CORDIS presented to Parliament committee
At the request of the European Parliament's Committee on industry, external trade, research and energy, the head of unit for communication and awareness in the Enterprise DG's innovation activities directorate, Kurt König, explained how CORDIS can be of use to MEPs on 22 May. The role of CORDIS (the Community research and development information service), a web based service created over ten years ago, is to bring together the research and business communities and to raise awareness of the benefits of research to society, explained Mr König. The service has around 42,000 pages, and seeks to provide transparent access to funding opportunities as well as the latest information on research activities. CORDIS users come from 100 different countries, and are also well represented in the European institutions. Mr König highlighted four ways in particular in which MEPs can benefit from CORDIS: - obtaining timely information on the implementation of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and opportunities for participation; - gleaning a picture of EU funded research in the various constituencies; - reviewing daily news on relevant policy developments; - locating exploitable technologies, breakthroughs and success stories. The launch of FP6 provided a 'major challenge' for CORDIS, said Mr König, but the FP6 service, providing information on funding opportunities, partnering facilities, documents and electronic submission tools, already has 250,000 unique users every month, who download 300,000 documents and view seven million pages. UK MEP Bill Newton Dunn welcomed the presentation and invited the Commission to introduce CORDIS by e-mail to other MEPs.