A partners meeting for the project WIDE AcrossEU: Empowering Research and Innovation Across Borders was held 7-8 October 2024 in Skopje, North Macedonia.

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe – WIDERA programme, the project consists of partners from three Widening countries, Czechia (Coordinator), North Macedonia, and Ukraine, as well as two partners from non-Widening countries Finland and Sweden.

With each project partner institution having diverse participation experience in Horizon Europe (HE), Synergic EU R&I funding, Smart Specialisation Clusters, and other international R&I funding schemes, the main aim of the project is to strengthen the ability of the Widening country institutions to submit higher level funding proposals (as main applicant coordinator) through capacity, skills and competence building and networking actions. This is being achieved by strengthening competitiveness by means of targeted training, work shadowing, mobility, benchmarking best practices, and customised group of capacity and competence building activities.

Having started in May 2024, the project will run until August 2027, and by the project’s end our partners universities in Widening country will be in a very good position to not only compete but excel in benefitting from direct EU funding programs.

The Skopje meeting was attended by: Beti Kostadinovska (Host), of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (MK); Monika Vejchodova, Koudelova Michaela, and Diana Kalaskova, of the University of Pardubice (CZ); Yuliya Bogoyavlenska, and Andrii Polchanov, of Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University (UA); Pierre-André Forest and Marlene Kohllechner-Autto, of the University of Lapland (FI); and Agnetta Plambock, of Umeå University (SE).