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A joint effort will be required to overcome the global challenges of the present and the future.
These include climate change, questions of nutrition and food production, securing our future energy supply, combating poverty and infectious diseases as well as questions of security and migration. This prompted the Federal Government to adopt the Strategy for the Internationalisation of Science and Research in 2008.

Four high-priority goals:

1. Strengthening cooperation between the best researchers:

• The Internationalisation Strategy aims to bring together the world’s best minds. Accordingly, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has initiated various measures, including the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship that enables outstanding researchers to undertake long-term research stays at German universities. The successful Sofia Kovalevskaya Prize for up-and-coming young researchers is being continued. Furthermore, existing and new scholarship programmes are increasing German students’ mobility and Germany’s attractiveness for foreign undergraduate and postgraduate students. Cooperation with the world’s best teams is also being fostered by the increasing international orientation of funding programmes as well as numerous bilateral and multilateral agreements.

2. Gaining access to international innovation potentials:

• If German businesses wish to remain competitive, they have to collaborate with the best partners worldwide. That enables them to benefit from the latest discoveries and developments and at the same time strengthen Germany as a centre of innovation.

3. Sustainably strengthening cooperation with developing countries in the fields of education, research and development:

• The Internationalisation Strategy regards the developing and newly industrialised countries as important partners for international cooperation. German researchers will cooperate with their colleagues as equals and thereby establish partnerships with future centres of research and industry. This initiative also involves improved training for specialists and managers in developing countries. Specially adapted and coordinated instruments of development cooperation and scientific-technological cooperation form important prerequisites for collaboration between researchers.

4. Assuming international responsibility to overcome global challenges:

• The pressing problems of our age can only be solved through joint effort and Germany is contributing its research and innovation potential to finding appropriate solutions. Germany’s research policy goals are therefore closely linked with its foreign and development policy goals. Dialogue with the G8 and OECD countries has been established on an international research agenda and Germany has assumed a leading role. Its subjects are climate change, securing energy supplies and combating poverty and infectious diseases.

Promoting innovation and research in Germany

Goals defined in the Internationalisation Strategy are being realised, for example, in the initiative to „Promote Innovation and Research in Germany“, which the Federal Government initiated in 2006. Under the heading "Research in Germany" it is encouraging increased cooperation with specific countries and in selected subject- and country-related fields where Germany is traditionally strong.

The European research and innovation area

The European Research Area (ERA) is one of Germany’s key areas of international cooperation and Germany is a major contributor to its development. The European Higher Education Area that is being created within the framework of the Bologna Process is also intended to increase academic mobility in Europe. It is based on the conviction, formulated in the Lisbon Strategy, that Europe can only successfully grow together if education and research play a key role.

The European Research Council (ERC), which Germany co-founded, acts on the principle that outstanding research is the sole precondition for European research funding. The European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) was largely established during the German European Council Presidency. Additionally, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), in which the Federal Government participates, is creating modern research infrastructures such as the European x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) and various accelerator facilities for European researchers.