nowEurope

Yesterday I met Vilmos Bognar, Hungary’s National Contact Point (NCP) for FP6 IST. Mr Bognar has agreed to be the keynote speaker at my upcoming First Tuesday event (Jan 31). In the course of our discussion he offered a few insights about Hungary’s FP6 participation.

The good news, according to Mr Bognar, is that Hungary could well lead Central Europe in research and development in as little as two years. The caveat, of course, is that the region as a whole has a lot of catching up to do.

You might expect Mr Bogner to be optimistic. As I reported earlier, Hungary has been showing good results in FP6 tenders and particularly in the thematic area of Information Society Technologies (IST).

Framework Six consists of six calls; the fifth call closed in September. It’s still too early to talk about how many Hungarian proposals have won, because the finalists are in negotiation, however Mr Bognar told me he was pleased with the result so far. The final figures should be available in April.

If Hungary continues at this rate, said Bognar, it will lead the region in two years time.

However, he noted that Central Europe’s share of the FP6 is still small (3.48% according to my latest figures). The reason? Since 1989, a great number of formerly state-supported research institutions have been privatized, which means the region now lacks R&D capacity. Put simply, there just aren’t enough researchers anymore.