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COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
Preliminary guidelines for the Fifth Framework Programme of Research and Technological Development Activities
"INVENTING TOMORROW"
Europe's research at the service of its people
10 July 1996
"... apart from generating new knowledge, we would like science to contribute to general well-being and social balance. We want to see scientific progress and innovation making a major contribution to Europe's future ..."
European Research Ministers, 1996
The purpose of this document is to open a debate with the participation of Parliament, Council and all those concerned by or interested in European research. The aim is to decide together the guidelines which will serve as the basis for a detailed proposal for the Fifth Framework Programme of research and technological development, which will determine Union action in this area as we move into the next millennium.
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
I. WHAT DO WE NEED FROM EUROPEAN RESEARCH AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURY?
- I.1 General parameters
- I.2 Challenges and opportunities
- I.3 Main objectives
II. MOVING FROM THE FOURTH TO THE FIFTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
- II.1 Progress with the fourth framework programme
- II.2 Shifting the balance to improve the impact on society and the economy
Supporting basic research
Bringing research more into line with the real market
Doing more to exploit results
III. PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL FOR THE STRUCTURE OF THE FIFTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
III.1 Content
III.1.1 Priority topics (research at the service of the people)
- Unlocking the resources of the living world and the ecosystem
- Creating a user-friendly information society
- Promoting competitive and sustainable growth
III.1.2 Horizontal activities
- Improving human potential
- Innovation and participation of SMEs
- Confirming the international role of European research
III.2 Implementation
- Increasing flexibility in research work and the decision-making process
- Ensuring more efficient management
- Extending the range of instruments and means of coordination
CONCLUSIONS
Annex: facts, figures, trends (not currently available on this server)
The world is changing ever more rapidly. Never before has there been such a mix of trends, ideas and aspirations, feeding on each other and contradicting each other at the same time. This is borne out by three statistics, all of which were difficult to imagine even a few years ago. In 1996 there are now 18 million unemployed in Europe, 1.3 million declared cases of AIDS throughout the world and 50 million Internet users.
Everything seems possible. We now have a global economy. Ideas, like capital, travel around the earth as fast as fibre optics and satellites permit. Every day, shares for an equivalent of US$2 000 billion are traded throughout the world. Increasingly, the value of products lies in their intangible characteristics. Unemployment on the other hand is a very tangible problem.
Meanwhile, work continues on the institutional framework for Europe with the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference which will determine the future of the continent for many years to come. Research policy will have to play its part as a force for integration and for shaping the future.
On a day-to-day basis, in a European society which is torn between moving ahead and marking time, each individual is at the same time a citizen, a consumer of products and services and a source of ideas and patterns of behaviour. Locked into a society which depends ever more directly on the acquisition of knowledge, individuals sometimes wonder about the impact of scientific progress on their lifestyle and values.
There is no denying that the world has become increasingly complex. In order to understand it better and to feel more at home in it, individuals require more knowledge. However, the answers to many of the major problems now facing society - growth and unemployment, and also health, the environment and mobility - have to be sought in science and technology.
This is the purpose behind European research. It is not an end in itself but a means of meeting common objectives. It is now time to change direction slightly in order to put it in its new context. Hitherto research has been based largely on technical achievement. The aim now is to make research more efficient and increasingly directed towards meeting basic social and economic needs by bringing about the changes which each individual citizen desires.
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