• H2020
• Industrial Leadership
• ICT

European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes has outlined her enthusiasm for the EU’s forthcoming research framework programme.

Kroes, the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, announced that research into digital technology will be a key element of Horizon 2020. The Commission has already sought the advice and support of ICT multinationals Microsoft and Google to ensure success for the FP7 replacement.

“The EU has long supported top-quality research and innovation. We have done it through seven cycles of long-term funding and we are going to do it on an even larger scale from 2014 through Horizon 2020; the largest government-funded science programme in the world,” Kroes said.

“In my own field of digital technology, the largest sectoral element in Horizon 2020, we are taking a truly new approach to funding and the results we are getting make me excited about the future of European innovation.”

Horizon 2020 will run for seven years beginning on 1st January 2014. However, according to Kroes, the benefits and technological advancements witnessed under the programme will continue for many more years after the closure of the research framework programme.

“Through our Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme, we are locking in funding over a much longer-term (ten years rather than the usual two-to-four years) and focusing on truly large-scale work, the sort which has the power to change how we look at whole industries, our own bodies and society at large,” the Vice-President said.

“The FET Flagship programme in particular has served as a kind of ‘X-Factor for Science’. From 23 proposals in the first call, then a shortlist of six and now two winners, we are changing the face of European science for the better. The Graphene and Human Brain projects will help put Europe in the driver’s seat of the scientific world.”

Research into ICT, a key component of the digital economy, will sit under the Industrial leadership pillar.