Singh calls for reinforcing the EU-India strategic partnership
A pilot project on match making between Indian and EU Start-ups is underway in the area of innovation, the EU Ambassador Ugo Astuto announced at the review of progress on India-EU Science and Technology bilateral cooperation on 13 Oct 2021.
He also endorsed India’s idea of increasing cooperation in the Blue Economy as Deep Sea mining which has global ramifications. “India and EU agreed for more structured meetings in near future on subject specific issues.”
The Ambassador also called for greater student exchange programme between India and EU and informed that 200 PhD and 80 higher scholars from India are pursuing scientific studies in the EU.
Amb. Astuto wants to see deepening people-to-people contact, apart from focusing on areas like clean energy, Genome Sequencing, Marine protected areas in Antarctica and Collaboration on research using high performance computing.
He thanked India for supporting protection of the Antarctic environment by co-sponsoring recently the proposal of the European Union for designating East Antarctica and the Weddell Sea as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
The EU envoy held the review meeting with Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State Earth Sciences, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh.
Welcoming an EU delegation led by Ambassador Astuto, Minister Singh expressed happiness that the India-EU Science & Technology Agreement has been renewed recently for a period of five years.
The Minister also called for reinforcing the EU-India strategic partnership and developing a shared approach at the multilateral level to address global challenges.
Singh pointed out that the India and EU collaboration represents aspiration of 2 billion people.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s exhortation that the ultimate aim of all scientific endeavour is to bring “Ease of Living” for common man, Dr Jitendra Singh said, “India-EU must deepen cooperation in the areas like Health, Agriculture, Water, Renewable Energy, biotechnology, Electric mobility, ICT, AI, Robotics and Environment.”
The Minister said that based on the good progress achieved so far, there is a need for advancing the overall India-EU Strategic Partnership through increased efforts on research and innovation.
Singh noted that the European Union has recently launched “Horizon Europe (2021-2027)”, a planned 7-year European Union scientific research initiative. The EU is approaching Indian scientific agencies for its participation in Horizon Europe.
India is willing to participate in this programme provided some of the concerns on issues related to IPR Sharing, scope of the joint call, Signing of Model Grant Agreement and Joint Evaluation are addressed at the satisfaction of both the sides, he said.
Singh noted with satisfaction that India is closely collaborating with the European Union in the mission innovation programme which is currently led by EU.
He said that India is closely involved in shaping up Mission Innovation 2.0 where focus will be on development of time bound missions with clear deliverables and resource commitment.
At the same time India is engaged in development of platforms for high-level engagement of countries for clean energy transition, especially in the wake of climate change challenges, he added. #technology #startup #investment #environment #projects /fiinews.com
