During the first half of 2006, Austria held the Council Presidency of the EU, at a time when the European Union had some very important items on its agenda.
The agenda of the Austrian EU Council Presidency in the field of research focused on promoting the negotiations on the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) due to start at the beginning of 2007. Relying on what the Luxembourg and British EU Presidencies had already achieved, and in close teamwork with the current Finnish EU Presidency, but also in close cooperation with the European Parliament, we have done our best to make it possible for FP7 to start on time.
In addition to dealing with FP 7, the Austrian EU Presidency contributed to the annual Lisbon agenda and to even better research relations with other regions of the world, in particular with the Western Balkans and Latin America and the Caribbean. Moreover, we promoted the debate on the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) project and on a future European Space Programme to secure an important role for Europe in outer space also in future. With the European "Conference on Security Research" on 20 and 21 February 2006 in Vienna, we aimed at underlining the importance of security research for Europe and providing a strong impulse for the future work of the European Commission in this field.
Under our presidency, two meetings of the Competitiveness Council were complemented by an Informal Competitiveness Council, which took place from 20 to 22 April 2006 in Graz, Styria. The Research Formation of the Competitiveness Council was chaired by Minister Elisabeth Gehrer and by Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach.
