Scientific Cooperation and Academic Mobility between Belarus and the EU: towards a Fuller Realization of Their Potential
Scientific Cooperation and Academic Mobility between Belarus and the EU: towards a Fuller Realization of Their Potential

Summary/Abstract: Scientific cooperation is an important part of the European Union (EU)’s policy approach towards the countries in its neighbourhood. This has opened up many opportunities for cooperation in the areas of science, technology, research, and innovation between the EU and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. This paper reviews the institutional and policy parameters of scientific cooperation between the EU and three EaP countries – Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, focusing on the former for the purposes of this particular paper. It provides an overview of science policies in Belarus with a particular attention paid to communist legacies and post-Soviet transitions, as well as on its current strategies, institutions, and ambitions in the domain of science, research and development policy. We also take stock of the existing programmes for scientific and educational cooperation and academic mobility between the EU and EaP countries. We present an inventory of relevant projects, with a discussion of the progress, level of participation of the research communities in the EaP, and other relevant parameters, such as the distribution of projects and participating institutions across broad scientific fields as well as disciplines. Altogether, we find that Belarus has registered a considerable degree of participation in science and research programmes of the EU, but we also identify a number of barriers and structural impediments to a more successful partnership.

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