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General information
What is FP7?
FP7 became fully operational in January 2007 and will ran until 2013. It is designed to build on the achievements of its predecessor towards the creation of the European Research Area, a key reference for research policy in Europe since the 2000 Lisbon Council, which combines a European «internal market» for research, where researchers, technology and knowledge freely circulate; effective European-level coordination of national and regional research activities, programmes and policies; and initiatives implemented and funded at European level, to carry it further towards the development of the knowledge economy and society in Europe.
What is the overall budget for FP7?
The budget for the seven year period is € 50.521 billion and the Euratom budget for nuclear research & training activities carried out under the Euratom treaty for five years is € 2.7 billion. Overall, this represents a 41% increase from FP6 at 2004 prices and 63% at current prices.
How is FP7 structured?
The European Community part of FP7 is organised in four programmes corresponding to four basic components of European research:
The «Cooperation» Programme
Support is given to the whole range of research activities carried out in trans-national coopera¬tion, from collaborative projects and networks to the coordination of national research programmes. International cooperation between the EU and third countries is an integral part of this action.
FP7 allocates € 32.413 billion to the Cooperation programme. The budget is devoted to supporting cooperation between universities, industry, research centres and public authorities throughout the EU and beyond.
What themes have been identified for FP7 «Cooperation» Programme?
• Health
• Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology
• Information & Communication Technologies
• Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials
& new Production Technologies
• Energy
• Environment (including Climate Change)
• Transport (including Aeronautics)
• Socio-economic Sciences & Humanities
• Space
• Security
The Cooperation programme is sub-divided into ten distinct themes. Each theme is operationally autonomous but aims to maintain coherence within the Cooperation Programme and to allow for joint activities cutting across different themes, through, for example, joint calls.
Across these themes, support to trans-national cooperation is implemented through:
• Collaborative research: the bulk of EU research
funding in FP7 goes to collaborative research,
to establish excellent research projects and net¬
works able to attract researchers & investments
from Europe and the entire world. This is to be achieved through a range of funding schemes: Collaborative projects, Networks of Excellence, Coordination / Support Actions, etc. http:// www.cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/home_en.html#l
Technology Platforms: http://www.cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/home_en.html#2
• Coordination of national research programmes: http://www.cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/
home_en.html#3
Joint Technology Initiatives: http://www.cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/home_en.html#4
The «Ideas» Programme
Investigator-driven «frontier research», within the framework of activities commonly understood as «basic research», is a key driver of wealth and social progress, as it opens new opportunities for scientific and technological advance, and is instrumental in producing new knowledge leading to future applications and markets.
The objective of the specific programme «Ideas» is to reinforce excellence, dynamism and creativity in European research and improve the attractiveness of Europe for the best researchers from both European and third countries, as well as for industrial research investment, by providing a Europe-wide competitive funding structure, in addition to and not replacing national funding, for «frontier research» executed by individual teams.
A European Research Council to support science and scholarship
For its implementation, a European Research Council (ERC), consisting of an independent Scientific Council and a dedicated implementation structure (in total – 22 scientists of high authority, specialized in different areas of scientific knowledge), has been established by the European Commissionunderthis specific programme. The ERC operates according to the principles of scientific excellence, autonomy, efficiency, transparency and accountability, and supports investiga¬tor-driven projects in «frontier research», carried out by individual teams competing at the European level, within and across all fields of research.
The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of FP7 with an overall budget for the ERC of € 7.5 billion for seven years (2007-2013).
Grants for Starting and Advanced Researchers
ERC grants will be awarded through open competition to projects headed by young and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working in Europe - the sole criterion for selection is excellence. The aim is to recognise the best ideas, and retain and confer status and visibility to the best brains in Europe, while also attracting talent from abroad. By challenging Europe's brightest minds, the ERC expects to bring about new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveies - the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future.
The «People» Programme
The Marie Curie Actions have long been one of the most popular and appreciated features of the EU's FPs. They have developed significantly in orientation over time, from a pure mobility fellowships programme to a programme dedicated to stimulating researchers career development. The Marie Curie Actions have been particularly successful in responding to the needs of Europe's scientific community in terms of training, mobility and career development. This has been demonstrated by a demand in terms of highly ranked applications which in most actions has exten¬sively surpassed the available financial support.
Entirely dedicated to human resources in research, the «People» Programme has a significant overall budget of more than€ 4.7 billion forthe seven-year period until 2013, which represents a 50% average annual increase over FP6.
