On 15-16 October 2013, in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the Annual Conference of the Enterprise Europe Network was held. It was co-organised by the European Commission and the Vilnius Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Crafts, as a part of the Lithuania's EU Presidency calendar. The Conference considered the outcomes of the past year’s work and also discussed the problems to be focused at in the new contractual period 2015-2021. Formation of the updated Network will start in 2014. For the «third» countries, including Russia, the EEN call is expected mid-2014.

  At the Conference, the EEN Working Groups presented the results of their studies related to the topical issues of the Network operation environment, including the coming launch of the new EU programmers COSME and HORIZON-2020. Much attention was paid to the activities of the Sector Groups – one of most effective EEN tools, to the EEN interaction with high-tech clusters, to the importance of cooperation with the «third» countries. The Network Partners took part in the round tables related to the operational issues like the recently launched new programme platform named Merlin, the quality of profiles, bringing the brokerage event results to partnership agreements and many other actual problems.
The Network Partners could also meet the representatives of EACI and European Commission DG Enterprise and Industry and ask specific questions.

  The Conference offered unmatched opportunities for bilateral meetings of the Network Partners and matchmaking on specific clients’ profiles.

  The Russian EEN Consortium Gate2RuBIN was represented at the Conference by Lubomir Trifunovich and Dmitry Petryaev (Russian Union of Innovation Technology Centres) and Olga Tarasova (Russian Technology Transfer Network).