Pierrick Fillon-Ashida, Policy Officer of International Cooperation at the European Commission Directorate-General for Research, said Vietnam is successful in the 6th European Union (EU) Framework Programme for Research Cooperation (FP6).
Fillon-Ashida said Vietnam has received 42 multilateral projects worth 26 million euros from FPs, becoming the third largest beneficiary of FPs in Asia.
According to the EU official, Vietnam's success has been attributed to Vietnam’s active participation in making proposals to the EU. "Vietnam has realized that only making a host of proposals could it get more projects from the EU than other countries," he said.
Another reason for the success, in his opinion, is that Vietnam is good at selecting and focusing on several topics, which are agriculture, forestry and disease prevention and control.
Regarding FP7, which is worth 50.5 billion euros, Fillon-Ashida revealed that the EU is very open to all other topics in the FP7. He encouraged Vietnam to choose new topics such as climate change and informatics technology.
