3rd Expert Meeting for Developing a Blue Growth Initiative for Research and Innovation in the Black Sea

Dear all,

I would like to express our thanks to those of you who managed to join us for the 3^rd meeting for developing a Blue Growth Initiative for Research and Innovation in the Black Sea, which was held in Brussels on 11 December, despite the bad weather.

A brief itemised summary of the meeting is provided in attachment, with a general outline of the meeting presented below.

The main objectives of the meeting were

• to finalise the mapping of existing national or regional projects / initiatives and
• to discuss and agree on the next steps, mainly related to the drafting of the Vision Paper and the draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA).

Representatives of the European Global Ocean Observing System (EuroGOOS), French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) and the German Marine Research Consortium (KDM) joined the core group to brief about their activities in the Black Sea and bilateral cooperation with the marine research institutions in the coastal countries.

The discussions focused on the challenges in compiling the data in the matrix of marine research projects and the first findings emerging from it. The outline of the Vision Paper for SRIA was discussed. The Vision Paper and the first draft SRIA are planned to be presented at the European Maritime Day (31.05 – 01.06.2017) in Burgas (Bulgaria) under the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU (½ 2018).

For memory, I would also like to remind you that the pending contributions should be sent to the METU team and the European Commission (barisims [dot] metu [dot] edu [dot] tr (baris[at]ims[dot]metu[dot]edu[dot]tr) and Daniel-Constantin [dot] STRUGARIUec [dot] europa [dot] eu (Daniel-Constantin[dot]STRUGARIU[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)) at your earliest convenience, but no later than the 26^th of January 2018.

The draft Vision Paper and at least a general outline of the SRIA should be ready before the next meeting of the group, so that they can be finalised before the meeting in Burgas at the end of June.

Next meeting:

We would like to thank BSEC PERMIS for the invitation to have the next meeting of this expert group in Istanbul. Following some initial consultations, we propose the next meeting to take place on 27 March 2018. The logistical information about this meeting will be sent in due time, but until then:

Please save the date of the next meeting in your agendas: 27 March 2018, Istanbul.

The full list of participants are attached. The draft agenda of the meeting and the presentations given can be found below too.

We wish you all an excellent new year, with a lot of success and blue skies above the Black Sea.

Sigi and team

The participants at the meeting, incl. affiliation and contacts: ListOfPax_11122017.xlsx

The presentations given at the meeting:

Dr Mustafa YÜCEL (Institute of Marine Sciences, METU, TR) and Dr Baris Salihoglu (Institute of Marine Sciences, METU, TR) ODTU-BrusselsBlackSea-Presentation-Dec11-FINAL2.pptx

Mr Jan-Stefan Fritz, Head of Brussels Office of German Marine Research Consortium (KDM) 2017.12.11 KDM BlackSeaCooperation.pptx

Mr Glenn Nolan, Secretary General of European Global Ocean Observing System (EuroGOOS)

Couple of relevant documents:

The agenda of the meeting: Draft Agenda - Black Sea - 11 Dec 2017.docx

The summary of the discussions: Summary_11122017.docx