These mobility schemes (they probably cannot be called programmes) have been in principle small international mobility grant schemes implemented in cooperation with other countries. They usually have no sectoral focus or specific target groups other than researchers/research organisations intending to establish cooperation with their foreign counterparts. Hence objectives are “… to establish or to strengthen research and development cooperation with organisations from other countries by supporting following activities: (i) development of common international projects, (ii) preparation of common publications or other outputs of international cooperation, (iii) active participation in conferences and organization of common scientific events, (iv) reciprocal or joint use of utilities and equipment of both parties, (v) collection of research materials, samples, etc…, (vi) involvement of PhD students or junior researchers (up to 35 years) into common research.
Majority of participants are from academia though private organisations may participate in case they are registered as research and development organisations in Slovakia or abroad. There are few participants from the private sector but they are very rare as was confirmed by the Agency representative.
Several schemes have been prepared and implemented each year by the Slovak Research and Development Agency since 2007 for various countries. Bilateral calls for proposals have been prepared repeatedly for scome countries (e.g. Austria, China, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, etc.) for scome others it was just one call for proposals (e.g. Taiwan, South Africa, Greece, Czechia, Russia, Italy, etc.).