The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
/
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
to support and foster research in the
European Research Area (ERA). Starting in 2014, the funding programmes were named Horizon.
The funding programmes began in 1984 and continue to the present day. The most recent programme,
Horizon Europe
Horizon Europe is a 7-year European Union scientific research initiative, successor of the Horizon 2020 programme and the earlier Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. The European Commission drafted and approved a plan ...
, has a budget of 95.5 billion Euros to be distributed over 7 years.
![Flag of Europe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Flag_of_Europe.svg)
The specific objectives and actions vary between funding periods. In FP6 and FP7, focus was on technological research. In Horizon 2020, the focus was on innovation, delivering economic growth faster, and delivering solutions to end users that are often governmental agencies.
Background
Conducting European research policies and implementing European research programmes is an obligation under the
Amsterdam Treaty
The Treaty of Amsterdam, officially the Treaty of Amsterdam amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related acts, was signed on 2 October 1997, and entered into force on 1 May 1999; i ...
, which includes a chapter on research and technological development. The programmes are defined by Commission civil servants that are aided by various official advisory group and lobby groups. E.g. to advise the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
on the overall strategy to be followed in carrying out the Information and Communication Technology thematic priority, the Information Society Technologies Advisory Group (ISTAG) was set up.
The framework programmes
The framework programmes up until Framework Programme 6 (FP6) covered five-year periods, but from Framework Programme 7 (FP7) on, programmes run for seven years. The Framework Programmes, and their budgets in billions of Euros, are presented in the table below. For FP1–FP5, program expenditures were made in
European Currency Unit
The European Currency Unit (, ; , ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 421 ...
s; from FP6 onward budgets were in Euros. The values presented below are in Euros.
Funding instruments
FP6 and FP7
Framework Programme 6 and 7 (2002–2013) projects were generally funded through instruments, the most important of which included:
* Integrating Project (IP)
** Medium- to large-sized collaborative research projects funded in FP6 and FP7. They are composed of a minimum of three partners coming from three countries from
Associated states but can join several tens of partners. The typical duration of such projects is three to five years but there is not a defined upper limit. The budget granted by the Commission can reach several tens of million euros, paid as a fraction of the actual costs spent by the participants.
** IPs specifically aim at fostering European competitiveness in
basic research and
applied science
Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted ...
with a focus on "addressing major needs in society" defined by the Priority Themes of the Framework Programme. Like STRePs ''(see below)'', IPs ask for a strong participation of
small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to ascertain the translation of research results into commercially viable products or services.
* Network of Excellence (NoE)
** Medium-sized research projects co-funded by the European Commission in FP6 and FP7. These projects are "designed to strengthen scientific and technological excellence on a particular research topic through the durable integration of the research capacities of the participants."
** NoE projects require the minimum participation of three EU member-nations, however, projects are usually expected to involve at least six countries.
["Provisions for Implementing Networks of Excellence"](_blank)
cordis.europa.eu. . Retrieved 25 June 2009 Projects are provided grants for a maximum of seven years. The budget granted by the Commission is €1–6 million per year depending upon the number of researchers involved.
** An NoE project should not strictly be considered as a research project, since its aim is not to conduct research, but rather to contribute to the clarification of the concepts in the covered field.
* Specific Targeted Research Projects (STReP)
** Medium-sized research projects funded by the European Commission in the FP6 and FP7 funding programs. STReP projects involve a minimum of three partners coming from three countries from Associated states. The typical duration of such projects is two to three years. In FP6, they generally involved between six and 15 partners. The budget granted by the Commission is in average around €2 million.
Note also the FP7 Joint Technology Initiatives (JTI) in partnership with
industry. A specific action was the FIRST project, to foster cooperation in the area of internet technologies through the
European-Latin American Technology Platforms
The FIRST project was an FP7 Support Action intended to foster cooperation in the area of Internet technologies between Europe and Latin America FIRST focuses primarily on five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. The projec ...
.
Horizon 2020
Horizon 2020 was the eighth framework programme funding research, technological development, and innovation. The programme's name has been modified to "Framework Programme for Research and Innovation".
The programme ran from 2014 to 2020 and provided an estimated
€
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...
80 billion of funding,
an increase of 23 per cent on the previous phase.
The ERC, as one component of H2020, funded 6,707 research projects worth a total of €13.3 billion.
From 2013 to 2020 the EU’s European Research Council assigned to UK scientists €1.7bn in grants, more than any other country.
Horizon 2020 provided grants to research and innovation projects through open and competitive calls for proposals. Legal entities from any country were eligible to submit project proposals to these calls. Participation from outside the European Union was explicitly encouraged. Participants from European Union member states and countries associated to Horizon 2020 were automatically fundable.
Horizon 2020 supported
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
to research results.
Projects such as the
European Processor Initiative and
Nesplora were beneficiaries of Horizon 2020.
Horizon 2020 has been succeeded by
Horizon Europe
Horizon Europe is a 7-year European Union scientific research initiative, successor of the Horizon 2020 programme and the earlier Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. The European Commission drafted and approved a plan ...
in 2021.
Objective and pillars
The framework programme's objective is to complete the
European Research Area (ERA) by coordinating national research policies and pooling research funding in some areas to avoid duplication. Horizon 2020 itself is seen as a policy instrument to implement other high-level policy initiatives of the European Union, such as
Europe 2020 and Innovation Union.
The programme consists of three main research areas that are called "pillars":
* The first pillar, "Excellent Science", focuses on basic science. It has a budget of 24 billion euro.
* The second pillar is "Industrial Leadership", with a budget of 14 billion euro. It is managed by
DG Enterprise and based on Europe 2020 and Innovation Union strategies. The goal is to find ways to modernize European industries that have suffered from a fragmented European market.
