The European Commission presented its proposal for the Seventh Framework Programme to the European Parliament and Council. Parallel to the presentation of the proposal, the Commission outlined its the political objectives in an accompanying document entitled "Building the ERA of Knowledge and Growth.
Unlike previous programmes the Seventh Framework Programme is to cover a seven year period from 2007 - 2013. The Commission proposed a total budget of 72,726 million euros, with 12,670 million euros for the thematic area of Information and Communication Technologies.
The Seventh Framework Programme is structured into four specific programmes:
- Cooperation
- Ideas
- People
- Capacities
Cooperation:
The majority of FP7 funding - 44,432 euros - is proposed to be channeled to the Cooperation programme, in which "Support will be given to the whole range of research activities carried out in transnational cooperation, from collaborative projects and networks to the coordination of research programmes. International cooperation between the EU and third countries is an integral part of this action."
The Cooperation programme is divided into 9 thematic subprogrammes, including:
(1) Health;
(2) Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology;
(3) Information and Communication Technologies;
(4) Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies;
(5) Energy;
(6) Environment (including Climate Change);
(7) Transport (including Aeronautics);
(8) Socio-economic Sciences and the Humanities;
(9) Security and Space.
The transnational cooperation is to be carried out through
- Collaborative research;
- Joint Technology Initiatives;
- Co-ordination of research programmes;
- International Co-operation.
The efforts towards the coordination of national research programmes are invigorated with an expanded ERA-NET scheme, which opens up the possibility of launching new ERA-NET projects, and encourages expanding the scope and reach of ongoing ones. Furthermore the ERA-NET-PLUS is introduced as a tool to provide financial support to initiatives that progress to the establishment of common funds for implementing joint calls of national/regional programmes. In addition, the participation of the Community in jointly implemented national research programmes is to be supported in accordance with article 169.
Ideas
A budget of 11,862 million euros is earmarked for the ideas programme, under which "an autonomous European Research Council will be created to support investigator-driven “frontier research” carried out by individual teams competing at the European level, in all scientific and technological fields, including engineering, socioeconomic sciences and the humanities."
People
With a proposed budget of 7,129 million euros the People programme is to address "activities supporting training and career development of researchers, referred to as “Marie Curie” actions, will be reinforced with a better focus on the key aspects of skills and career development and strengthened links with national systems."
Capacities
A 7,486 million euro budget is foreseen for supporting "Key aspects of Key aspects of European research and innovation capacities" including "research infrastructures; research for the benefit of SMEs; regional research driven clusters; unlocking the full research potential in the EU’s “convergence” regions; “Science in Society” issues; horizontal” activities of international co-operation.
Source:
European Commission. 6 April 2005. Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament And of the Council Concerning the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities (2007 to 2013), COM(2005) 119 final. Available from CORDIS.