Scientific Cooperation with Portugal
Friday, 12 September 2008

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and Technological Development Bozidar Djelic met with delegation of Portugal headed by Prof. João Sentieiro, President of Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – FCT) of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal.
 

As the minister Djelic concluded, three key domains of cooperation beetwen two countries have been identified at this meeting: energy efficiency, nanotechnology and food industry. 

From one poor and not so big country, Portugal has been transformed into country admired by whole Europe, providing staffs for European Union, a state which has procured  Lisbon Agreement and has developed Lisbon Agenda strengthening  EU competition , said minister Djelic as well. 

Following Portuguese experience Serbia could learn so much, said the minister and mentionned that Porugal has succeeded during the last three years to double its science budget, being five times bigger than Serbian budget, with remark that a half of  this budget has derived from EU fonds. 

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister announced as well that Serbia and Portugal will sign Cooperation Agreement in Science and Technlogy by the end of this year. 

Prof. João Sentieiro, President of Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal expressed his country’s desire to elevate to a higher level cooperation of Serbian and Portuguese researchers. 

Also, it is necessary to sign Cooperation Agreement between scientific communities with aim to offer support for economic, societal and cultural development of two countries, cocluded M. J.Sentieiro. 

During the visit, delegation of Portugal was a guest of many scientific institutions in Serbia: Archives of Serbia and Montenegro, Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops and Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, as well as Institute “Mihajlo Pupuin” in Belgrade.