Bilateral relations between countries often refer to political, economic, cultural and historic ties. Strong bilateral relations are characterised by cooperation between institutions and persons at administrative and political level as well as in the private sector, academia and civil society. Other elements of bilateral relations include trade and investment, cultural exchange, as well as general knowledge, understanding and public awareness about the other country and the ties existing between them.

The bonds between countries that are parties to the EEA and Norway Grants are already strong due to a common history and culture, shared values as well as geographical closeness. The engagement funded through the Grants is only one of several contributions to strengthening the relations between the donor and beneficiary states.

In the context of the EEA and Norway Grants, the operational definition of “strengthened bilateral relations” is:  Cooperation, joint results, and increased mutual knowledge and understanding between donor and beneficiary states as a function of the EEA and Norway Grants.

In order to achieve these objectives, within the framework of HU12 Public Health Initiatives 4 calls for proposal were launched under the following areas:

• Action 1 - Exchange of experience and partnership programs in the field of innovative e-health solutions to promote early diagnosis of cancer
• Action 2 - Exchange of experience and partnership programs in the field of improvement of patient safety conditions in hospitals
• Action 3 - Exchange of experience to facilitate knowledge transfer in effective operation of in-patient care
• Action 4 - Exchange of experience related to and best practices and measures to reduce health inequalities

The calls were open from March 10, 2017 until 31 August 31, 2017. The total budget of the calls reached the amount of 68.85 million HUF. Under the four calls 18 application were positively evaluated and in total received 67.2 million HUF grant amount.

The list of the succesful applications can be found here.