The first year of BIOEASTsUP project has passed successfully despite the Covid-19 situation and all related challenges:)
We had our 3rd project meeting on October 17-23, 2020 – virtually.
We discussed the progress and achievements in the first project year and looked closely in the action plan for the next months.
The goal of BIOEASTsUP project is to support the BIOEAST initiative and BIOEAST Action Plan for transition of 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) Countries to bioeconomy.
In the past one year, BIOEASTsUP partners started building the national platforms for bioeconomy strategy development. Groups of different stakeholders are being regularly engaged in dialogue on national bioeconomy targets. A series of webinars took place in May-July 2020 in order to communicate the methodology for platform development and project activities. Some of the them were: “BIOEASTsUP BIO HUBs and national platforms for bioeconomy strategies development”, “Developing multi-stakeholder partnerships and co-creation for boosting the
uptake of bioeconomy in CEE”, “Planning sectoral analysis and exchange of good practices for bioeconomy value chains”.
Five thematic working groups (BIOEAST TWGs) have been initiated to support the work of the BIOEAST Governing Board in preparing specific area oriented strategic documents, especially the Strategic Research and Innovation
Agenda (SRIA), namely:

• “Agroecology and Sustainable Yields”,
• “Bioenergy and New Value-Added Products”,
• “Food Systems”,
• “Forestry”,
• “Fresh Water Based Bioeconomy”.

Respectively, five thematic SRIAs are being developed. The thematic working groups are regularly meeting online and ERDN is closely cooperating with BIOEAST Food Systems TWG.

One of the main objectives of the project is to develop in a bottom-up stakeholder driven approach a consolidated bioeconomy Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for the BIOEAST countries. The SRIA is based on orchestrated research and innovation gap analysis in BIOEAST countries. A common framework was created that guides the development of BIOEAST SRIA and the thematic SRIAs. In the coming months BIOEASTsUP partners in collaboration with the BIOEAST National Contact Points will conduct a series of workshops in all BIOEAST countries to engage national inter-ministerial groups and national stakeholder groups in the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities as well as gaps in bioeconomy related research and innovation. The first draft of BIOEAST SRIA will be developed by April 2021.
Despite all challenges caused by the pandemic, BIOEASTsUP project is moving forward target-driven. The more intensive and diversified virtual communication has resulted in a more efficient communication between project tasks and more successful dialogue with stakeholders.

For one year the project has achieved a lot. To improve the impact on bioeconomy in CEE countries, each result is being communicated to policy makers, the business, research entities and other stakeholders via intensive series of online workshops, putting effort to engage them in further activities and seeking feedback to validate all findings.

See the press release by Teodora Marinova, our PM available on Her LinkedIn and follow Bioeast-Bioeastsup LinkedIn to learn more on what BIOEASTsUP partners are doing!
The latest news on the BIOEAST you can also find on the web page: www.bioeast.eu.