Promoting innovation must be one of the priorities of the new governmental program, argue the members of the Romanian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AHK Romania), in a release sent to AGERPRES on Wednesday.

According to the cited source, AHK Romania has initiated a dialogue between the business and academic milieus in order to expand the partnership between German companies and Romanian universities in the field of research, innovation and continuous training. The meeting focused on strengthening the collaboration between private enterprises and the academia in the field of research – development (R-D), in order to benefit as much as possible from the financing opportunities of the European Union.

The main challenges discussed were the difficulties in accessing these funds, the need for sustained public, private or European research funding and the importance of aligning research topics with market needs.

Along with university teaching staff, the event was attended by representatives of companies from various fields, such as energy & gas, IT & digitization, automobile, retail, chemical industry, waste management.

„We want to exchange ideas and perspectives, to see how we approach this topic further, what needs to be done to develop the collaboration between universities, research institutes and other public entities on the one hand and SMEs, start-ups and companies on the other hand, to support the business environment in research and development activities”, said Sebastian Metz, general director of AHK Romania, at the opening of the forum for dialogue „Business meets innovation”, quoted in the press release.

He added that this collaboration is all the more necessary, since at the European level research-development and innovation are becoming more and more important and, therefore, they will receive larger budgets.

AHK Romania is the official representative of the German economy. Established in 2002, AHK counts over 670 member companies and offers companies an important platform for networking, exchange of information and experiences. Through the services it offers and through the events it organizes, AHK Romania actively supports German companies when they enter the Romanian market and is also a partner of Romanian companies interested in the German market. From January 1, 2020, the Competence Center for the Republic of Moldova also operates within AHK Romania.

AGERPRES