On 14 December 2021 at the Italian Pavilion of the World Expo Dubai 2020, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) together with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) organised the Conference  “Arab countries Innovation conference: Paving the way for International research collaboration and technology transfer”.

The meeting was opened by high level officials - Mr. Paolo Glisenti the Italian Commissioner General for World Expo 2020 Dubai, Stephen Quest, JRC Director General, Mr. Hasan Kleib, Maria Cristina Messa, Italian Minister for University and Research, and Maha Bakheet, Director for Intellectual Property and Competitiveness of the League of Arab Countries/States (LAS).  All speakers underlined the importance of international technology transfer collaboration for facing global challenges and readiness of their respective institutions and stakeholders to explore ways of more systematic and sustainable institutionalized collaboration between two regions and on the South – South level.  The idea of using “scientific diplomacy” for overcoming challenges was widely accepted as a most suitable means to reach scientific objectives..

The meeting provided an opportunity for EC, WIPO, LAS and other active European and Arab country innovation players to present their projects and capacity building programs in order to support the creation of linkages between the innovation ecosystems programs of two regions.

Following international expert round tables, on International Research Collaboration and Relations with Industry Partners, the need to upgrade existing interactions among scientists and to create a specific European-Arab platform, with basic intellectual property rights (IPR) principles of collaboration accompanied by reference materials, tools and guidelines on technology transfer from research to the market, were pointed out. It was also proposed to develop a new Forum to support innovation in the Arab counties which would involve other stakeholders beyond researchers, such as financial organisations, entrepreneurs and educators.