On April 10, 2019, President Hu Zhijian led a CASTED delegation to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) in Brussels, Belgium. Vladimír Šucha, Director-General of the JRC, received the delegation and jointly reviewed the cooperation between the two institutions with President Hu Zhijian. After that, researchers from both sides had an in-depth discussion on the comparison of innovation systems between China and the EU, the EU’s Industrial R&D Scoreboard, and issues like intelligent specialization and technology foresight, and reached an important initial agreement on deepening cooperation. Researchers from JRC’s Seville Branch participated in the discussion through video links. Vice President Sun Fuquan, and Li Zhe, Li Yan and Yang Yang of the Institute of S&T Systems and Management participated in the activities.

The JRC is the scientific and knowledge service institution of the European Union. Its mission is to provide independent policy support in the process of EU policy formulation. The visit this time is a return visit to the visit of experts arranged by the JRC to CASTED in June 2017.