The aim of the conference called "The Information Day of the JRC" is to acquaint the Croatian academic circles with possibilities of cooperation within the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Development of the European Union, also known as FP 6.
Science and Education Minister Dragan Primorac said at a news conference that one of the particularly important tasks of the JRC was to establish new forms of cooperation in science and technology in compliance with relevant European legislation.
Primorac said the ministry had taken all necessary steps so that Croatia may become a full member of the FP 6 at the start of 2006. Croatia is currently a partner-country in that programme.
The chief of the EC Delegation to Croatia, Ambassador Jacques Wunneburger, said that all planned activities regarding relations between Croatia as an EU candidate and the European Union would go on regardless of the final decision on the start of Croatia's entry talks.
Wunnenburger told Croatian scientists that they did not have to wait for Croatia to become a full EU member as they would soon cooperate in the FP 6 on an equal footing with other scientists.
Roland Schenkel, the acting director general of the JRC, told reporters that scientists come before politics and that today's event would send a strong signal of support to the inclusion of the Croatian scientific community into the EU.
The Directorate General of the JRC is one of EC directorates general and it is headed by Slovene Janez Potocnik. It pools 2,300 scientists and collaborators who work on five locations in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.