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![european flag](./../../../images/eclogo.jpg)EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 19.1.2016

SWD(2016) 2 final

Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

Annexes

Accompanying the document

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

On the response to the Report to the High Level Expert Group on the Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

{COM(2016) 5 final}  
{SWD(2016) 1 final}

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

Annexes

Accompanying the document

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

On the response to the Report to the High Level Expert Group on the Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

 

 

Contents

1.Procedural information concerning the process to prepare the evaluation

2.Stakeholder consultation

3.Methods and Analytical models used in preparing the evaluation

4.List of evaluation studies

5. Evaluation questions

6.Background to FP7

7.Overview of FP7 indicators

8.Background on current situation

9.The Cooperation Specific Programme

10.Thematic areas of the Cooperation Programme

1.Procedural information concerning the process to prepare the evaluation 

Lead DG: Directorate General Research and Innovation (RTD)

Agenda Planning number: 2015/RTD/004 Commission Communication on the ex-post evaluations of the EC and Euratom 7th Framework Programmes

The Ex-Post evaluations of the EC and Euratom Seventh Framework Programmes started in 2014. The main justification derives from Article 7 paragraph 3 of Decision 1982/2006/EC setting up FP7 which stipulates that "two years following the completion of this Framework Programme, the Commission shall carry out an external evaluation by independent experts of its rationale, implementation and achievements”.

At the first stage the Inter-Service RTD Evaluation Network functioned as the Inter-Service Group (ISG) for this evaluation. After the adoption of the Better Regulation Guidelines a specific ISG was set up in June 2015 specifically for the preparation of the Staff Working Document on FP7 Ex-Post Evaluation
[1](#footnote1)
. This ISG met three times before the submission of the Staff Working Document to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (30 June, 29 July and 3 September 2015).

In accordance with the feedback received from the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, the Staff Working Document has been revised in the following ways. The qualitative assessment of the different aspects of FP7 has been strengthened. This has included greater explanation of the reasons why certain aspects of FP7 were particularly successful while others worked less well.

In this regard, a more detailed assessment of the impact of simplification measures introduced in FP7 has been included. Greater attention has also been paid to setting FP7 in the wide global context and its contribution to the EU’s objective of becoming the world’s leading research area. Further analysis has also been added as regards the coherence between FP7 and other related programmes, including the Cohesion Funds.

Metholodogical and presentational aspects have been clarified. The intervention logic has been made more transparent. Graphical presentation of data has been streamlined to make FP7 results and outcomes more comparable.

The evaluation studies used for this evaluation are listed in Annex 4 and the results of the over 150 evaluation studies are described in Annexes 9-22. Majority of the evaluation studies were carried out by external experts and contractors.

  

2.Stakeholder consultation

Introduction

The Ex-Post Evaluation of the 7th Frameworks Programme for Research (FP7), required also by the legal base, is an important instrument for informing the European Parliament and the Council, Member States, the research community, the general public and other stakeholders about the achievements of FP7. It will also contribute to improving implementation of Horizon 2020 and provide a solid evidence base for designing future framework programmes. The evaluation will examine the effectiveness of FP7 implementation, the efficiency of resources used and the wider socio-economic impacts of the Framework Programme.

In order to provide the evaluation with a range of opinions and views about the functioning, achievements, and impacts of FP7, a public consultation ran from February to May 2015 allowing for contributions both from those with direct experience with the FP7, as well as groups or individuals who wished to give their views.

This is an overall summary of the contributions to the consultation.

2.1. Executive summary

In general FP7 was well received: The overall satisfaction with FP7 was high (80 %) among those who participated in the consultation. The key strengths of the programme can be summarised as follows:

-Creating the European Research Area through cooperation and competition: Networking people and organisations over the geographic, sectorial and disciplinary borders (international, inter-sectorial and interdisciplinary collaboration) and funding the highest quality research through competition

-Joint Agenda-setting: Joining forces in solving the grand challenges together (e.g. through JTIs, PPPs, ETPs)

-European Research Council (ERC)/IDEAS Specific Programme was a great success

-Marie Curie Actions/PEOPLE Specific Programme made an important impact for the future of research through training and creating opportunities for mobility

At the same time there were some shortcomings:

-Administrative burden was high and financial and legal rules were cumbersome

-Societal impact was not addressed to a sufficient extent

-Perception of sometimes narrow topics and of difficulty to enter for newcomers: Game of big entities who know how the system works

-Regarding the impact of the Programme, according to the respondents, the biggest impact of FP7 was on scientific excellence and on technological and social innovations.

According to the input received, among the ERA priorities, FP7 contributed most to i) Optimal transnational co-operation and competition, ii) Optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge, iii) Open labour market for researchers. More specifically for SMEs the ERA priority to which FP7 contributed the most was "Open labour market for researchers". At the overall level EU added value of FP7 was demonstrated through: i) Tackling pan-European challenges, ii) Increased competition in research, iii) Enhance researchers’ mobility. For individuals the most important area of EU added value was the enhancement of researchers' mobility whereas for ministries and agencies the most important areas were the improvement of S&T capabilities and the increased competition in research. The simplification measures taken were well received, and the need for further simplification was raised by a number of respondents.

2.2.1 EECS/RTD Event "Have your say on FP7"

On 27 October 2015 from 14:30-18:00 the EESC together with RTD held an event on the public consultation. About 120 people participated. The purpose of the conference was to present:

-The FP7 Ex Post Evaluation set-up

-The findings of the online consultation on FP7

-Expert opinions on scientific impact

-Expert opinions on impact on innovation

-Expert opinions on socio-economi impact

-Expert opinions on European added value

-Key achievements and shortcomings of FP7

All the presentations can be found on this 
[link](http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.events-and-activities-your-say-fp7)
.

The presentations were followed by a moderated discussion allowing participants to air their thoughts and views. The main topics for discussions were: Simplification, open access and industry collaboration, discussion on scope, civil society's role and Technology Readiness Levels.

  

2.2. Context of the public consultation on FP7

Framework Programmes

The Framework Programmes are the EU’s main instruments for the funding of research and innovation in Europe. Based on the Treaty establishing the EU
[2](#footnote2)
, the Framework Programmes serve two main strategic objectives: strengthening the scientific and technological bases of industry and encouraging its international competitiveness while promoting research activities in support of other EU policies.

The 7th Framework Programme (FP7) pursued the general objectives described in the Treaty to strengthen industrial competitiveness and to meet the research needs of other Community policies, thereby contributing to the creation of a knowledge-based society, building on a European Research Area and complementing activities at a national and regional level. It promoted excellence in scientific and technological research, development and demonstration through four specific programmes: Cooperation, Ideas, People and Capacities.

Horizon 2020 is the on-going EU Research and Innovation programme with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020). Horizon 2020 aims to contribute to building a society and an economy based on knowledge and innovation across the Union by leveraging additional research, development and innovation funding and by contributing to attaining research and development targets. Horizon 2020 supports the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy and other Union policies, as well as the achievement and functioning of the European Research Area (ERA).

