minister of Science Dr. Sanja Damjanović stated at today’s press conference after the session of the Government.

The new Strategy of Scientific Research Activity is based on past experience, but also envisages new measures and instruments.

- During the year, we have identified the challenges, systematically analysing the national policies of small countries in Europe, such as Malta, Cyprus, and Iceland – countries that have progressed significantly in terms of innovative ecosystems. We have identified the measures that were lacking in our ecosystem, Minister Damjanović said.

According to her, given the size of the country, it was necessary for the Strategy to be focused, with clearly defined goals, as this is the only way to achieve progress. In addition, the problems of small countries require different solutions compared to the countries with millions of inhabitants.

- We have specifically defined three goals. The first one is to improve human resources and research capacities, where the key measure is the employment of young people, doctoral students at universities and in the economy. The aim is to introduce fellowships, which will, besides salaries, also provide funds for work on research and innovative projects with an active internationalization component. This will help reduce brain-drain, but also build a new generation of researchers, the Minister said.

The second goal of the Strategy is to promote international cooperation and networking. The Minister has reminded those present that the Ministry has already started a new process of internationalization as Montenegro has joined the largest European international institutions with large infrastructures, in which a lot of knowledge and technology is accumulated.

- We will finance scientific research and innovative projects that will be directed towards larger, development projects and aim at the technological recovery of Montenegro. National funds should be a leverage for the use of international funds, especially from the EU Horizon 2020 programme. We have already begun implementing these measures, and the results achieved in recent months show that this is possible, and that we are on the right track, Minister Damjanović said.

In this context, the Minister said that after three years of negative effect of participation, the net profit of the Horizon 2020 programme had been achieved for the first time in 2017. Until now, the Montenegro’s success rate in this EU programme was the lowest among the European countries. In the past few months, however, the success rate has increased, so last week Montenegro found itself in an incredible first place, with a 25% success rate.

- The third goal of the Strategy is to strengthen the synergy between science and the economy. One of the measures is to create better conditions for self-employment of young people by establishing an innovative start-up ecosystem, for which it is necessary to remove the barriers through legislative amendments, in which we have provided the support of the European Commission to help implement such a policy. By providing new financial instruments, as well as the environment for work and further realisation of the Science and Technology Park, we will activate a significant number of young people and make progress on the global market, as did Malta, Minister Damjanović said.

Finally, the Minister concluded that the Strategy of Scientific Research Activity had been developed in a modern way, that it was representative, and that it was well elaborated visually despite its concise content.