What's it all about? - Rationale and Objectives

The Human Potential Programme

Rationale and Objectives

Rationale

The world is increasingly based on knowledge. The Community’s prime asset in this area is the quality of its researchers, engineers and technicians. The aim is to preserve and help develop this knowledge potential through greater support for the training and mobility of researchers and by enhancing access to research infrastructures.

The Community also has a solid tradition of research in social and economic science and the humanities, which needs to be mobilised to identify economic and social trends and requirements, both current and future, in order to contribute to the Community’s competitiveness and quality of life of its citizens.

General Objectives

The general objectives of this programme, to be realised in concert with related activities elsewhere in the Framework Programme, are centred on two main areas of activity, to improve the human research potential and to strengthen the socio-economic knowledge base. To this end, actions will be undertaken:

• to develop the Community’s human research potential, making special efforts to ensure equality of access and a better balance between men and women, notably through the training and mobility of researchers so as to contribute, inter alia, toefforts for creating new jobs;

• to help make the Community an attractive location for researchers and to promote European research in the international arena and to promote a European scientific and technological culture;

• to strengthen, through a specific key action, the socio-economic knowledge base for a better understanding of key problems facing European society;

• to help develop scientific and technological policies and other Community policies.

Source: Council Decision on the Programme