Evaluation framework

The Decision
[3](#footnote3)
 setting up FP7 stipulates that "two years following the completion of this Framework Programme, the Commission shall carry out an external evaluation by independent experts of its rationale, implementation and achievements." The evaluation is an important instrument for informing the European Parliament and the Council, Member States, the research community, the general public and other stakeholders about the achievements of FP7. It also contributes to improving implementation of the current Framework Programme, Horizon 2020 and provides a solid evidence base for designing future framework programmes. The evaluation examines the effectiveness of FP7 implementation, the efficiency of resources used and the wider socio-economic impacts of the Framework Programme. The evaluation covers the entire period of FP7 implementation in between 2007-2013.

In order to provide the evaluation with a range of opinions and views about the functioning, achievements, and impacts of FP7, the public online consultation was set up to allow for contributions both from those with direct experience with the FP7, as well as any groups or individuals who wished to give their views. The questionnaire is attached as Annex 1.

Responses

202 responses were encoded to the public online consultation between February and May 2015. The responses came from 24 EU member states (all except for EL, HU, LV and SK) and additionally 6 responses were sent from other countries (such as Switzerland and Turkey). The respondents were asked whether they respond as individuals or whether they represent an organisation. The results are presented separately for overall, individual respondents and for different types of organisations.

-88 (44%) higher education and public research organisations (HES & RES)

-70 (35%) individuals

-20 (14%) private sector (PRC)

-17 (8,4%) ministries and agencies (PUB)

-7 (3,5%) SMEs

Most of the questions in the questionnaire were compulsory single/multiple choice questions. In addition the respondents were provided with an option to comment on each theme with an optional open reply. In addition to the responses to the online questionnaire 10 organisations
[4](#footnote4)
 provided their individual written contributions separately. These contributions are referred to at each relevant section of this analysis (Separate written contributions).

2.3. Key figures on the public consultation and main outcomes

Overall satisfaction and effectiveness of implementation

At the overall level 68 % of the respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with FP7 whereas 17 % were moderately or very dissatisfied. Only a handful of respondents indicated that they were very dissatisfied. Ministries and funding agencies responded "Very satisfied" most often, whereas individual respondents tended to respond "Moderately or very dissatisfied" more often than other groups of respondents. SMEs were more likely to reply "Very satisfied" or "Very dissatisfied" compared to other respondents.

Figure 1. Overall are you satisfied with FP7?

The large majority of the responses (92 %) agreed that the implementation of FP7 was effective in general whereas only 8 % considered that the implementation has not been effective.

Figure 2. Based on your experience has the implementation of FP7 been effective?

 

In the comments received a number of respondents, both public and private bodies, noted that the incoherence in the implementation of rules and regulations influenced the effective implementation of the Programme negatively. According to LERU (League of European Research Universities) "the vast majority of the problems faced were related to the administrative overhead and red tape they were confronted with when participating in, and especially when coordinating, an FP7 project."

Separate written contributions

According to the contribution from the European University Association (EUA) FP7 was a key driver of enhanced European university research and innovation development and cooperation. Also, according to the UK higher education institutions the impact of European research depends crucially on international collaboration and the mobility of researchers across Europe. FP7 was vital in enabling that collaboration and mobility. The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) reported that in general the implementation of FP7 was mostly successful. On the other hand, in its separate input Science Europe, UK Department for BIS and Research Councils UK (RCUK) call for more transparent governance (including consistency, coherence and transparency) and for a more balanced mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Key achievements and strengths of FP7

Question: What are the key achievements/strengths of FP7 in particular?

Key achievements reported by the respondents:

-Creating the European Research Area through cooperation and competition: Networking people and organisations over the geographic, sectorial and disciplinary borders (international, inter-sectorial and interdisciplinary collaboration) and funding the highest quality research through competition

-Joint Agenda-setting: Joining forces in solving the grand challenges together (e.g. through JTIs, PPPs, ETPs)

-European Research Council (ERC)/IDEAS Specific Programme was a great success

-Marie Curie Actions/PEOPLE Specific Programme made an important impact for the future of research through training and creating opportunities for mobility

-SMEs highlighted especially the networking effect of FP7 and efforts made to involve all the different parts of the value chains. For the private companies, one of the key achievements seemed to be the JTIs setting the agenda jointly for the public and private actors. According to HES and REC the key achievements of the Programme were investing firstly in collaborative, transnational research and networking and secondly in scientific excellence through ERC. For Ministries and Agencies the main achievements of FP7 were the input to scientific excellence, notably through IDEAS Specific Programme and to research careers and mobility.

Other observations on achievements by several respondents:

-Level of funding was good (especially compared to the national R&I funding)

-The efforts made to simplify were welcome (e.g. Research Participant Portal) although not sufficient

-The efforts made to widen the access to major research infrastructures were appreciated

Shortcomings

Question: Are there shortcomings in FP7 that you think should be corrected? According to your experience have these already been addressed to in the Horizon 2020 Programme?

Main issues reported by the respondents

-Administrative burden was high and financial and legal rules were cumbersome

-High oversubscription

-Societal impact was not addressed in calls and/or projects to a sufficient extent

-Too narrow topics and too limited call scopes

-Industry participation was neglected: FP7 did not enhance industry participation enough

-Difficult to enter for newcomers: Game of big entities who know how the system works, lack of transparency

-FP7 was fragmented and inconsistent: Need for Commission and Agencies internal coherence (e.g. different interpretations of rules)

While some of the respondents representing industry claimed that the Programme was directed towards the needs of the academia, at the same time some respondents from the HES and REC side considered that public funding should not be channelled to respond to the interests of the private companies. But overall the respondents were quite unanimous irrespective of their background (private or public, SME or individual). Also, it was noted repeatedly that many of the shortcomings of FP7 have been corrected in Horizon 2020. As one individual respondent put it: "Many shortcomings were addressed in H2020, namely: faster time to grant, more possibilities for open topic calls, decreasing of the fragmentation by programmes, types of instruments etc." 

Separate written contributions

SNSF highlighted the following issues as shortcomings: Fragmentation, regulatory and administrative issues (lack of clarity and consistency)

The endurance of FP7 impact

At the overall level nearly 90 % of the respondents considered that FP7 research activities produced enduring impact to high or medium extent. Less than 10 % of the respondents perceived that FP7 produced enduring impact only to low extent. Private organisations (other than SMEs) were more likely to consider that FP7 activities produced enduring impact to a high extent. Individual respondents and SMEs were more likely than others to respond that FP7 produced enduring impact only to a low extent.

Figure 3. Based on your experience to what extent did FP7 research activities produce enduring impact?

Regarding the question "To what extent did FP7 research activities produce enduring impact for you as FP7 beneficiary (e.g. networking, benchmarking, joint agenda setting and harmonisation of peer review systems)?" for the individual respondents and for the SMEs the impact on networking was clearly the most important. For the HES and REC the comments concerned the FP7 having a great impact in increasing the collaborations in research projects, partnerships and networking. According to the private companies the impact of FP7 is based on the joint agenda setting and strategic cooperation. For the Ministries and Agencies, the biggest influence of FP7 was on the contribution to the peer learning and exchange of good practices in addition to the networking effect.

