Operation 2.2.1 Science and Innovation Investment Fund – Phase II, under the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports consists of the grant scheme and technical assistance within Operational Programme for regional Competitiveness 2007 - 2011 Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA).

Tendering and contracting procedure for allocating grant contracts and technical assistance was implemented by the Central Financing and Contracting Agency. Altogether, 19 projects have been contracted that will develop new technologies in various sectors of research, development and innovation as the basis for the development of the Croatian economy. The totalvalue of the grant scheme is approximately EUR 11.2 million (of which EUR 7.6million is financed by the European Union, and national co-financing amounts to EUR 3.6 million). In addition to the grant scheme for the grant beneficiaries,technical assistance for grant beneficiaries has been contracted to providecontinuous assistance to grant beneficiaries during the implementation ofprojects. Total value of the project is EUR 279,500.00 (of which the share of the European Union amounts to EUR 237,575.00, while the value of national assets is EUR 41,925.00.

The priority issues for this Call for Proposals include the following:

LOT 1: Improvement of regional and national innovation system by establishment and development of professional services for technology transfer across national and regional networks of higher education and public research institutions.

LOT 2: Enhancement of the science-industry-business collaboration in order to enable the higher education and public research institutions to effectively interact with business sector.

The global objective of this grant scheme is to build technology transfer and commercialization capacities of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and Public Research Organizations (PRO) in order to contribute to sustainable regional development and industry competitiveness of high value added sectors of the economy and knowledge based SMEs.

The specific objective is to support innovation commercialization in public R&D sector in order to bridge the gap between the pre-commercial and commercial phases of R&D in Croatia, and thus create a productive environment where innovation capacity can grow and develop.