European Union News - Research & Innovation

The European Commission has published a new “Practical Guide to EU funding opportunities for Research and Innovation”, which will help to all interested stakeholders to find the right funding programme for their projects in a user-friendly and comprehensive way.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the EU's flagship initiative for boosting innovation in Europe, marks the launch of its activities with the first meeting of its recently appointed Governing Board. The meeting, which took place September 15th in the Institute's host city of Budapest, counted upon the presence of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, Commission President José Manuel Barroso, and Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Ján Figel', among others.

The first beam of protons was successfully made on the morning of September 10th, paving the way for a new era of discoveries in the field of particle physics. Among other things, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should help scientists answer some key questions about the universe, including the nature of dark matter, what happened right after the big bang, and how many dimensions there are.

The Directorate-General for Research has published last 13th September a call for tender for the development of a study to assess fund-raising from philanthropy for research funding in European universities with a maximum budget of 0,3 meuros.

Aiming to prepare the establishment of a network of projects to demonstrate the use of CCS technology in power plants, the Commission launched a call for tender for an external service provider to assist in establishing and running this network. The Call for Tender will be opened until October 6th, 2008.

The European Commission has presented on the 11th September a Report about the European Space policy progress COM(2008)561 final. The Report provides an overview on the main progress achieved in the first year of the implementation of the European Space Policy (ESP), as elaborated jointly by the European Commission and the Director General of the European Space Agency.

The European Commission Directorate General for Informatics (IDABC) organises its Open Source Software Event 2008 on 20 October in Málaga, in the Spanish Region of Andalucía. It is organised with the regions of Andalucía and Extremadura in parallel with the Open Source World Conference. It is the fifth edition of this event and it is estimated a total participation beyond 6,000 attendees.

It has been published the Communication of 5th September 2008 from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions related to the ex-post evaluation of the ‘Information Society Technologies (IST)’ Thematic Priority in the Sixth Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (RTD) (COM(2008) 533 final).

The European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling on the Commission to submit proposals prohibiting the cloning of animals for food supply purposes, as well as the  farming of cloned animals or their offspring and the placing on the market or importing of products derived from cloned animals. MEPs refer to the higher mortality problems of cloned animals and the harm that allowing cloning techniques could cause to the image of the European agricultural model which is based on product quality and the respect for stringent animal welfare conditions.

The European Commission launched on September 4th a public consultation in search of the best strategies to boost Europe's leadership in ICT (Information and Communications Technology) research and innovation in the next decade. The public consultation will be opened for contributions  until November 7th 2008.

On the 3rd September 2008 the Official Journal of the European Union has published the authorisation for State aid pursuant to Articles 87 and 88 of the EC Treaty in a UK cases where the Commission raises no objections. The Commission concludes that the notified State aid (N 593/07) measure, “the Energy Technologies Institute”, is compatible with the common market, pursuant to Article 87(3)(c) of the EC Treaty. It accordingly decided not to raise objections to the notified measure. The date of adoption of the decisión was the 23.6.2008.

The Official Journal of the European Union has published on the 3 rd September 2008 a set of call for proposals related to the 7th EC Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities in the  Cooperation Specific Programme and in the Capacities Specific Programme for the 2008-2009 period.