Separate written contributions

According to EUA FP7 facilitated scientific and technological cooperation across European universities which will have a lasting effect with respect to academic research staff and young researchers exchange and career development. RCUK believes that funding for transnational pan-European collaborative research lies at the heart of the Framework Programme.

Impact of Specific Programmes

The respondents were asked to assess, for each of the four Specific Programmes of FP7, the areas to which that specific programme created most impact
[5](#footnote5)
.

For all the four Specific Programmes the respondents perceived that the impact of Specific Programmes on scientific excellence was the greatest followed by the impact on technological and social innovations and the economic impact. For the People Specific Programme the Societal impact was considered more important than the economic impact. For Capacities Specific Programme the regional and societal impacts were considered more important than for other Specific Programmes.

Regarding the views of different respondent groups, interestingly societal impact was considered more important by individuals and HES & REC than by other respondent groups.

Figure 4. In which of the following areas did COOPERATION Specific Programme of FP7 generate most impact?

Figure 5. In which of the following areas did IDEAS Specific Programme of FP7 generate most impact?

Figure 6. In which of the following areas did PEOPLE Specific Programme of FP7 generate most impact?

Figure 7. In which of the following areas did CAPACITIES Specific Programme of FP7 generate most impact?

In the optional open comments the respondents highlighted the underlining objectives of FP7 to support excellent science and technological and social innovations thus stating that FP7 was achieving the objectives set in these terms. At the same time some respondents made the remark that for the evaluation of the societal or economic impact of FP7 an in-depth analysis would be required. Overall, according to the input received the four different Specific Programmes seem to cover the different needs of the complex research and innovation system and thus seem to generate impact as expected. As one respondent from the private side put it: "In their impact, the 4 Specific Programmes were complementary".

Separate written contributions

According to the contribution by Science Europe “excellence fosters excellence”, thus the Framework Programmes must remain excellence-based programmes. Similarly, RCUK recognised the added value of the EU funding for frontier research, mobility programmes, collaborative research and research infrastructures. According to UK Department for BIS FP7 provided significant added value to national research activities and in many areas helped to establish critical mass beyond the reach of national capability but it is far too soon to fully assess the programme’s economic impact. This was also backed up by the contribution of UK HE institutions.

The impact of simplification measures

In the course of FP7 major simplification measures
[6](#footnote6)
 were introduced to reduce the burden to the participants. The respondents were asked to assess the impact of various simplification measures
[7](#footnote7)
. At the overall level “Research Participant Portal” was considered to have been the measure having most impact on simplification. This is clearly the view of the individual respondents and the representatives of HES&REC.

SMEs considered that the flat rate system for SME owners and the wider acceptance of average personnel costs were the most efficient simplification measures. For the other private sector organisations the simplification measures having most impact were the unique Registration Facility (URF) and the web-based electronic system for negotiations (NEF).

Figure 8. Which of the following FP7 simplification measures generated most impact?

In the replies to the optional open question on simplification measures the views of the respondents were divided. On one hand a number of respondents highlighted their experiences on the administrative burden, notably on the usefulness of the reporting requirements. On the other, many respondents underlined the success of the simplification measures taken, especially the Participant Portal and the Electronic System for negotiations. As one respondent put it: "The simplification measures succeeded in making the implementation of the FP7 projects manageable and smooth. The Research Participant Portal has been the most useful tool for the negotiation, implementation and reporting."

Separate written contributions

According to LERU the FP7 simplification measures were "reasonably successful". Furthermore LERU stated that "the level of detail requested at reporting stage has increased significantly throughout FP7 turning it into a laborious exercise." According to the contribution of EUA “the overall effectiveness could have been enhanced more with greater simplification of the procedures and regulations governing the grants and contracts”. In detail, EUA asks for further simplification of rules and regulations, procedures and cost recovery. According to Science Europe the complexity of funding instruments made the access to FP7 more difficult to newcomers and the agenda-setting less transparent. UK Department for BIS reported that no single simplification measure had a major impact but the collective impact was welcome especially because the programme was still regarded as bureaucratic and complex. According to RCUK simplification measures were a welcome step towards reducing the administrative burden.

Contribution of FP7 to European Research Area priorities
[8](#footnote8)

The respondents were asked to assess to which of the European Research Area (ERA) priorities FP7 contributed the most
[9](#footnote9)
. At the overall level the clear majority considered that FP7 contributed most to the ERA priority “Optimal transnational co-operation and competition”. This refers also to the specific section on key achievements of FP7 (see section 5.2.).The importance of the contribution by FP7 to the ERA priorities ranked according to the responses:

  

1. Optimal transnational co-operation and competition

2. Optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge

3. Open labour market for researchers

4. More effective national research systems

5. Gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research

For SMEs the ERA priority to which FP7 contributed the most was "Open labour market for researchers". Concerning the views of HES and REC, the biggest contribution from FP7 was to the "Optimal transnational cooperation and competition". One respondent from HES found: "The more funding available for collaborative research the more ERA will become reality, through researchers working together, moving to work etc. Large-scale International projects (enabled by FP7 & H2020) are essential." Moreover, reflecting the importance of the open labour market perceived by HES and REC, they also underlined the importance of continuing the efforts to improve researcher training, career perspectives and mobility to achieve ERA.

The Ministries and Agencies assessed FP7 having contributed to the more effective national research systems more often than other groups of respondents. In the written comments, one respondent noted: "The Joint Programming initiatives have increased the effectiveness of research and reduced duplication of efforts by strategically aligning the research funding of member states, implementing joint research agendas and jointly investing in research infrastructures. Secondly, the FP7 has facilitated the spreading of practices such as peer review, competitive funding, open access, transparent recruitment, gender mainstreaming etc." An interesting aspect is that in the multiple choices question Ministries and Agencies considered that FP7 did not contribute at all the ERA priority "Gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research".

Figure 9. Contribution of FP7 activities to the European Research Area (ERA)

Separate written contributions

  

According to EUA, “FP7 has been instrumental in supporting universities in consolidating their actions towards the ERA goals”. Among the key aspects in these terms according to EUA were adequate public funding mix for university activities, nurturing of the open labour market for researchers (especially with respect to university-business collaboration and mobility) and the enhancement of optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge. The shift towards open access and open science in general during FP7 was welcome according to several individual contributions (e.g. UK BIS and Science Europe). Moreover, the ERA-NETs and joint programming were highlighted as schemes offering added value by networking the funding the agencies across the Europe. Furthermore, according to RCUK among others, ERA benefitted from FP7 Research Infrastructure programme.

Success of FP7 in achieving EU added value

The respondents were asked to assess at which of the areas of the EU added value
[10](#footnote10)
 FP7 was most successful
[11](#footnote11)
. The three most important areas of EU added value where FP7 was most successful ranked according to the respondents:

1. Tackling pan-European challenges

2. Increase competition in research

3. Enhance researchers’ mobility

For individuals the most important area of EU added value was the enhancement of researchers' mobility whereas for Ministries and Agencies the most important areas were the improvement of S&T capabilities and the increased competition in research. From the perspective of the private bodies, the added value of FP7 was specifically channelled through tackling the pan-European challenges and through reducing the risks. In the optional open comment one representative from the private side noted that: "By bringing additional public support and fostering critical mass for ambitious but risky research programmes, FP7 has addressed market failures and reduction of technical and business risks."

