View article

Within the international Cooperation scheme of the European Commission Framework Programme 7 (FP7), the Mediterranean Partner Countries play an important role. The Mediterranean Partnership was initiated at the Barcelona Conference in 1995to establish a comprehensive partnership among the participants–the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. Interest in the Mediterranean Partnership was revived through another initiative, the Mediterranean Union, with 43 members from Europe and the Mediterranean Partner Countries. Within this context, the Framework Programme for Research and Development has funded support projects in the ICT sector aiming at a closer cooperation in R&D in the ICT field between the two regions. In this paper we report on our investigation to obtain a clearer picture of the ICT R&D landscape in the Arab region and to identify the ICT R&D priorities that leading research institutes in the Arab region see for the future. We present our findings and analysis with the aim to support bringing researchers from both EU and Arab researchers together through an ICT Research Network and in identifying research policies in the Arab region and developing policy recommendations for enhanced EU-Mediterranean R&D collaboration in the field of ICT.