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Research and innovation are central to the bilateral relations between Bavaria and Israel. Nowadays, Bavarian-Israeli scientific relations cover almost all areas of research: health, energy, foodtech, agriculture, artificial intelligence, social science and humanities, to name just a few that reflect the broad field of common interests. 

The United Kingdom (UK) government has again extended its commitment to provide replacement funding for UK participants in Horizon Europe. The "guarantee" now covers all calls in Horizon Europe with a submission deadline before or on 30 June 2023.

The European Commission has decided to transfer in the interests of the service Marc Lemaître to the function of Director-General in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD). This Commission department is responsible for EU policy on research, science and innovation, with a view to help create growth and jobs and tackle our biggest societal challenges. The decision will take effect on 16 February 2023.

Zlín (Czech Republic)/Munich – New battery technologies that are affordable and sustainable over the entire life cycle are crucial to achieve the goals of the European Green Deal. As part of the EU project TwinVECTOR, the centre of excellence at the Tomas Bata University (TBU) in Zlín, Czech Republic, is to be expanded technically and institutionally with the support of the consortium partners to enable multidisciplinary national and international project teams to network, create synergies and work together on the further development of battery energy storage technologies. The EU is supporting the recently launched project with EUR 1.3 million over a period of three years. Five partners from the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland and Austria are participating in the project coordinated by the Tomas Bata University.

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Munich/Bologna (Italy) - The potential of intelligent, AI-controlled robots that "give a helping hand" to people in hospitals, care facilities for the elderly and children, factories, restaurants, the service industry and households is enormous. However, an intelligent and interactive robot can only be effective if it can react flexibly to different environments and situations. It therefore needs to be able to learn – and this presents an attainable challenge for researchers and developers. The EU-funded research and innovation project IntelliMan aims to develop such intelligent and learning robots. Thirteen partners from six countries are working together on the project, coordinated by the Università di Bologna (Italy). The EU is supporting the project with EUR 4.5 million under the European framework programme for research and innovation, "Horizon Europe".

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The new Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership has officially launched and will hold an internal kick-off meeting with the European Commission at the end of January. The goals of the partnership are to build a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive and competitive blue economy by 2030 and to create favourable conditions for a healthy ocean by 2050.

On 1 January 2023, Sweden took over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from the Czech Republic. The Swedish government will hold the Presidency of the Council of the EU until 30 June 2023.

More than 30 higher education and cultural institutions in Hungary, including 21 universities, have been excluded from Horizon Europe and Erasmus funding retroactively to 15/12/2022 due to ongoing concerns about Hungarian rule of law violations. Hungary has so far received just over 60 million euros under Horizon Europe alone to fund 199 projects.

Artificial intelligence affects almost all areas of our daily lives today. Research at the interface of artificial intelligence, humanities and social sciences is a highly dynamic and nowadays inevitable field. Big data and machine learning have the capacity to revolutionize research about humans, their social formations, and their cultural practices, while research in the “soft” sciences is fundamental for understanding the potential consequences of changes imposed by technological advances.

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The Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) has pledged to continue reimbursing the costs of Swiss partners in approved Horizon Europe and Euratom projects for the 2023 calls.