Confindustria (the powerful national federation of Italian private industry), the Ministry of Reforms and Innovation in Public Administration, the Ministry of International Commerce, and the National Institute of Foreign Commerce have decided to hold a high profile "Canada Day" event in Rome on May 28 and 29, 2007 to promote Canada as a partner country of choice for Italy in the fields of technology, research partnerships and investment.

The event is in follow-up to the recent visit to Canada by Minister of Reforms and Innovation in Public Administration, Luigi Nicolais, during which the Minister actively promoted extending successful S&T collaborations between Italy and Quebec to other Canadian provinces and partners.

The Italian government has allocated 1.1 B euros ($Cdn 1.7 B) in new funds to S&T in a campaign to increase Italy's competitiveness in innovation and high technology.

Minister Nicolais is driving efforts to build international collaboration with selected advanced countries such as Canada with a focus on cluster development, research partnering and investment.

Nicolais sees Canada as an S&T leader and admires Canada's ICT capabilities and innovation strategy for SMEs. His view is that more structured Canadian-Italian collaborations can help bring Canada access to European FP7 projects where other European countries will be involved.

IST-EC2 will be present to introduce the partnership building experience in the IST-EC2 project and in supporting Canadian and Italian, as well as European organisations in the bilateral business and research meetings.

Please view the draft programme as of 22 May 2007.