Does Twinning address limitations to institutional cooperation? A case study on institutional cooperation between Dutch institutions and post-communist institutions in the field of research

Abstract

The low participation of some new member states in the European Union’s Framework Programmes for Research & Innovation display an internal R&I divide within Europe, which impacts EU’s competitiveness on the world stage. To address this challenge the European Commission introduced some measures in the newest Framework Programme. This study aims to analyse to what extent one of the introduced measures called Twinning addresses the limitations to institutional cooperation between new member states and the old member states. It does so by a case study on institutional cooperation via the Twinning instrument between Dutch universities and post-communist institutions. The findings suggest Twinning addresses some of the barriers such as network access, but also finds multiple barriers persist due to institutional contexts.