  

Figure 10. In which of the following dimensions of EU added-value has FP7 been most successful?

Separate written contributions

In the view of EUA the EU added value of FP7 is illustrated around European Research Council (ERC), Marie Curie Actions and European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). In a similar way, in their inputs, Science Europe and UK Department for BIS considered the ERC and the instruments for researcher mobility as the key strengths of FP7. RCUK considers FP7 successful in terms of funding for EU added value activities and the opportunities for collaboration and competition on a pan-EU scale.

Results to marketable products

At the overall level around 1/3 of the respondents estimated that the results of their research will lead to marketable products and services within 1-5 years and ¼ considered that the same will happen within 5-10 years. A large share of SMEs and the private organisations tend to expect the results of their project to lead to marketable products and services already within one year. However, up to 1/3 of the respondents chose the alternative “Don’t know” to this question. This can be explained by the large share of “non-participants” among the respondents (e.g. the Ministries and funding agencies).

  

Figure 11. How quick do you think the result of your research will lead to marketable products and services?

2.4. Further remarks

On participation and non-participation

Almost 2/3 of the respondents knew theirs partners in the project beforehand and only ¼ got to know their partners only at the start of project. Nearly 90 % of the respondents intend to stay in touch with their project partners also in the future. Less than 20 % replied that they participated for the first time. 92 % of the respondents also intend to participate in the Framework Programmes in the future.

An optional open question was posed for the non-participants on the reasons for not participating ("In case you have not been participating FP7, please specify the reasons for non-participation"). The main remarks received commented on the cumbersomeness of big consortia (e.g. finding international partners) and the perception of consortia being "closed clubs for those who already know each other". This view was reported by both some individual respondents and some public and private bodies.

Separate written contributions

Important aspects to be further addressed during Horizon 2020 are according to EUA the following:

The continuation of bottom-up funding instruments and the coverage of the whole value chain by instruments

Enhancing the integral role of the social sciences, arts and humanities

Strengthening the international dimension of Horizon 2020 and coordinating regional/national/European R&D and innovation programmes

Wider interpretation of innovation and further promotion of knowledge partnerships (links between education, research and business)

Science Europe calls for mid- to long-term vision and commitment for excellence research and finds it worrying that the research agenda is more and more industry-led and subject to short-term goals. Furthermore they emphasize the importance of an instrument portfolio enabling international cooperation and third country participation. Science Europe Scientific Committees of Social Sciences and Humanities provided an input covering specific issues related to the participation of social sciences and humanities in the Framework Programmes. According to this the key achievements of FP7 were the community building, contribution to the growing scientific ambitions, the support for global competition and the investment in infrastructures. As shortcomings of FP7 the Science Europe SSH Committees highlight the project design format more appropriate to industrial processes than for SSH research, the under-estimation of SSH research contribution and the focus on large-scale and rigid linear organisation of the research projects.

2.5. Conclusions

As stated in the Better Regulation Guidelines the design, evaluation and revision of policy interventions benefit from considering the input and views provided by stakeholders. Consultations can also improve the evidence-base of the evaluation. This was clearly the case also for the Ex-Post Evaluation of FP7.

According to the input to the public consultation on the FP7 Ex-Post Evaluation the overall satisfaction with the Framework Programme was good. The respondents of this consultation state clearly that FP7 was creating EU added value, mainly by tackling pan-European challenges, by increasing competition in research and by enhancing researchers’ mobility. Strong support is given to boosting excellence in fundamental research, notably through European Research Council.

The respondents find that FP7 contributed to the creation of European Research Area, notably by supporting the optimal transnational cooperation and competition, the optimal circulation, access to and transfer of knowledge and the open labour market for researchers. According to the responses there seems to be clear support for increasing the excellence of European science through policies that reinforce openness and integrity of science. The results also suggest that reinforcing international engagement is needed.

Based on the respondents' perceptions on whether the FP7 has an enduring impact and how quickly the results would lead to marketable products the FP7 made a clear effort to capitalise on the results of research and to create a vibrant innovation ecosystem. Where there was room for improvement according to the respondents a lot has already been done for Horizon 2020. One of the main shortcomings of FP7 was the heavy administrative burden. Here, the efforts made and the measures taken to simplify were welcomed and well received.

  

2.6. The online questionnaire

Public online stakeholder consultation on the Ex-Post Evaluation of FP7

I.
   Context and background

The Decision
[12](#footnote12)
 setting up 'Seventh Framework Programme’ (FP7) of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities' stipulates that "two years following the completion of this Framework Programme, the Commission shall carry out an external evaluation by independent experts of its rationale, implementation and achievements."

The evaluation is an important instrument for informing the European Parliament and the Council, Member States, the research community, the general public and other stakeholders about the achievements of FP7. It will also contribute to improving implementation of Horizon 2020 and provide a solid evidence base for designing future framework programmes. The evaluation will examine the effectiveness of FP7 implementation, the efficiency of resources used and the wider socio-economic impacts of the Framework Programme.

The evaluation covers the entire period of FP7 implementation in between 2007-2013. The evaluation will cover the objectives of FP7 as set out at the time when the objectives originally were set (2005-2007). At the same time, it should take into account that the context has changed significantly during the period of programme implementation. Several developments (in the context of FP7 or with a significant impact on the programme) influenced the evolution of FP7 over this period:

The size of the EU Budget allocation to the research activities of FP7 grew substantially both in real terms and as a proportion of the overall budget;

New initiatives to stimulate the European Research Area were launched;

The European Research Council (ERC) was created;

A range of new activities and implementation schemes were introduced during FP7.

Moreover, in the light of the financial and economic crisis, research efforts have been more than ever expected to help address major challenges. Besides these external factors, entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 and the Europe 2020 strategy have extended the scope of European research policy and positioned it as a key component of growth and competitiveness, together with innovation.

Furthermore, over the life of FP7 there has been an increased focus on accountability and the need to demonstrate more concretely what impact has been achieved with the resources devoted to the Framework Programme. This aspect was raised in the ex post evaluation of the Sixth Framework Programme (2009) and the Interim evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme (2010).

The ex-post evaluation covers research programme activities under FP7, involving almost 25,000 research projects and signed grant agreements in four specific programmes - Cooperation, Capacities, Ideas and People
[13](#footnote13)
. Currently around 50 % of the projects are still running.

The ex-post evaluation is carried out by an independent High Level Expert Group, supported by an extensive evidence-base. It will be completed by the end of 2015 as is required by the legal basis 
[14](#footnote14)
. This will be followed by a Commission Communication on the Ex-Post Evaluation.

In order to provide the experts with a range of opinion and views about the functioning, achievements, and impacts of FP7, this interactive consultation has been set up to allow for contributions both from those with direct experience with the FP7, as well as groups or individuals who wish to give their views. The results of this consultation will be made publicly available and will be taken into account in the Commission Communication reacting to the Evaluation Report of the High Level Expert Group.

