CORDIS Archive

Coordination between European R&D; Schemes

Coordination between the R&D; policies of the Member States and the European Community's RTD Framework Programmes is of paramount importance. Beyond achieving and intensifying synergies, coordination is necessary to define common objectives for R&D; activities, to foster optimal exploitation of research results and to guarantee complementarity with other research initiatives.

In this context, the EUREKA initiative has an important role to play in supporting R&D; activities that are closer to the market. EUREKA's "bottom-up" approach will be used to develop strategic projects by providing a framework for cooperation. This cooperation framework will also extend the scope of R&D; activities beyond the European Union's borders to the new candidate countries and others.

The COST framework promotes the coordination of national research at the pan-European level by increasing European information exchange and interaction on basic and pre-competitive scientific and technical research. COST activities complement the European Community's RTD Framework Programmes. In a number of cases, COST actions - with their emphasis on themes of a more fundamental nature (chemistry, physics, etc.) and their bottom-up approach - have led to the emergence of research issues that have been taken up by the European Community's RTD Framework Programmes.