During the event, the Forum representatives raised awareness for the fact that education and research systems in EaP countries have yet to rise. Low levels of research funding persist in all EaP countries with no positive trends, alongside with reductions in research personnel by 4 to 12 times compared to 1990 (min – Belarus, max – Georgia). Education funding in all EaP countries is declining with especially low levels in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Increasingly, this makes highly qualified researchers (HQR) in the EaP region leave their countries for good. More than half of all HQR in Georgia emigrate; in other EaP countries the percentage is even higher.

Stressting the fundamental value of education and R&D for the development of the EaP region, Shatberashvili and Nochvai recommended:

• to assign the same high weight to progress in education and research as to progress in democracy
• to establish tighter monitoring mechanisms for the fulfilment of EaP obligations by the national governments
• to introduce more conditionality into EU assistance measures
• to use more intensively the Forum’s capacity at the planning, evaluation and monitoring
• to let the experience of EU member states with a post-Soviet background in the area of research and education be role model for the EaP countries