Research and Development Policies in the Southeast European Countries in Transition: Republic of Croatia

1. The pre-1990 situation

Apart from the already mentioned forms of bilateral cooperation, an important role was played by personal contacts and cooperation of Croatian internationally recognized scientists and scholars with their foreign colleagues. Many senior teachers visited foreign countries as guest lecturers, while young researchers spent some time abroad on various scholarships.

Cooperation was well developed with first-class universities in Europe and the rest of the world, especially in the United States. Cooperation programmes often provided for visiting lecturers and scientists coming to Croatia. A relatively large number of doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships used by Croatian young scholars were an important factor of quality improvement, because many of them now provide a solid base for the further growth of Croatia’s research and development effort. Also, new fields were developed in step with modern trends in world science. It is noteworthy that the research projects run by Croatian scientists for reputable agencies such as the NSF, the NIH, the DoE were subjected to the same strict criteria of evaluation as those that were applied to American scientists and their projects. Mutual visits by American project officers and Croatian chief researchers ensured the maintenance of the quality of such research at the highest level. Inter-university and inter-academy bilateral and multilateral cooperation was also well developed. In addition to what has just been said, Croatian scientists had long-term cooperative arrangements with other non-European countries in the fields of research and development and higher education. This included bilateral and multilateral cooperation and direct contacts through joint projects.

2. The situation between 1990 and 2000

Croatia is not a member of CERN or similar organizations which possess large research facilities, machines, and instruments. The reason was that the country could not provide the necessary finances for participation in CERN projects. However, Croatia is included in several major world information systems. This is especially true of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), which has bilateral agreements with the science academies of Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, France (French Institute), Italy (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Accademia dei Concordi, Rovigo), Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, United Kingdon (Royal Society in London and the British Academy). Although no formal agreement has yet been signed with the National Academy of Science in Washington, cooperation with that body is well developed. Formal visits were exchanged between the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Science in 1993 and 2000; in 1995, the two Academies jointly organized a conference, held in Washington, on the reconstruction of science and higher education in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The HAZU is a founding member of ALLEA, the Inter-Academy Panel and the Inter-Academy Medical Panel, and is also included in the European Scientific Exchange Programme (ESEP) run by the Royal Society in London, as well as in the European Exchange Scheme for the Humanities and Social Sciences run by the British Academy. The Croatian Academy was involved in the Pugwash and Amaldi conferences from the very beginning. Although the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts was active in the establishment of the European Science Foundation (1975), it is at present (since 1991) not a member because of the absence of positive legislation for the allocation of funds for research and development. Croatian scientists took part also in the establishment of the Academia Europaea, which works together with the Croatian Academy on the reorganization of the Croatian system of research and experimental development¹⁰².

Between 1991 and 2000, Croatia signed bilateral agreements on scientific and technical cooperation with 39 countries. In the year 2000, new bilateral agreements or amended existing agreements were signed with Bulgaria, People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Estonia, Greece, Iran, the Russian Federation and Slovenia¹⁰³. Bilateral agreements with 34 more countries (including, inter alia, Armenia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay) are ready to be signed.

Scientific cooperation is most active with Slovenia (67 research projects with 19 participating institutions from Slovenia and 22 from Croatia), United Kingdom (32 projects channelled through the British Council and the Academic Links and Interchange Scheme – ALIS), Italy (31 projects, especially in agriculture, marine studies and medicine), Federal Republic of Germany (25 projects), France (10 projects) and the United States (8 projects).

The exchange of scholarships took place with more than 30 countries in the year 2000, totalling 2,000 months (252 months with the United States, 146 with Hungary, 90 with Italy, 85 with France, 66 with Austria, 60 with China, 40 months with Poland, etc.) The Croatian universities and public institutes have their own cooperative agreements with foreign partners. The Universities of Osijek and Rijeka are actively involved in regional cooperation.

Although international cooperation looks varied and well developed, the actual amounts of money invested by Croatia into such cooperation are very small. The budget allocation for international cooperation in 2001 amounted to 33,324 thousand kunas or 1.44 % of the total budget of the Ministry of Science and Technology (which amounted to 2,320,209 thousand kunas)¹⁰⁴. The National Programme for Research and Development for the period 1996-1998 envisaged 8 % of the budget allocation to be spent on international cooperation.

Until 1991 Croatia had 10 corporate (industrial) research institutes, while now only three survive: (1) the Pliva Pharmaceuticals Research Institute, (2) the Podravka Food Processing Industries, and (3) Ericsson – Nikola Tesla Institute for Telecommunications. Their international cooperation extends to Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria, USA, Mexico, Greece, Australia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Following the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the subsequent war (1991-1995), Croatian scientists and scientific institutions did their best to keep their joint research programmes with the European Union and the United States alive. The programmes financed jointly by the USA and Croatia and the European Union and Croatia included EUROMAR and EUROTRAC. Although Croatia is not a member of CERN, several Croatian research groups took part in its experiments.

Other joint projects worthy of mention included those with the Brookhaven National Laboratory, US, the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland, TRIUMF, Vancouver, Canada, the Elettra Synchrotronic Centre in Trieste, as well with research institutions in Hamburg, Grenoble, and Daresbury (Great Britain).

It is estimated that more than 500 Croatian scientists (about 8% of the total number of researchers in 2001) cooperate with their foreign colleagues. According to the same estimates, about 100 visiting lecturers teach at the Croatian universities, while 200 Croatian researchers and university professors are visiting researchers or lecturers abroad. Roughly 75 per cent of Croatia’s international cooperation is realized with the OECD countries, and about 25 per cent with the countries in the Adriatic-Ionian region (mainly in the fields of environmental protection, transport, health care, life sciences, geosciences, and linguistics)¹⁰⁵.