Press Releases

Good morning and welcome to Cyprus! It is a pleasure of having you here with us today. Thank you all for joining us at this high-level discussion on EU Missions under the Horizon Europe Programme.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to all our distinguished colleagues from the European Commission who are with us today, physically, and remotely, and contributed to the curation of an insightful and interesting agenda to exchange information and views aiming to facilitate the coordination of EU and national initiatives directly related to Missions.

It is true that the EU Missions are a new way to tackle some of our greatest challenges. They constitute an innovative concept of bringing together a multitude of stakeholders, such as research organizations, municipalities, universities and industrial partners, to implement comprehensive policies related to the five Mission areas.

Dear Friends,

Cyprus is, undoubtedly, a country with significant potential in Research & Innovation, a fact which is demonstrated through an impressive and fast-growing R&I ecosystem, featuring high quality academic and research institutions, and a flourishing entrepreneurship community.

Cyprus has already achieved notable progress towards a knowledge-based economy, which is reflected in improved scores in innovation performance and digital readiness at European and global level:

1. Cyprus ranks 20^th among 27 EU Member States in the 2022 edition of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), moving up 4 places in the last 2 years.
2. Also, Cyprus has entered the “Strong Innovators” category in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2022 climbing at the 10^th place in the overall ranking of EU Member States.

Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go to achieve a fundamental transformation of our economy and society, capitalizing on a well-tuned and powerful R&I ecosystem. Our efforts focus on enabling researchers, entrepreneurs, and all creative minds to gain access to resources that include state-of-the art research infrastructure and facilities, knowledge, finance and human capital, with the aim of building innovative enterprises that are able to thrive in the international market with innovative products and services.

Access to funding is amongst our highest priorities. In this regard, tapping on the opportunities offered by EU Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation is crucial to our efforts.

Our country’s participation in EU activities has been significantly beneficial in developing our national research and innovation ecosystem, providing us - in addition to the funding platforms - the right framework, the connectivity and networking, as well as the knowhow on the crafting and implementation of our national R&I policies.

Horizon Europe serves as a unique opportunity to reaffirm our R&I investment targets given the constraints on national budgets. Thus, we plan to exploit synergies with other EU Programmes particularly ESIF funds and the Recovery and Resilience Facility and, in particular, in the framework of its EU Missions and Partnerships.

At the same time, we are trying to create coordination structures at national level that will enable the creation of synergies with national and regional initiatives and will contribute to the achievement of the EU Missions' objectives. Such effort is already taking place in the context of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities mission and the EU mission for Cancer.

Thus, today’s event is an important step towards achieving the highest possible level of collaboration between our local actors first, and then with the European Commission relevant agencies, for a coordinated effort to pool the necessary resources in terms of funding programmes, and to mobilise and activate public and private actors, to create a real and lasting impact.

To conclude, strengthening Cyprus’ participation in the Horizon Europe Programme and taking advantage of synergy tools provided to leverage direct and indirect R&I funding in the context of implementing activities relevant to the EU missions targets will be our top priorities.

Ensuring maximum benefit in areas of strategic importance not only to our country but to Europe as well, is a key driver in our efforts.

Once again, allow me to thank everyone for their contribution to today’s event, and wish everyone a fruitful discussion.

(MH)