II.
   List of questions

1.
   Information about the respondent
[15](#footnote15)
 (compulsory)

1.1 Do you reply

As an individual

On behalf of an organisation

1.2 Your role in the organisation

-None – I am answering as an individual

-Senior management

-Management

-Researcher

-Strategy /policy function

-Specialist/Expert

-Other (please specify)

1.3 Country of origin (of the organisation when relevant) [to choose from a list]

  

1.4 Your organisation's geographical area of activities (indicate your area of activities if answering as an individual person):

-Local

-Regional

-National

-European

-International

-Not applicable

1.5 Your organisation's type of activity (indicate your activity type if answering as an individual person)

-Higher or Secondary Education (HES)

-Research Organisation (REC)

-Private For-Profit (excluding education) (PRC)

-If SME, please indicate

-Public body (excluding research and education) (PUB)

-Research and/or Innovation Funding Agency

-Ministry

-Other

-Other (i.e. NGO, association, please specify)

2.
   Implementation of FP7
[16](#footnote16)

2.1 Based on your experience has the implementation of FP7 been effective? (compulsory)

With implementation we refer to the overall management of the framework programme, i.e. communication on calls, application and grant negotiation procedures and dissemination of project findings.

-Yes

-Generally yes, but with some problems

-Generally no, although with some successes

-No

-Don't know

2.2 Has the implementation of FP7 been effective? - Comments (optional)

Please specify the reasons for the reply given under 2.1.

|  |
| --- |
|  |

2.3 In case you have not been participating FP7, please specify here the reasons for non-participation (optional)

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| --- |
|  |

3.
   Simplification of FP7
[17](#footnote17)

3.1 Which of the following FP7 simplification measures generated most impact? 
[18](#footnote18)
 (compulsory)

Out of the 11 FP7 simplification measures listed below, please select the 5 FP7 simplification measures which, in your view, generated most impact and rank them accordingly (5 generating most impact))

-Certification of costs (fewer audit certificates)

-Participants Guarantee Fund (fewer ex-ante financial checks)

-Unique Registration Facility (URF)

-Certification of methodology

-Web-based electronic system for negotiations (NEF)

-Project reporting – streamlined guidelines and structure of reports

-Grant amendments – streamlined rules and procedures

-Research Participant portal

-Simplification of recovery process (flat rate corrections)

-Wider acceptance of average personnel costs

-Flat rate system for SME owners and natural persons without salary

3.2 To what extend have the FP7 simplification measures been successful? - Comments (optional)

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| --- |
|  |

4.
   Achievements and impact
[19](#footnote19)

4.1 Impacts of each Specific FP7 Programme (compulsory)

In which of the following areas did each Specific Programme of FP7 generate most impact?

For each of the 6 areas per specific programme listed below, please select the 3 areas which in your view generated most impact and rank them accordingly (3 generating most impact)

COOPERATION Specific Programme

-Impact on scientific excellence

-Impact on Technological or social innovations

-Economic impact

-Societal impact

-Environmental impact

-Regional impact

-I don't know

IDEAS Specific Programme

-Impact on scientific excellence

-Impact on Technological or social innovations

-Economic impact

-Societal impact

-Environmental impact

-Regional impact

-I don't know

PEOPLE Specific Programme

-Impact on scientific excellence

-Impact on Technological or social innovations

-Economic impact

-Societal impact

-Environmental impact

-Regional impact

-I don't know

CAPACITIES Specific Programme

-Impact on scientific excellence

-Impact on Technological or social innovations

-Economic impact

-Societal impact

-Environmental impact

-Regional impact

-I don't know

4.2 Impacts of each Specific FP7 Programme – Comments (optional)

Please specify the reasons for the ranking given under question 4.1 and/or refer to any further evidence on impact (scientific, behavioural, technological, innovation, structural, policy, and other ) FP7 has had.

|  |
| --- |
|  |

4.3 Based on your experience to what extent did FP7 research activities produce enduring impact? (compulsory)

-High

-Medium

-Low

-Don't know

4.4 To what extent did FP7 research activities produce enduring impact for you as FP7 beneficiary (eg networking, bench marking, joint agenda setting, harmonisation of peer review systems? – Comments (compulsory)

|  |
| --- |
|  |

4.5 Contribution of FP7 activities to the European Research Area (ERA) (compulsory)

To which of the following ERA areas
[20](#footnote20)
 did FP7 activities contribute most? Please rank the following areas on a scale from 1 – 5 (5 being the area to which FP7 activities contributed most).

-More effective national research systems

-Optimal transnational co-operation and competition

-An open labour market for researchers

-Gender Equality and gender mainstreaming in research

-Optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge

4.6 Contribution of FP7 activities to the European Research Area (ERA) – Comments (optional)

Please specify the reasons for the ranking given under question 4.5

|  |
| --- |
|  |

5.
   European added value

5.1 EU added-value of FP7 (compulsory)

In which of the following dimensions of EU added-value has FP7 been most successful? Out of the 9 EU added-value areas identified below, please select the 3 which in your view have been most successful and rank them accordingly (3 being the EU added-value dimension in which FP7 has been most successful);

-Tackling pan-European challenges

-Coordination of national research policies

-EU scale of dissemination of research results

-Pooling of resources (achieving critical mass; economies of scale and scope)

-Reduction of research risk / of commercial risk

-Increase competition in research

-Leverage on private investment / on public investment

-Improving of S&T capabilities

-Enhance researchers' mobility

5.2 EU added-value of FP7 – Comments (optional)

Please specify the reasons for the ranking given under question 5.1

|  |
| --- |
|  |

6.
   Final questions
[21](#footnote21)

6.1 What are the key achievements/strengths of FP7 in particular? (compulsory)

|  |
| --- |
|  |

6.2 Are there shortcomings in FP7 that you think should be corrected? According to your experience have these already been addressed to in the Horizon 2020 Programme? (compulsory)

|  |
| --- |
|  |

6.3 Overall participatory experience (compulsory)

-Do you attend to participate again in future? yes/no

-Did you know your partners in the project before? yes/no

-Did you participate for the first time? yes/no

-Do you intend to stay in touch with the partners of your project after the end of the research work? yes/no

How quick do you think the result of your research will lead to marketable products and services?

-Within 1 year;

-1 – 5 years,

-5 – 10 years,

-In more than 10 years
   

6.4 Overall are you satisfied with FP7? (compulsory)

-Very satisfied

-Satisfied

-Moderately dissatisfied

-Very dissatisfied

-Don't know

3.Methods and Analytical models used in preparing the evaluation

This meta evaluation builds on a significant compilation and assessment of evidence base consisting of three combined streams of information, gathered from both internal (Research and Innovation family DGs) and external sources (European RTD Evaluation Network
[22](#footnote22)
 and from the stakeholder consultation):

Statistics data were extracted from the EC databases CORDA and SESAM RESPIR

CORDA, the common research data warehouse, is the Framework Programmes' (FP) central repository of data collected and/or derived during the course of FP implementation.

