In the period of December 02-06, 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland in precincts of the National Palace took place the work of the III annual Session of the Committee on Economical Cooperation and Integration (CECI) in the frame of the United Nations European Commission for Europe (UNECE). The delegation of the Republic of Moldova constituted of Octavian Calmic, head General Direction of the commercial Policy and Elena Guzun, consultant, Direction Development of the small and middle business in the frame of the Ministryof Economy and Commerce of the Republic of Moldova, as well as Svetlana Munteanu, councilor of the Director General AGEPI, as a member of the working group on coordinating the activity of the national experts of the Republic of Moldova in the frame of CECI UNECE.

In the Session took part 72 delegates, representatives of 22 countries, European Commission (UE), World Economical Forum, organizations and agents in the field, non-governmental organizations, foundations of research and innovation (including those with the venture capital), business medium and the private sector.

There were represented and discussed the results of the works realized after the II-d Annual Session in the 7 fields of the CECI activity:

1. Creation of a medium contributing to the development of innovations and competitiveness based on the knowledge;
2. Facilitation of the effective protection of intellectual property rights and raising the role thereof in the innovational development;
3. Promoting the medium favourable for the development of the business and SME;
4. Promoting the medium favourable for the efficient finance mediation in the innovational development support;
5. Promotion of the best practice the public-private efficient partnership;
6. Creation of a more large and close economical integration in the countries of UNECE region;;
7. Activity on the increasing the capacities;
8. The level of the works in relation of the virtual platform on the change of Information.

There was established that the main objectives and results stipulated for 2006-2008 were successful realized. The Committee urged the member-states to disseminate the normative documents in the field of policies adopted on the annual sessions, as well as recommendations of the reunions of the group of experts and other documents on elaboration the policies and apply thereof in the processes of adoption of the decisions. The publications elaborated by the Committee are accessible on-line http://unece.org/ceci/ and will be included in the reserves of the Center of Information and Documentation in the field of IP in frame of AGEPI.

In frame of the Session there took place the political discussions on the development of the cooperation and economical integration in the UNECE region. On the base thereof there were tackled 2 subjects of great importance:

• Eco-innovations and the “pure” energy for the raise of the competitiveness;
• The economical integration by means of innovational development of the efficient and safe transport and the commercial contacts.

The delegates came to a conclusion that solution of the matters, connected with the protection of the medium, need the integrated efforts and cooperation on the international level. The eco-innovation may reduce the costs of medium protection and increase the power efficiency contributing to the decrease of the pollutants industrial emissions. With this aim there may be used different instruments, including stimulation, removing the barriers for dissemination of the existent technologies, state support of the new technologies, campaigns on consumers information, long-term sustaining of the strategic researches from the public funds, retraction of grants for the power stimulating the insufficient consumption thereof, recovering the losses by introduction of penalties for the pollution of the environment and more other.

There was marked the importance of the intellectual property in creation of the adequate conditions for the technological transfer and a balance between the owner’s rights and auspicious conditions for dissemination of technologies. The technologic transfer has a cooperative aspect that can not be determined even in relation to the intellectual property aspects. There are also necessary other policies and infrastructures to stimulate the cooperation between innovators and users. The users of technologies strongly request on generating and disseminating the eco-technologies and the efforts in order to minimize the global climatic changes. The engineering solutions may already exist, but are not requested. The political efforts were to have been directed to the stimulation of the request by the adequate mechanisms. In order to encourage the technological transfer and innovation on the local level it is preferably that this request be related to a concrete problem in the concrete context.

Moreover, there was accentuated the importance of the commercial facilities and investments in the transport infrastructure in order to stimulate the competitiveness. However, reducing the commercial barriers shall not jeopardize the consumers by the afflux of the products not corresponding to the security, health and medium standards, or jeopardize the entrepreneurs of the unfair competition by products infringing these standards or violating the intellectual property rights. The owners of intellectual property rights draw attention of the Committee on the costs of stocking and destruction of the counterfeit products stopped on the frontier. Now these costs fall on the rights owners, i.e. on the party suffering from the trade with the counterfeit products. But the rights owners propose to study the possibility to realize the cooperation with the international transporters, to define conditions of the freight so, that the above mentioned costs are supported by the producers or expeditors of the counterfeited products.

The Committee discussed and adopted the Program of activity on 2009-2010 and recommended to take in account in the future activity in the frame of the sub-programs the global economical and financial crisis. The crisis situation shall be foreseen not only as a problem but also as an opportunity of the development based on knowledge.

The Committee also recommended to make a renewal of the mandates of the specialists groups in the field of Innovation and Competitiveness Policies (TOS-ICP), Intellectual Property (TOS-IP) and Public Private Partnership (TOS-PPP) on 2009-2010, inviting the members of these groups to the active contribution in the program of implementation, including the activity of raising the consulting capacities.

The documents of the session may be accessed on the address: http://unece.org/ceci/documents/2008/session3/thirdsession.html