In an
op-ed article titled "Boycott? What boycott?", the EU's ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen praised the mutual cooperation between Israel and the European Union regarding technological and academic advancements.
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| Lars Faaborg-Andersen |
The EU's cooperation with Israel in the field of science and technology took a giant leap forward in 1996, when Israel joined one of the EU's seven-year R&D Framework Programmes. It was raised to its highest level last year when Israel became associated to the EU's 80 billion euro Horizon 2020 program, the biggest research program in the world. To this day, Israel is the only non-European country in the world to be fully associated to such programs.
To give you an idea of what this means in practice, during the last framework program - FP7 (2007-2013) – close to 2,000 Israeli researchers participated in 1,612 projects for which they received a total of euro 875.08 million, approximately 1.6 times the amount that Israel invested in the program. Almost 70% of funding went to institutions of higher education and FP7 became the Israel's leading source of competitive public funding for civil R&D.
Faabordg-Andersen continues to hail the cooperation and stresses out that this cooperation is beneficial for both parties. His concluding words need no introduction:
The close EU-Israel partnership in science and technology is more than just a success story. It is a model for the type of close relations we hope will continue and which we would like to see in more fields in the future.
Cooperation, partnership, a success story. No mention of whiny BSemites to be found. Exactly like it should be.