Objectives of the «People» Programme
Strengthening, quantitatively and qualitatively, the human potential in R&D in Europe, by stimulat¬ing people to enter into the profession of researcher, encouraging European researchers to stay in Europe, and attracting to Europe researchers from the entire world, making Europe more attractive to the best researchers, are major objectives of the People Programme. Building on the experiences with the Marie Curie actions under previous FPs, this is being done by putting into place a coher¬ent set of Marie Curie actions, particularly taking into account the European added value in terms of their structuring effect on the European Research Area. These actions address researchers at all stages of their careers, in the public and private sectors, from initial research training, specifically intended for young people, to life long learning and career development. Efforts are also being made to increase the participation by women researchers, by encouraging equal opportunities in all Marie Curie Actions, by designing the actions to ensure that researchers can achieve an appropriate work/ life balance and by facilitating resuming a research career after a break.
Activities
The «People» Programme is being implemented through actions under five headings:
Initial training of researchers to improve mostly young researchers' career perspectives in both the public and private sector, by broadening their scientific and generic skills, including those related to technology transfer and entrepreneurship.
Life-long training and career development to support experienced researchers in complement-ing or acquiring new skills and competencies or in enhancing inter/multidisciplinarity and/orintersectoral mobility, in resuming a research career after a break and in (re)integrating into a longer term research position in Europe after a trans-national mobility experience.
Industry-academia pathways and partnerships to stimulate intersectoral mobility and increase knowledge sharing through joint research partnerships in longer term co-operation programmes between organisations from academia and industry, in particular SMEs and including traditional manufacturing industries.
International dimension, to contribute to the life-long training and career development of EU-researchers, to attract research talent from outside Europe, and to foster mutually beneficial research collaboration with research actors from outside Europe.
Specific actions to support removing obstacles to mobility and enhancing the career perspec-tives of researchers in Europe.
The «Capacities» Programme
The FP7 Capacities programme aims to enhance research and innovation capacities throughout Europe and ensure their optimal use. The Capacities programme is provided with a budget of € 4.097 billion to operate in seven broad areas:
Research infrastructures
Research for the benefit of SMEs
Regions of knowledge and support for regional research-driven clusters
Research potential of Convergence Regions
Science in society
Support to the coherent development of research policies
International cooperation
This specific programme also aims to support the coherent development of policies; to complement the Cooperation programme; to contribute to EU policies and initiatives to improve the coherence and impact of Member States policies, and to find synergies with regional and cohesion policies, the Structural Funds, education and training programmes and the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP).
Euratom in FP7
Euratom energy research activities are carried out under the treaty with the same name, which in 1957 established the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Euratom is legally separated from the European Community (EC) and has its own Framework Research Programme, but managed by the common Community institutions.
Although EU Member States retain most competencies in energy policy, whether based on nuclear or other sources, the Euratom Treaty has achieved an important degree of harmonisation at European level. It legislates for a number of specific tasks for the management of nuclear resources and research activities.
The Council Decision concerning the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom FP7) for nuclear research and training activities
includes € 2.751 billion to be spent over five years (2007-2011).
In Euratom FP7 there are two associated specific programmes, one covering indirect actions in the fields of fusion energy research and nuclear fission and radiation protection, the other covering direct actions in the nuclear field undertaken by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). The JRC was initially established by the Euratom Treaty and has since become a leading institute of nuclear research in Europe.
Euratom indirect actions are managed by the Commission's Directorate-General for Research. The specific programmes allocate € 1.947 billion to fusion energy research and € 287 million for nuclear fission and radiation protection. € 517 million are reserved for nuclear activities of the JRC. The JRC is also a partner in many of the consortia implementing indirect actions in the fission area.
FP7 Euratom aims to address the major issues and challenges in nuclear research and to contribute to the further consolidation of the European Research Area in the nuclear energy sector. In general terms, the Euratom research programme aims to develop and assemble knowledge and to improve scientific and technical competences and know-how in support of safety, security, reliability, sustain-ability and cost-effectiveness of nuclear energy.
How and when can I register as an independent expert for FP7?
Suitably qualified experts (including from Belarus) are invited to register themselves in the «independent experts» registration service for FP7, which is available on CORDIS at http://www. cordis.europa.eu/emmfp7. It is from this database that independent experts are regularly selected for the evaluation of proposals submitted to FP7 calls. Further information on the appointment of independent experts can be found in the CORDIS FP7 participation section at http://www.cordis. europa.eu/fp7/who_en.html#appointment.
* This section is presented with usage of materials of the «Compendium on Science & Research Cooperation between the European Union and the Russian Federation», © European Communities, 2009.
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
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