Over the last two decades, economic relations between the EU and the five post-Soviet Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) have evolved around two parallel and contradictory patterns. On the one hand, due to the efforts of the EU, economic relations and inter-dependence have increased and the presence of EU companies in the region has expanded significantly. On the other hand, inconsistent business ethics standards - and the peculiar way in which rule of law is interpreted and applied in the region, also called “the local way of doing business” have hindered and limited the role of foreign companies in the region. Building on recent political developments leading to the opening up of previously closed and inaccessible countries, CENTRAL ASIAN LAW is a research and training programme that aims to promote greater understanding and explanation of the interconnections between legal cultures, local business environments and governance in Central Asia. This will enable the CENTRAL ASIAN LAW team to: 1) produce new empirical knowledge on legal cultures and business ethics in the region; 2) engage with, and challenge, existing theoretical paradigms within socio-legal studies, law, economic and business sciences, Central Asian studies (post-Soviet studies, more generally) and governance scholarship; 3) provide strategic intelligence for business actors interested or already operating in the region; 4) inform international organizations and decision makers in the EU and Central Asia on possible ways to improve the business and investment climate, the rule of law and governance in the region.

The overarching goal of BEYOND5 is to build a completely European supply chain for Radio-Frequency Electronics enabling new RF domains for sensing, communication, 5G radio infrastructure and beyond. BEYOND5 is first and foremost a technology project gathering most significant European actors covering the entire value chain from materials, semiconductor technologies, designs and components up to the systems. BEYOND5 will drive industrial roadmaps in More than Moore (MtM) in adding connectivity features on existing CMOS Technology. The ambition is to accomplish sustainable Radio Frequency SOI platforms to cover the frequency range from 0.7GHz to more than 100GHz, and to demonstrate the technical advantage of SOI, which allows combining large scale integration, low power consumption, cost competitiveness and higher reliability; thus, resulting in high volume production of trusted components with low environmental impact in Europe. This objective will be achieved in a “Time to Market” approach using the 3 major work streams: 1. Technology enhancement in three European industrial pilot lines: • 300mm RF SOI substrates pilot line in Soitec, supported by the “Substrate Innovation Center” in CEA LETI to prepare future generations. • RF-SOI 65nm pilot line for 5G FEM in ST addressing both sub-6GHz and 28GHz domains. • 22FDX pilot line addressing Digital Signal Processing of radio module and RF reliability, in GF 2. European RF design ecosystem strengthening, based on a large fabless community using FD-SOI and RF-SOI platforms 3. Six Leading edge systems aggregating the value chain to demonstrate added-value of the technology at the user level: • NB IoT for Smart Asset Tracking, • Contactless USB for high-data rate communication, • V2X for autonomous connected trucks, • 5G Low Power Digital Beamforming Base Station for Indoor dense spaces, • Automotive MIMO Radar with embedded AI, • Car Interior Radar for passenger monitoring.

Development assistance to the Caucasus and Central Asian regions has grown significantly. Not only do these regions attract international attention for some of the largest world reservoirs of natural resources, but they are also considered fertile markets for their proximity and links to Europe. What possibly distinguishes the EU’s approach from others (i.e. China, India, US) is its interest not only in technical innovation and local market shares but also the regions’ social and human development. This is a major tendency with the EC that has been addressed already as early as 2014, when development strategies started emphasising the importance of taking into account social impacts in its overall development approach. In spite of this declarative intentions by local governments, but even by EU agencies, to introduce social innovation in development and assistance have not been followed through by clear and precise instructions on how to do this. This is visible both at the international and local levels and may be due to: 1) the fact that although a framework for EU-Caucasus-Central Asia relations has significantly advanced, production of specialists and intelligence regarding the regions has not followed accordingly; 2) only a limited amount of intelligence on the region is available. As a response, CARSI is a training and research programme bringing together 16 leading institutions across two continents with a major focus on the Caucasus and Central Asia to train fellows through secondment and eventually produce new empirical evidence on the region. By processing first-hand data and thus identifying the gap between declarative approaches and reality with regards to social innovation CARSI teams will define new relationships between global social innovation approaches and social theory while working to translate research findings into policy recommendations

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) is the natural evolution for both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) because they are mutually beneficial. AI increases the value of the IoT through machine learning by transforming the data into useful information, while the IoT increases the value of AI through connectivity and data exchange. Therefore, InSecTT – Intelligent Secure Trustable Things, a pan-European effort with 52 key partners from 12 countries (EU and Turkey), will provide intelligent, secure and trustworthy systems for industrial applications to provide comprehensive cost-efficient solutions of intelligent, end-to-end secure, trustworthy connectivity and interoperability to bring the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence together. InSecTT aims at creating trust in AI-based intelligent systems and solutions as a major part of the AIoT, i.e. moving AI to the edge and making AI and ML based systems trustable, explainable and not just a black box. InSecTT will foster cooperation between big industrial players from various domains, a number of highly innovative SMEs distributed all over Europa and cutting-edge research organisations and university. The project features a big variety of industry-driven use cases embedded into various application domains, i.e. smart infrastructure, building, manufacturing, automotive, aeronautics, railway, urban public transport, maritime as well as health. The demonstration of InSecTT solutions in well-known real-world environments like trains, ports, airports and the health sector will generate huge impact on both high and broad level, going from citizens up to European stakeholders. It will establish the EU as a center of intelligent, secure and trustworthy systems for industrial applications enabled by a strong industry with a strong reputation and an informed society, in order to enable products and services based on AI compliant to European values and “Made in Europe".