ARIMNet is based on a four-step process, each one being a work package, to go from the present state to the implementation and the funding of joint activities.

     1- The first requirement is to provide a precise description of agricultural research in the Mediterranean (research, research capacities and training) in collecting information, processing it to give a more integrated picture of this activity at the scale of the whole area and giving a description of the context at large. This survey will also provide information on the way research activities are performed in order to identify the best practices.

     2- The second step is to analyse the opportunities for future coordination and cooperation in identifying complementarities and gaps from the state of the art as well as barriers to cooperation, selecting activities that could enter in the field of joint activities or even of transnational funding and finalising a strategic agenda between the participants. It is important at this stage to share as widely as possible the setting of the agenda. In that respect the ARIMNet project proposes to convene a “Conference of stakeholders” in order to organise a debate around the objectives to address. This Conference will provide legitimacy to the participants of the ARIMNet project. It will also give more substance to the Steering Committee to select the subset of programmes that will enter the coordination process, either on the basis of joint activities either on that of transnational funding.

    3 & 4- The two following steps, that are the major aim of ARIMNet, can be run almost simultaneously.

     - One is to demonstrate the feasibility of joint activities. The objective, at this stage is to increase the consistency of the bunch of national programmes in order to create a “virtual-like” programme at the scale of the community of national institution gathered in ARIMNet. It will target the activities which complementarities can be improved through this process.

     - The other is to go further, from virtual to real, in organising a joint definition of a programme and the funding of transnational research. It will target activities which complementarities are strong enough and synergies more easy to exploit to enter in the phase of transnational funding. To prepare this phase, the ARIMNet project will seek to identify as early as possible, on the basis of existing bilateral cooperation, one field interesting some of the participants where an experiment of transnational funding could be undertaken. This experiment could provide useful information on barriers to this type of coordination.