Plans for the Sixth Research Framework Programme, intended for launch at the end of this year and covering the period to 2006, are now well advanced. They promise a major step forward in Europe's efforts to bring new scientific knowledge to bear on the practical needs of enterprise and society.

As a political priority, innovation's visibility will be markedly increased in FP6," says Giulio Grata, Director of Innovation in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Enterprise. The Commission's proposals for the new Framework Programme conceive it as the principal tool for building a European Research Area (ERA). They state that research and innovation, co-ordinated across the European Union, will be twin engines of its drive to become, "by the end of the decade, the most successful and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world".

The plans, proposed by the Commission in February last year, have had their first reading in the European Parliament, and the Research Council was expected to reach a common position on them in December. A final text and budget are likely to be adopted jointly by Parliament and Council in mid-2002. Decisions on implementation mechanisms will be taken by the end of the year, with the launch of the first calls for proposals at the start of 2003.

Visible and verifiable

FP6 will comprise two main programmes(1), with innovation a prominent component of each.

The first, Integrating and strengthening the European Research Area, covers support for research activities in seven priority fields, and for underpinning science to anticipate future technological needs. Here, the Commission makes it clear that the research to be funded under the new network of excellence and integrated project instruments(2) will have to include verifiable plans for exploiting the knowledge produced, involving activities such as knowledge management, dissemination and transfer, and analysis of the economic and social impact of the technologies concerned. Most projects will therefore include activities similar to those of FP5's accompanying measures, involving entrepreneurs, local authorities, investors, end-users and other stakeholders alongside research contractors.

This programme also addresses the co-ordination and development of research and innovation policies, providing for further development of the work of the Trend Chart on Innovation in Europe and the Innovation Scoreboard, as well as more specific studies. It covers the benchmarking of innovation policy at national and regional levels, and will support exchange of experience between policy-makers as the basis for accelerated improvement of the environment for innovation throughout the European Union.

Second, Structuring the European Research Area covers four areas of activity - research and innovation, human resources and mobility, research infrastructures, and 'science and society'. Research and innovation aims to improve the coherence of the European innovation system as a whole, through stakeholder networks, regional innovation strategies and trans-regional co-operation, the testing of new approaches to innovation, information and assistance services, economic and technological intelligence activities, and analysis and evaluation. Europe's innovation culture is among the issues addressed under the heading of science and society.

(1) In addition to Euratom, and the Joint Research Centre's nuclear and non-nuclear research programmes.
(2) See 'A new framework for European research', edition 3/01.

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