The European Union and its six Western Balkan partners have signed a joint declaration promising to deepen cooperation in research and innovation, in a move Brussels hopes will help bring the region closer to EU membership. The deal, endorsed in Brussels on 22 October at the Ministerial Meeting of the Western Balkans Steering Platform on Research and Innovation, commits the EU and its partners to a new joint Action Plan focused on supporting researchers, building up innovation ecosystems and widening participation in European science programmes.
Six Partners, One Direction
The partners signing up alongside the European Commission are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. All six are at different stages of the EU accession process, with Montenegro and Albania currently the furthest along in formal negotiations. Research cooperation is one of the less visible but more practical ways the EU and candidate countries build ties: it moves money, students and ideas across borders long before any membership paperwork is finalised.
The meeting was hosted by Ekaterina Zaharieva, the Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, and co-chaired by Ireland’s Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless. “With the endorsement of this joint declaration, we are opening a new chapter in EU-Western Balkans cooperation in research and innovation,” Zaharieva said after the signing. “Together, we will develop concrete actions to strengthen research excellence, support innovation and bring the region closer to the European Union.”
What’s Actually in the Declaration
The declaration is framed around two main themes: research careers and innovation ecosystems. In plain terms, that means making it easier for scientists to build a career in the region, slowing the brain drain that has long pulled talent westwards, and helping start-ups and spin-outs find funding, mentorship and routes to market.
The forthcoming Action Plan will spell out specific projects. The ministers also used the meeting to hand out a dedicated innovation award to young researchers and entrepreneurs from the region, a reminder that the Commission wants to put faces to its policy announcements.
Twenty Years of Quiet Groundwork
This year’s meeting marked the 20th anniversary of the Steering Platform on Research and Innovation, which has brought together the Commission, EU member states, the six Western Balkan governments and the wider research community since 2006. It is not a glamorous body and rarely makes headlines, but over two decades it has done a lot of the slow work needed to associate the Western Balkan countries with EU research programmes — the big funding pots that let their researchers apply for grants and join consortia on equal terms with their colleagues in Berlin or Barcelona.
The numbers suggest that work is paying off. Western Balkan partners have so far pulled in around €237 million under Horizon Europe, the EU’s current research funding programme, across more than 1,000 projects involving the region. Horizon Europe runs until 2027 and is worth around €95 billion in total, so the Western Balkans slice remains modest, but it is a meaningful presence for countries whose national research budgets are a fraction of their larger EU neighbours.
Why It Matters Now
The EU has been under pressure to show that enlargement into the Western Balkans is more than a diplomatic slogan, especially since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine shifted the political calculus on bringing new members in. Research cooperation is a low-cost, high-visibility way to show momentum, and one of the few areas where candidate countries can genuinely integrate with the bloc before accession is complete.
Whether a new Action Plan and a joint declaration translate into fewer researchers leaving the region, more start-ups scaling up and more EU-funded projects landing in Tirana, Pristina or Skopje is a longer-term question. For now, the political signal is the point.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (2026). EU and Western Balkan partners deepen research and innovation cooperation to support EU integration. 22 October 2026. https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/eu-and-western-balkan-partners-deepen-research-and-innovation-cooperation-support-eu-integration-2026-10-22_en
Joint Declaration EU–Western Balkans on Research and Innovation (2026): https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/document/download/be9a27a9-f168-4000-82d9-109e79b9034a_en?filename=ec_rtd_joint-declaration-eu-western-balkans.pdf