The ASBIMED Project "Assessment of the bilateral scientific co-operation between the European Union Member States (MS), Accesion Countries (AC), Candidate Countries (CC) and the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPC)" was based on a FP6 Specific Support Action-SSA (INCO-CT-2004-510659) which was proposed to fulfil the requirement of information formulated by the Monitoring Committee for the Euro-Mediterranean RTD Co-operation (MoCo) in its 9th Meeting in Cairo in 2003 about the content, instruments and intensity of the bilateral Scientific and Technological cooperation between the 25 + 2 European Union Member States (MS), the Accession and Candidate Countries and the Mediterranean Partners Countries (MPC).
In this sense, the ASBIMED Project was an answer to the demands of the European Commission and the MoCo to know the state-of-the-art of these Scientific and Technical bilateral co-operations, specifically trying to study and identify the following aspects:
(1) The thematic priorities developed by the bilateral co-operation, and the intensity of this co-operation, expressed as the number of common publications, exchange of student, projects and man-months used thereon. In addition, joint participation in projects of the EU Fifth Framework Program will be analysed, as an indicator of preliminary traditional cooperation.
(2) The instruments used: travel grants, student exchange, common projects, access to infrastructures, seminars, etc . their performance and their relevance.
(3) The budget engaged in the bilateral co-operation and its distribution between priorities and instruments.
(4) The key industrial or social sectors benefited by the bilateral co-operation. The degree of Innovation introduced in the socio-economic tissue by the bilateral S+D co-operation.
(5) The institutions, their character (universities, hospitals, research centres, companies, etc), personalities and experts involved in the bilateral co-operation.
This analysis was performed by using bibliometric indicators (SCI database) of common EU-MPC publications, joint projects in the 5 th FP, using the CORDIS database, and fluxes of students. Moreover, a formulary was distributed among key stakeholders to identify the bilateral ( MS- MPC ) RTD cooperation programmes.
This web site also contains a Knowledge Base in order to provide the Monitoring Committee (MoCo) for the Euro-Mediterranean RTD Co-operation and the European Commission with a Knowledge Base of the identified bilateral cooperation programmes between the Member States (MS) and the Mediterranean Partner Countires (MPC), accessible to the authorized persons, notably the ASBIMED Consortium Members, the MoCo members and the Commission officers.
After the processing and analysis in detail of this Knowledge Base contents, the ASBIMED Consortium elaborated different reports on each MPC and a global view, with a picture of the this bilateral co-operation between EU-Member States and the MPC, the topics and the instruments, to be used in the evaluation of the global R&D co-operation effort and the planning the implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean Co-operation Agenda in R&D. A follow-up of this bilateral co-operation and its comparison with the development of the 6th FP was performed during the second year of the ASBIMED Project.
Only the period 1998-2003 was scheduled to be studied in this Project. However, if a program covering periods before this period was interesting for the purpose of the project, it was incorporated but duly identified in its duration. The same happened with some relevant programs signed after the scheduled period.
ASBIMED Project: MAIN RESULTS (downloading of FINAL and NATIONAL Reports)
Main results are gathered by the following sensible map (Adobe Macromedia's Flash Plug-in need to be installed in your Web Browser):
