With 30 partners across the Mediterranean, including policy-makers and research entities, MIRA, the Mediterranean Innovation and Research Coordination Action, provides a functional dialogue and action platform to support the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation in research and innovation, by exploring and promoting creative ways of generating opportunities for win-win collaborations.

MIRA is not an isolated project. On the contrary, its main strength is to be associated with more than 35 other projects financed under the international cooperation activities of the FP7 capacities programme, which enhances its legitimacy in representing the Euro-Mediterranean research community and in conveying appropriate messages to policy makers in the Euro-Mediterranean S&T Monitoring Committee (MoCo). These networks are the following ones:

- The BILAT projects, with five Mediterranean countries having signed an S&T agreement with the European Union in order to enhance their cooperation, i.e. Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Algeria.

- The ERA-WIDE projects, the aims of which are to strengthen the research and RDI management competences of Mediterranean research centers in order to improve their competitiveness in the Euro-Mediterranean Research and Innovation Space.

- Other Euro-Mediterranean thematic networks financed under FP7 such as EUMEDGRID (grid infrastructures), ARIMNET (Agro-food).

This “pulling” function of MIRA ensures a better representation of research priorities with respect to other regional and sectorial programmes and policies financed by other EC General Directorates:

- Horizon 2020 for the depollution of the Mediterranean Sea by 2020, financed by DG Cooperation and Development under the lead of DG ENV;

- Fostering innovation, targeted by DG Cooperation and Development, DG ENTR and the European Investment Bank.