The EU-CHINA Cooperation Initiative

The EU and China recognised that they have a shared responsibility in addressing global societal challenges and the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals through Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) cooperation, and that innovation is at the core of both EU and China strategies for sustainable development and prosperity. A new package of EU-China flagship initiatives was agreed for the period 2018-2020 targeting the areas of Food, Agriculture and Biotechnologies, Environment and Sustainable Urbanisation, Surface Transport, Safer and Greener aviation, and Biotechnologies for Environment. Cooperation on energy R&I is pursued in the framework of Mission Innovation.

The flagship initiatives and priority areas translate into a number of topics dedicated to cooperation with China under Horizon 2020 co-funded from China either via the general co-funding mechanism by MOST or by other Chinese funding agencies. The emphasis will be on green initiatives with actions on ecological quality of water in cities, nature-based solutions for restoration and rehabilitation of urban ecosystem, reduction of transport impact on air quality, aviation operations impact on climate change or biotechnologies for environmental remediation.

14th EU-China Joint Steering Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation and side events Group picture of the Chinese and EU delegates The 14th meeting of the Joint Steering Committee of the EU-China Agreement for Scientific and Technological Cooperation took place in Beijing on 13 December 2018 under the cochairmanship of European Commission Director General for Research and Innovation Mr Jean-Eric Paquet and Chinese Vice-Minister for Science and Technology Mr Zhang Jianguo. The two parties went through framework conditions for cooperation, the implementation of the Co-Funding Mechanism (CFM), and thematic areas including aviation, Food, Agriculture and Biotechnologies (FAB), biotechnologies and biomaterials, environment, sustainable urbanisation and Mission Innovation. Topics of potential future collaboration were also raised such as water, artificial intelligence (in particular ethical aspects), health, marine, and space. There were also talks on personnel exchange and mobility and an agreement to develop a common cooperation roadmap.