Commission publishes 2003 Annual Report on research activities
The European Commission has published its annual report on the EU's research and technological development activities in 2003. The report covers the period January 2002 until March 2003, and therefore reports on the final year of the implementation of the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5), as well as the negotiations on the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and the early stages of its implementation. The paper covers all aspects of the EU's research policy, from the coordination of research policies and the mobility of researchers to research infrastructure and increasing investment in research. Some of the activities covered in the report have already been well publicised. Others have either gone unnoticed, or have not been elaborated upon before. For example, it is not widely know that EU cooperation with Eureka was stepped up in 2002. The secretariat participated in several Commission meetings, and while Eureka provided a list of around 100 experts on innovation issues for possible participation in proposal evaluation panels under FP6, the Commission passed on to Eureka best practices in terms of project ex-ante evaluation and ex-post impact assessment. The report also contains tables illustrating the numbers and types of proposals and contracts dealt with between January 2002 and March 2003.