As of 20 August 2015, CORDA information about 26,079 grant agreements. Figures are refreshed on a daily basis.

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DG | Closed | Signed | Under Preparation | Total\* |
| DG RTD | 2686 | 4950 | 1 | 4964 |
| DG CNECT | 1412 | 2471 | 0 | 2471 |
| DG ENER | 43 | 133 | 4 | 137 |
| DG MOVE | 19 | 49 | 0 | 49 |
| DG EAC | 3 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| DG TREN | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| REA | 6808 | 12613 | 175 | 12831 |
| ERCEA | 827 | 4567 | 4 | 4584 |
| GSA | 0 | 0 | 84 | 84 |
| CS2 | 73 | 483 | 23 | 510 |
| FCH2 | 4 | 155 | 0 | 155 |
| HOME | 26 | 93 | 0 | 93 |
| ENIAC | 0 | 63 | 0 | 63 |
| ARTEMIS | 0 | 38 | 20 | 58 |
| IMI | 0 | 56 | 1 | 57 |
| GROW | 13 | 16 | 0 | 16 |
| NA | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Total | 11914 | 25691 | 315 | 26079\* |

\*including cancelled

Number of FP7 grant agreements present in CORDA (20 August 2015)

The SESAM Research Performance and Impact Reporting (RESPIR) tool was launched in 2012 by DG RTD. It presents, for the first time in the history of the Framework Programmes implementation, detailed statistical data on research outputs and impacts (peer-reviewed applications, applications for patents, gender, etc.) based on FP7 project final reports that are submitted and registered in the SESAM application.

For FP7, the reference population in SESAM RESPIR comprises processed
[23](#footnote23)
 final reports of all DG RTD and REA FP7 projects. The tool therefore does not cover the whole FP7 as it does not include, for FP7, the activities managed by Directorate-Generals for Communication Networks, Content and Technology (CONNECT), Energy, Transport and Mobility (MOVE), the European Research Council (ERC) and some Joint Technology Initiatives (IMI, ENIAC, ARTEMIS).

To illustrate this, and as noticed in the Seventh FP7 Monitoring Report (2013) referred to in this evaluation, as of 1 December 2014, more than 25,000 grant agreements were signed by the various Commission Directorates-Generals, executive agencies and other services implementing FP7. SESAM RESPIR included statistics from 7,288 project final reports (out of 8,576 closed projects). SESAM RESPIR therefore reported on 41% of FP7 projects
[24](#footnote24)
. These projects were distributed as follows:

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Priority Area | | Number of Signed Grant Agreements | Processed Final Reports | | | |
|  | |  | Number | % | | |
| COOPERATION | Health | 1.008 | 400 | 40% | |
|  | Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology | 516 | 185 | 36% | |
|  | Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies | 804 | 350 | 44% | |
|  | Energy | 239 | 105 | 44% | |
|  | Environment (including Climate Change) | 494 | 216 | 44% | |
|  | Transport (including Aeronautics) | 589 | 280 | 48% | |
|  | Socio-economic sciences and Humanities | 253 | 131 | 52% | |
|  | Space | 267 | 111 | 42% | |
|  | Security | 319 | 79 | 25% | |
|  | General Activities | 25 | 11 | 44% | |
|  | Joint Technology Initiatives ( | 609 | 121 | 20% | |
| Total : COOPERATION | | 5.123 | 1.989 | | 39% | |
|  | Marie-Curie Actions | 10.715 | 4.361 | 41% | |
| Total : PEOPLE | | 10.715 | 4.361 | | 41% | |
| CAPACITIES | Research Infrastructures | 198 | 88 | 44% | |
|  | Research for the benefit of SMEs | 1.030 | 471 | 46% | |
|  | Regions of Knowledge | 84 | 46 | 55% | |
|  | Research Potential | 206 | 107 | 52% | |
|  | Science in Society | 183 | 90 | 49% | |
|  | Support for development of research policies | 27 | 16 | 59% | |
|  | Activities of International Cooperation | 157 | 60 | 38% | |
| Total : CAPACITIES | | 1.885 | 878 | | 47% | |
|  | Fusion Energy | 4 | 3 | 75% | |
|  | Nuclear Fission and Radiation Protection | 134 | 57 | 43% | |
| Total : EURATOM | | 138 | 60 | | 43% | |
| Total | | 17.861 | 7.288 | | 41% | |

Processed Final Reports in FP7 Grant Agreements by Priority Area and Funding Scheme (1/12/2014)

Inputs provided by stakeholders in the 202 responses to the online public consultation

Please see Annex 2.

An extensive literature review

This integrates:

A wide corpus of thematic and horizontal evaluation studies which have been carried out over FP7
[25](#footnote25)
 and which have been collected from the Research and Innovation family DGs (see Annex 4)

These evaluations rely on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Quantitative methodologies mostly include surveys, descriptive statistics, scientometrics; qualitative analyses methods include mostly interviews and case studies, and to a lesser extent network analysis. Impact measurement techniques include patents analysis and bibliometrics and few studies have implemented microeconomic and macroeconomic modelling methods. A striking feature is that a large majority of these evaluations is based on techniques related to observational and opinion-based investigation modes (surveys, interviews of FP participants, etc.) Most of them usually involve panels, workshops or other forms of stakeholder consultations, at two different and complementary stages: early in the process to collect data, and later on, to share and discuss their preliminary findings.

Assessments provided by the Research and Innovation family DGs services through dedicated and harmonised "building blocks templates" structured along the evaluation questions (see Annex 4);

The evaluation of each of the four FP7 Specific Programmes provided by the four Supporting experts to the High-Level Group carrying out the ex-post evaluation of FP7;

FP7 Annual Monitoring Reports
[26](#footnote26)
;

DG RTD Annual Reports on Programme Evaluation Activities
[27](#footnote27)
;

Other relevant reports such as the ex-ante assessment of FP7 and the FP7 interim evaluation and other official policy documents;

National impact studies collected from the European RTD Evaluation Network.

Furthermore, the methods used in this meta-evaluation were an intervention logic analysis, descriptive statistics, cluster analysis and meta-analysis techniques.

The review of the aboved-mentioned evaluations has a number of limitations. The main limitation relates to their scope (these evaluations are focused on a theme or a specific instrument) and their timing (even though this is less prominent issue as most of the thematic evaluations feeding into this meta-evaluation have been carried over the last two years, once the interim evaluation of FP7 was achieved). These are well-known issues for a meta-evaluation. The main consequence is that it is not possible to aggregate their findings (using for instance an arithmetically based method to derive results at the level of the FP).

This was these limitations were mitigated by strong cooperation with the services involved in the Inter service Group set up for this evaluation and by using the same template to collect data from their evaluation studies. This serves as a matrix design.

Overview of the evaluation methods mostly used in the context of this meta-evaluation:

- Statistical methods.

- Econometric modelling.

- Sociometrics (e.g. Social network analysis).

- Scientometrics & Informetrics (e.g. bibliometric & patent analysis).

- Judgement-based and critical methods (e.g. Surveys, interviews).

