The Commission adopted its proposal for the FP7 Specific Programmes on 21 September 2005. This sets out the Commission’s proposal through which the next Framework Programme will be implemented.  Before announcing its proposal the Commission had undertaken a consultation for views on their proposal (between July and October 2004) and also an exercise to identify research themes to be supported under the 7th Framework Programme.

The European Commission unveiled its high level proposal for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) in April 2005, which propose a duration of seven years (2007 to 2013), a budget of 73 billion euro and a structure based on four specific programmes:

• Cooperation - research activities involving trans-national co-operation.  The thematic priorities and instruments of the Programme will remain largely unchanged from FP6, with the addition of Space and Security.
• Ideas - investigator driven research projects across all fields, carried out by individual teams in European competition and managed by a European Research Council (ERC).  Projects will be evaluated on the sole criterion of excellence as judged by peer review.
• People - Marie Curie actions are aimed at the mobility of researchers.
• Capacities - key aspects of European research and innovation capacities, including:

i. Infrastructures

ii. Science and Society

iii. Regions of Knowledge

iv. Research Potential and

v. European Research Council (ERC)

More information on this proposal and supporting documentation can be found on the Europa Research Site.

The European Commission published a communication on the future of EU R&D on 16 June 2004 titled ‘Science and technology, the key to Europes Future- Guidelines for future EU policy to support research’. 

• Commission Communication on FP7

This called for a doubling of the budget from FP6 and identified six major objectives:

• Creating European centres of excellence through collaboration between laboratories
• Launching European Technology Initiative
• Stimulating the creativity of basic research through competition between teams at a European level
• Making Europe more attractive to the best researchers
• Developing research infrastructure of European interest
• Improving the coordination of national research programmes

In addition two new areas for European-level research activities are presented: Space and Security

The Marimon Panel Evaluation on the FP6 New Instruments, the Communication on basic research, the Court of Auditors report on FP5 and the Communication on Nanotechnology can be found under related documents on the right-hand side of the screen.