Montenegro becomes the first non-EU country to adopt a Smart Specialisation Strategy

   

At its 126th session, held on 20 June 2019, the Government of Montenegro adopted the Smart Specialisation Strategy of Montenegro. At the press conference after the session, a statement for the media was given by the Minister of Science, Dr. Sanja Damjanović.

“This strategy is not a strategy of the Ministry of Science, but of the state of Montenegro. The document identifies the priority areas that have the greatest potential for economic development, in which research and innovation are the key factors for boosting competitiveness. In fact, this policy document was first created as a tool of the European Union to facilitate modern development of economies on the basis of domestic potentials, but with openness to the international scene, as well as to technologically promote the traditional sectors, especially through digitalisation”, Minister Damjanović said.

In this way, investments are focused on domains and areas identified by the strategy as the ones in which a country can be competitive on a broader scale. In this regard, Montenegro has identified the following priority areas: sustainable agriculture and food value chain, sustainable and health tourism, and energy and sustainable environment, with technological support of information and communication technologies as a horizontal priority.

A smart specialisation strategy is one of the requirements for using the EU funds, and will be a strict prerequisite for the use of structural funds once they become available to our country.

The process of drafting the strategy lasted two years and was conducted in line with the methodology developed by the EU, which closely followed and evaluated each stage of the process. The Ministry of Science coordinated the entire endeavour with the help of the Ministry of Economy, but more than 300 people from the academic, business, public and civil sector were involved in the preparation of the document overall, more than half of which from the business sector.

“An important benefit from this strategy is access to European thematic platforms for smart specialisation, which are available to us from today. Thematic platforms are created by the countries of the European Union that have similar strategic priorities within their S3 strategies. In this manner, they implement joint projects and enter the international market with them. Our objective for the coming period is to join such platforms”, Damjanović said.

According to the minister, the next step is to define the national structure that will be in charge of both the management and the implementation of the S3 strategy.

The Smart Specialisation Strategy is adopted for the period of 2019-2024. During this period, the document will serve as the basis for priority investments in research, innovation and development. In this period, investments worth about EUR 174 million are planned. Out of the total planned funds, EUR 116.5 million will be provided from the budget, while the private sector investments are projected at EUR 21.7 million. The contribution from EU funds is expected to amount to EUR 33.5 million, while the contribution from other international organisations and programmes is projected at about EUR 2.5 million.