4.List of evaluation studies

List of evaluations

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Area/Activity | SP | Theme/Area | Title |
| FP7 | COOPERATION | Health | Ex-post evaluation of the Health theme in FP7 |
|  |  |  | Review of Public Health Research Projects Financed under the Commission’s Framework Programmes for Health Research |
|  |  |  | Report of the Independent Expert Group on the Future of European Public Health Research |
|  |  |  | Impact Assessment of the Health Theme and proposal for post 2013 EU support for health research and innovation |
|  |  |  | Profiles, motivations and expectations of participants to EC funded research in Health (2002–2010): A statistical analysis |
|  |  |  | Evaluation of Health research under FP6 and FP7, In-depth Case studies |
|  |  | Energy | Mid-term evaluation on the impact of energy EU-funded research and demonstration projects under FP6 and FP7 |
|  |  |  | Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU  Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy |
|  |  | Transport | Interim Evaluation of EU FP7 Transport Research, notably within Theme 7 of the Cooperation Programme "Transport (including Aeronautics)" |
|  |  |  | TRI VALUE - Ex-post evaluation of the Transport (including Aeronautics) theme of the FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme |
|  |  | Environment | Research on climate change funded by the Seventh Framework Programme |
|  |  |  | Stock-Taking of Results and Impacts of EU-Funded Environmental Research |
|  |  |  | State of the Art and Forward-Looking Analysis of Environmental Research and Innovation |
|  |  | KBBE | Ex-post evaluation and impact assessment of FP7-funded projects in Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology |
|  |  |  | Impacts of EU Framework Programmes (2000-2010) and Prospects for Research and Innovation In Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnologies |
|  |  |  | Small and Medium-sized Enterprises - Participation in FP7 Projects in the Biotechnologies Activity |
|  |  |  | Meta-analysis of "Bio-Technology", "Agriculture", "Food", "Marine and Maritime" and Horizontal themes |
|  |  |  | Impact Assessment of Food related EU Research in PF6 and FP7 |
|  |  |  | Ex-post evaluation The Ocean of Tomorrow calls (2010-2013) |
|  |  | NMP | Ex-post evaluation and impact assessment of funding in the NMP thematic area - FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme |
|  |  |  | Comparative scoreboard and performance indicators in NMP research activities between EU and third countries |
|  |  |  | Analysis of patenting activity of FP7 NMP projects |
|  |  |  | Strategy Definition and Road Mapping for Industrial Technologies to Address Grand Challenges |
|  |  |  | Innovation - How to Convert Research into Commercial Success Story? Part 1 : Analysis of EU-funded Research Projects in the Field of Industrial Technologies Part 2 : Analysis of Innovation Successes in the Field of Industrial Technologies |
|  |  |  | Ex post Evaluation of FP6-NMP - Project Level |
|  |  |  | Analysis of Smart Specialisation Strategies in NMP related areas |
|  |  | ICT | Interim evaluation of the ICT research in the 7th FP |
|  |  |  | Interim Evaluation of AAL Joint Programme |
|  |  |  | Final Evaluation of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL JP) |
|  |  |  | Assessing impact of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing |
|  |  |  | Ex-post evaluation of the ICT research in the Seventh Framework Programme, including the support study SMART 2013/0049 (COOP. and CAP. SP) |
|  |  | SSH | Evaluation, monitoring and comparison of the impacts of EU funded SSH (Socio-economic sciences and Humanities) research in Europe (IMPACT-EV project) |
|  |  | Space | Evaluation of socio-economic impacts from space activities in the EU |
|  |  |  | Ex-post evaluation of the FP7 Space research actions |
|  |  | Security | Review of security measures in the 7th Research Framework Programme FP7 2007-2013 |
|  |  |  | SMEs and their participation in security research |
|  |  |  | Final report from the European Security Research and Innovation Forum (ESRIF) |
|  |  |  | Ex-post evaluation of the FP7 Security research actions |
|  | CAPACITIES | SMEs | Progress Reports on SMEs Participation in the 7th R&D Framework Programme |
|  |  |  | Performance of SMEs within FP7 - An Interim Evaluation of FP7 Components |
|  |  | Research infrastructures | Assessing the Projects on the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) Roadmap |
|  |  |  | Evaluation of pertinence and impact of the EU research infrastructure activity in FP7 |
|  |  | Regions of Knowledge | Evaluation of research intensive clusters as potential vehicles for smart specialisation in the European regions |
|  |  |  | Final Evaluation of the Regions of Knowledge (RoK) Programme |
|  |  | Research potential of Convergence Regions | Analysis and recommendations for the future evolution of the Research Potential Activity of the EU-EU FP7 Capacities Programme - Expert Group on Research Potential Project Portfolio - 17 May 2011 |
|  |  |  | Final evaluation of FP7 “Research Potential” (REGPOT) Programme, COWI report – April 2014 |
|  |  | Science in Society | Ex-post evaluation of Science in Society in FP7 |
|  |  |  | Interim evaluation and assessment of future options for Science in Society Actions |
|  |  | Coordination of Research Activities | Ex-post evaluation of the research and development programme undertaken by several Member States aiming at supporting research and development performing small and medium-sized enterprises (Eurostars) |
|  |  |  | Review of the Joint Programming Process |
|  |  |  | Interim Evaluation of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) |
|  |  | Support to the coherent development of research policies | Evaluation of the "Coherent Development of Research Policies" Programme |
|  |  | ERA initiatives | Expert group on open innovation and knowledge transfer |
|  |  |  | Support for Continued Data Collection and Analysis Concerning Mobility Patterns and Career Paths of Researchers – MORE 2 |
|  |  |  | Knowledge Transfer Study 2010-2012 |
|  |  |  | Evaluation of the EURAXESS Project (2008-2012) |
|  |  |  | Monitoring of the human resources policies and practices in research ("European Partnership for Researchers monitoring" EPR ) |
|  |  |  | Study to monitor the implementation and impact of IP recommendation and code of conduct - Knowledge transfer |
|  |  |  | Analysis of the ERA State of play in Member States and Associated Countries: focus on priority areas |
|  |  |  | Evaluation of ERA progress in MS and AC |
|  |  |  | Researchers' report 2014 |
|  |  | International cooperation | International Science and Technology Cooperation in the EU's Seventh Framework Programme: the specific programme 'Cooperation' and its thematic areas |
|  |  |  | European Added Value of EU Science, Technology and Innovation actions and EU-Member State Partnership in international cooperation |
|  |  |  | Mapping of best practice regional and multi-country cooperative STI initiatives between Africa and Europe — identification of financial mechanism(s) 2008–2012 |
|  |  |  | Overview of International Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation between Member States and Countries outside the EU and the Development of a Future Monitoring Mechanism |
|  |  |  | International Cooperation in Science, Technology and Innovation: Strategies for a Changing World - Report of the Expert Group Established to Support the Further Development of an EU International STI Cooperation Strategy |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation agreement between the European Union and Russia |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and the USA |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and New Zealand |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation agreement between the European Union and South Africa |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and Mexico |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and Morocco |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and the Federative Republic of Brazil |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and Government of the Republic of India |
|  |  |  | Review of the S&T Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Korea |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and Tunisia |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and Argentina |
|  |  |  | Review of S&T cooperation between the European Union and Chile |
|  | PEOPLE | | Contribution to the interim evaluation of Marie Curie 2014-2020 + ex-post of Marie Curie under FP7 |
|  |  | | FP7 Marie Curie Life-long Training and Career Development Evaluation: Individual Fellowships and Co-funding Mechanism |
|  |  | | Marie Curie researchers and their long-term career development: A comparative study |
|  |  | | FP7 Marie Curie Actions Interim Evaluation |
|  |  | | Ex-post Impact Assessment study concerning the ‘Marie Curie Actions’ under the Sixth Framework Programme |
|  | IDEAS | | Comparative overview of the current research funding instruments in Europe and selected countries |
|  |  | | Monitoring ERC's implementation of excellence |
|  |  | | Understanding and assessing the impact and outcomes of the ERC funding schemes |
|  |  | | Emerging Research Areas and their Coverage by ERC-supported Projects |
|  |  | | Comparative scientometric assessment of the results of ERC funded projects |
|  | EURATOM | | Ex-post evaluation of the Euratom Framework Programme (2007-2013) |
|  | JRC | | Ex-post evaluation of FP7 JRC activities |
|  | PPPs | | Interim Assessment of the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership |
|  |  | | (2nd) Interim Assessment of the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership |
|  |  | | Interim Assessment of the Research Public Private Partnerships in the European Economic Recovery Plan: Energy-Efficient Buildings, Factories of the Future, and European Green Cars Initiative |
|  |  | | Final Assessment of the Research PPPs in the European Economic Recovery Plan: Factories of the Future; Energy-efficient Buildings; European Green Cars Initiative |
|  | JTIs | | Interim Evaluation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI JU) |
|  |  | | First Interim Evaluation of JTI ENIAC and ARTEMIS |
|  |  | | First Interim Evaluation of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) |
|  |  | | First Interim Evaluation of the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking (CS JU) |
|  |  | | Commission Response to the First Interim Evaluation of CS, FCH, IMI Joint Untertakings |
|  |  | | Commission Response to the First Interim Evaluation of ARTEMIS and ENIAC Joint Technology Initaitives |
|  |  | | Second Interim Evaluation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI JU) |
|  |  | | Second Interim Evaluation of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) |
|  |  | | Second Interim Evaluation of the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking (CS JU) |
|  |  | | Commission Response to the Second Interim Evaluation of CS, FCH, IMI Joint Untertakings |
|  |  | | ARTEMIS and ENIAC Joint Technology Initatives Second interim evaluation |
|  |  | | Commission Response to theSecond Interim Evaluation of ARTEMIS and ENIAC Joint Technology Initiatives |
|  | EIP | | Outriders for European Competitiveness: European Innovation Partnerships (EIPs) as a Tool for Systemic Change |
|  | RSFF | | First Interim Evaluation of the Risk-Sharing Financial Facility (RSFF) |
|  |  | | Second Interim Evaluation of the Risk-Sharing Financial Facility (RSFF) |
|  | Executive agencies | | External Evaluation of the Research Executive Agency (REA) and the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) |
| Horizontal studies | | Innovation Union | Interim Evaluation of the Innovation Union |
|  | | Impact | Assessing the contribution of the Framework Programmes to major innovations |
|  | |  | Assessing the contribution of the Framework Programmes to the development of human research capacity |
|  | |  | Assessing the research management performance of FP projects |
|  | |  | Understanding the long term impact of the Framework Programmes |
|  | | Participation | Network analysis of FP participation |
|  | |  | The role and participation of industry in the FPs |
|  | |  | The role and participation of research organisations in the FPs |
|  | |  | The role and participation of universities in the FPs |
|  | |  | Interim evaluation of the participation of SMEs in the Cooperation Programme and the Research for the benefit of SMEs schemes under the Capacities Programme of FP7 (2007-2013) |
|  | |  | Network analysis of Civil Society Organisations' participation in research framework programmes |
|  | | Gender | SHE Figures 2012 |
|  | |  | SHE Figures 2015 |
|  | | Simplification | Assessing the Effectiveness of Simplification Measures under FP7 |
| Other activity reports | | Monitoring Reports | Annual Monitoring Reports of FP7 |
|  | |  | Innovation Union Competitiveness reports |
|  | | Programme Evaluation Activities | DG RTD Annual Report on Programme Evaluation Activities 2011 |
|  | |  | DG RTD Annual Report on Programme Evaluation Activities 2012 |
|  | |  | DG RTD Annual Report on Programme Evaluation Activities 2013 |

