SMEs collaborate for better funding
In recent years, the EU's collective research projects have significantly improved the competitiveness of large communities of SMEs by supporting their research and development efforts. This has been taking place under the EU's Collective Research Programme (Cornet) which represents a network of European ministries and funding agencies that manage research funding. In an effort to maintain the impetus, the EU-funded project 'Collective research ERA-NET II' (Cornet II) continued this funding drive for two years, from 2008 to 2010. The latest project involved Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Iceland, Poland and Spain. It aimed to establish a sustainable structure for reinforcing collaboration on collective research in Europe, increasing funding and raising the number of calls for project proposals. Through its efforts, Cornet II organised six calls for EU-funded project proposals by announcing and promoting these calls through several channels. The most successful of these attracted 23 excellent proposals, and the best 12 were funded with a budget of EUR 8.6 million. The project team also aligned its efforts with those of the European Research Area (ERA) in bolstering SMEs (EraSME), jointly managing projects to reach out to more stakeholders and spur competitiveness. Eventually, the outputs and research results from these joint projects could benefit thousands of SMEs, yielding decisive positive impacts on social and economic developments in Europe. By channelling funding to SMEs that work together under collective research projects, the project is giving small companies a valuable push towards making them more sustainable and viable. This is important in stoking the economy as SMEs represent 99 % of all European businesses, thus raising their competitiveness worldwide and creating new jobs.