EU - Argentina & MERCOSUR

Research cooperation between the European Union (EU) and Argentina is carried out under the umbrella of the Since and Technology Cooperation Agreement, signed in 1999 in order to strengthen the institutional foundations of this cooperation and extending and intensifying research cooperation in areas of mutual interest. Following for recommendations of the Third Meeting of the European Commission – Argentina Science and Technology Agreement Steering Committee held in Brussels on April 17, 2008 a Bilateral Road Map for 2008-2009 was established in order to define strategic activities to be jointly implemented. As a novel activity, it was proposed to launch an initiative of twinning research projects respectively from the EU Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), Theme 2 “Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology” (FAFB) and Argentinean national research programmes (MinCyT) and other mechanisms available in both sides. Emphasis was placed on making the fullest use of existing instruments and on combining bilateral cooperation with bi-regional cooperation.

One practical implementation of European Union – Latin America bi-regional cooperation in Science and Technology is a joint programme BIOTECSUR, supported by the European Union and the Latin America trade pact MERCOSUR. “BIOTECSUR” is a MERCOSUR biotechnologies platform and part of the BIOTECH-MERCOSUR-EU project. It is unveiled on 19 December 2007; it funds agricultural biotechnology projects in Latin America, and is coordinated by Argentina.