Smart specialisation in the Eastern Partnership Countries: Potential for knowledge-based economic cooperation

Smart Specialisation in EU Eastern Partnership countries is a part of this joint initiative involving the EU, its Member States and six Eastern European Partners: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus , Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, which includes the commitment to develop place-based Smart Specialisation Strategies for research and innovation to enhance regional competitiveness. The purpose of this study is to contribute to evidence-informed research and innovation policy, particularly to development of Smart Specialisation Strategies. The study presents a solid basis for the Smart Specialisation process by offering an extensive quantitative analysis of national level potential in economy, innovation, science and technology. A series of economic and innovation (E&I) specialisation domains, and, in parallel, a series of science and technology (S&T) specialisation domains are identified for each EU Eastern Partnership country. The study proposes a subset of EIST combined specialisation domains that the analysed countries will be able to build on further developing Smart Specialisation with their own efforts, adding the relevant national data sources and other useful information. The evidence-informed areas for knowledge-based economic cooperation are also identified and discussed.