ERA Country Reports 2023: Western Balkans

The European Commission's Pact for Research and Innovation includes the preparation of annual European Research Area (ERA) Country Reports for each Member State and associated countries to Horizon Europe. These reports aim to assess the progress in implementing the ERA Policy Agenda, focusing on priority areas and committed actions. They also provide qualitative information on implementation processes and are quantitatively based on ERA Performance indicators.

Commission has recently published the ERA Country Reports for all Member States and Associated Countries for the reporting year 2023, including those of the Western Balkan countries' integration into the ERA. These reports offer an overview of the current progress and challenges related to ERA integration in the respective economies of the Western Balkans namely Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, since the establishment of the new ERA and the establishment of the new ERA Monitoring Mechanism. 

According to the report findings, Kosovo updated recently the legal framework for intellectual property rights (IPR), by adopting the new Copyright and Related Rights. The scope of this law closely follows several EU Directives related to the protection of IPR and other related rights. 

Albania introduced the new draft Law of Science which includes the creation of Knowledge Transfer Centres and recognises knowledge valorisation as an integral part of the researcher’s activity. The new Draft Law of Science incorporates three aspects of key importance for the integration in and the implementation of the ERA, i.e.: Open Science, Research Infrastructure and Knowledge Valorisation.

The reports state that Serbia has been rather active in patenting environmental technologies according to the indicator values for OECD patents on environment technologies whereas Montenegro has not shown a consistent trend. 

Regarding North Macedonia, the weakest innovation dimension is Intellectual assets with the performance index being at 14.4% of the EU average. Also, the performances of the indicators Design applications, research and development (R&D) expenditure in the business sector, Government support for business R&D and Lifelong learning are well below EU average (less than 10% of EU average).