Information on first three IST calls released
Following the publication of the Fifth IST in October, details have been published concerning the response to the first three calls, showing a healthy participation of most countries. Germany, the UK and Italy topped the number of retained proposals in the third call, with 12.6 12.1 and 11.4 per cent of the total respectively. France and Spain figured next with 9.8 and 9.6 per cent respectively. Of the non-EU and pre-adhesion countries, Poland and Bulgaria figured highest with 0.8 and 0.7 per cent respectively and both the Czech republic and Hungary registered 0.5 per cent of the total. In the second call, the prominent country in retained proposals was again Germany, with 15.99 per cent of the overall total. It was followed by Italy (13.02 per cent), the UK (10.94 per cent) and France (10.88 per cent). The largest number retained from associated countries was Norway with 2.44 per cent and of pre-adhesion countries the Czech republic with 1.43 per cent and Poland with 0.77 per cent figured highest. The results of the second call had shown a change in the order of the top four of the first call, where Germany (17.08 per cent), France (13.89 per cent) the UK (13.1 per cent) and Italy (12.19 per cent) had the largest number of retained proposals. The figure accounting for the retained proposals from pre-adhesion countries was the lowest in the first call of the three, with them only accounting for 2.64 of the total (compared with 5.11 per cent in the second call and 4.05 per cent in the third call). The biggest contributors in this group were Poland (0.68 per cent), Slovenia (0.61 per cent) and Hungary (0.56 per cent). Associated countries accounted for 2.64 per cent of the total with two major contributors - Norway on 1.37 per cent and Israel with 1.19 per cent. The technical evaluation of the fourth call for proposals, which closed at the end of October 2000, is already taking place.