The webinar was opened by Markus Ederer, EU Ambassador, Head of the EU Delegation to the Russian Federation. Mr. Ederer emphasised the need to leverage research and innovation potential and boost cooperation to address the most pressing climate change-related challenges. When climate change and environmental degradation present an existential threat to Europe and the world, science becomes a matter of safety and security. With reference to good experience of the EU-Russia scientific cooperation, the EU Ambassador eхpressed his confidence in the importance of joint efforts aimed at climate change mitigation and natural disasters prevention. Mr. Ederer highlighted that climate action was at the heart of the European Green Deal with the first European Climate Law aiming to ensure that Europe’s economy and society to become climate-neutral by 2050. On this basis, as well as with reference to the address delivered by the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on 16 September 2020, the Ambassador pointed out that the European Commission had proposed even a more ambitious intermediate objective to increase the 2030 target for emission reduction to at least 55%.

By summing up the speakers interventions, Tadzio Schilling, AEB Chief Executive Officer, highlighted the great potential in the sphere of scientific cooperation between the European Union and the Russian Federation with relation to the new European growth strategy. He pointed out that in the framework of the program Horizon 2020 all relevant actors as science, government, public actors and private sector come together to bring the new technological solutions to respond new challenges. The AEB CEO highlighted growing attention and the interest in green economy topic among the AEB member companies, AEB sectoral and cross-sectoral Committees. In view of this fact, he informed the audience of a new platform currently developed by the AEB under its umbrella. The new platform is aimed to reunite various initiatives around green economy, sustainability and technology, and to ensure that certain issues addressed jointly with the Russian partners, both at the federal and regional levels, could be tackled. The new platform will serve for the promotion of the European solutions, but also as a gate to innovative Russian solutions interesting to Europe. At the end of his address, Mr. Schilling expressed his support for the topics discussed during the webinar and offered the AEB platform for any forthcoming follow-up discussions and conferences, to be held together with the EU Delegation to Russia. 

Among the other speakers of the webinar were: Grigory Trubnikov, First Vice Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna Special Representative for International Cooperation of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation; Vladimir Knyaginin,Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg; Lyudmila Ogorodova, Vice-Governor of Tomsk Region for Scientific and Educational Complex; Sofya Blyuger, Director for International Cooperation; Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after Professor N.E. Zhukovsky (TsAGI); Evgeny Shvartz, Honored ecologist of the Russian Federation, Independent Director, Member of the Board of Directors, Member of the Corporate Governance, Nomination and Remuneration Committee at Nornickel; Alex Kashin, InEnergy Group CEO and the Chairman of the Board of Directors. 

Record is available via link