The first issue of this year's Echo magazine presents two articles in English. They are extensive analytical articles regarding activity of coordinators from EU member countries in SC7 – Secure societies in H2020 and at the quality of RIA and IA proposals submitted by coordinators from member countries and Nano-Bio-Medical Research in the Czech Republic and EU Framework Programs namely with contributions of D. Frank and P. Pracna. Another articles in English is an interview with the director of the European ESS Infrastructure, which touches Brexit.
The contributions in Czech are an article about the EU transition to the circular economy, and the text about results of the TWINNING and ERA Chairs 2017 calls.

(To make the English part of the magazine at least a bit visually different from the Czech one, it will be printed on colored paper from this number on.)

• Miroslav Kostić, Zdeněk Kučera: Regional business R&D expenditure within application sectors of the National Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation of the Czech Republic
• Martin Kobert: Research and Development aid according to Temporary Framework
• Miroslav Kostić: Ownership and size dimension of regional business R&D expenditure within application sectors of the Czech RIS3 strategy