* The third pillar funds potential solutions to social and economic problems, "Societal challenges" (SC). The goal is implementation of solutions, less on technology development.
The structure follows the previous framework programme (FP7, 2007–2013) to the level of the sub-programmes under the pillars.
Horizon 2020 is also implementing the
European environmental research and innovation policy, which is aimed at defining and turning into reality a transformative agenda for greening the economy and the society as a whole so as to achieve a truly
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
.
Agencies
The framework programme is implemented by the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
, the executive body of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
. More specifically, it is implemented by various agencies, including:
*
Directorate-Generals (DGs)
**
Directorate-General for Research and Innovation
**
Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology
*
Executive Agencies
**
Research Executive Agency (REA)
**
Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME)
**
ERC Executive Agency
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...
(ERCEA)
Associated countries
Associated countries have signed an association agreement for the purposes of this framework programme. To date, 14 countries are associated to Horizon 2020. Participants from European Union member states and countries associated to Horizon 2020 are automatically funded.
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
is considered as "partly associated" due to the
2014 referendums
Fourteen or 14 may refer to:
* 14 (number), the natural number following 13 and preceding 15
* one of the years 14 BC, AD 14, 1914, 2014
Music
* 14th (band), a British electronic music duo
* ''14'' (David Garrett album), 2013
*''14'', an unrel ...
held by Switzerland, which free movement of workers between Switzerland and the EU was limited. Swiss organizations continue to be active participants in Horizon 2020, however, their participation is sometimes covered by national funding.
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
is an associated country of Horizon 2020. A central point of negotiation was the funding of projects beyond the
Green Line
Green Line may refer to:
Places Military and political
* Green Line (France), the German occupation line in France during World War II
* Green Line (Israel), the 1949 armistice line established between Israel and its neighbours
** City Line ( ...
.
Israel published its views in an Appendix to the official documents.
Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...
gained the status of associated country and Armenian researchers and organizations can participate in all Horizon programs on equal footing with EU member states.
Illustrative projects
IMPETUS
IMPETUS (Information Management Portal to Enable the inTegration of Unmanned Systems) is addressing the scientific analysis of information management requirements for a safe and efficient integration of
unmanned aerial systems
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controlle ...
(UAS) in very low level airspace. As a result, technologically and commercially feasible service solutions are elaborated and deployed in an experimental testing environment.
The expected growth of future UAS movements in rural as well as urban areas indicates the need for traffic management solutions, ensuring a normal course of trouble free operations of manned as well as unmanned aviation. IMPETUS contributes by investigating potential
microservices that serve the airspace user's needs in all phases of the operation life cycle, from strategical planning over pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight data provision. Since
information management
Information management (IM) concerns a cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to those who need it, and its ultimate disposal throug ...
is an infrastructural prerequisite of future unmanned traffic systems, the results support the European goal to gain in prosperity by means of the job and business opportunities of an emerging drone service market.
Ensuring a scalable, flexible and cost efficient system, IMPETUS proposes the application of the
Function as a Service Function as a service (FaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typical ...
paradigm and Smart Concepts. Concurrently, data quality and integrity is taken into account to guarantee a safe conduct of all operations. To fulfil these purposes, the project started to characterize data processes and services of vital importance for drone operations. Following the requirements derived from this preliminary studies, a Smart UTM Design is drafted in alignment with the U-Space concept, which describes a framework for a progressive implementation of services to "enable complex drone operations with a high degree of automation to take place in all types of operational environments, including urban areas". Subsequently, specific microservices will be prototyped and laboratory scale tested in a server-less cloud-based environment.
On behalf of the
SESAR Joint Undertaking, IMPETUS is carried out from 2017 to 2019 by a multinational consortium of key stakeholders in unmanned aviation:
Altitude Angel (UK), Boeing Research and Technology Europe (ES), C-Astral (SI), CRIDA (ES), INECO (ES), Jeppesen (DE) and the
Technical University of Darmstadt (DE).
OpenAIRE
A network of Open Access repositories, archives and journals that support Open Access policies. The OpenAIRE Consortium is a
Horizon 2020
The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europea ...
(FP8) project, aimed to support the implementation of the
EC and
ERC Open Access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
policies.
The
Zenodo research data repository is a product of OpenAIRE. The OpenAIRE portal is online.
Criticism of the programmes
The programmes have been criticized on various grounds, such as actually diminishing Europe's industrial competitiveness and failing to deliver fundamental excellence and global economic competitiveness.
In 2010, the
Austrian Research Promotion Agency
The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (german: links=no, Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft or FFG) is an organization for the promotion of research and innovation in the field of applied and industrial research in Austria and i ...
launched a petition calling for a simplification of administrative procedures, which attracted over 13,000 signatories. The numerous other criticisms of the petitioners were later distilled into a
green paper
In the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth countries, Hong Kong, the United States and the European Union, a green paper is a tentative government report and consultation document of policy proposals for debate and discussion. A green paper represen ...
. In Horizon 2020 there are significant simplifications: e.g. fewer funding rates (increasing the funding rates of the large companies), less reporting, less auditing, shorter time from proposal to project kick-off. In a ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'' article in December 2020, Horizon 2020 is praised for being less bureaucratic than past framework programmes.
The European Commission services introduced several simplifications in the new framework programme Horizon Europe, to facilitate the work of the beneficiaries especially in the reporting phase.
See also
*
Best Available Techniques Reference Document (BREF)
Best Available Techniques Reference Documents (BREFs) are reference reports developed in the European Union to describe industrial processes, emission and consumption levels of applied techniques, and best available techniques for integrated prev ...
References
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Framework Programmes For Research And Technological Development
European Commission projects
European Union and science and technology
*