National impact studies are listed in Annex 21.

5. Evaluation questions

Evidence Building Block 1: Rationale (“why”): Building Block 1 aims to describe the logic of intervention (of the expenditure programme); to analyse the relevance of its objectives; whether the objectives are consistent with the strategic context and the identified challenges in the FP7 period 2007-2013.

Evidence Building Block 2: Implementation (“how”): Building Block 2 aims to describe the FP7 intervention from a process/implementation perspective (how was the programme in your thematic area implemented?) by factually establishing the participation patterns by research actor type; the distribution of funds by research actor type; the changes over different FPs (FP7, FP6, FP5, and prior if relevant); and by analysing the reasons for these patterns, distributions and trends.

Evidence Building Block 3: Achievements (“what”) – direct achievements (“outputs”): Building Block 3 describes the “outputs” or direct achievements of “all what is produced” through this intervention at project and programme level per thematic research area or main topic. Building Block 3 also describes and analyses the uptake on cross-cutting issues per thematic research area.

Evidence Building Block 4: Achievements (“what”) – wider achievements (“results” and “impacts”): Building Block 4 deals with the “results” of the intervention for the beneficiaries and the wider economic, societal and environmental “impacts” for Europe at large.

Evidence Building Block 5: European Added Value: Building Block 5 deals with European Added Value (EAV). EAV refers to the need for Europe to intervene. EAV is analysed through establishing a need for public intervention (as opposed to market forces) and establishing a need for this public intervention at EU level (as opposed to MS and regional level).

Evidence Building Block 6: Conclusions on FP7 and Outlook for H2020: Building Block 6 wraps up the analysis and concludes per thematic research area the main findings for FP7 and indicates what can be learned from FP7 achievements for the successor programme H2020 and what FP7 shortcomings are already addressed in H2020.

Examples of the specific questions used to build the evidence base under the “building blocks’ include the following.

Guiding questions:

Has, for each specific programme, clear objectives been formulated?

Were the programme objectives adequately designed to address EU needs and societal challenges as intended?

Were the activities and budgets allocated among the areas sufficiently and adequately distributed, in a way that strengthened the scientific and technological base and encouraged international competitiveness?

How have the objectives and coverage of topics evolved through time, and how did they align to the overall EU policy context?

Has the programme evolved to become less or more prescriptive regarding research and innovation topics and to allow bottom up approaches to deliver innovative ideas? Did the priority-setting evolve in this respect during FP7?

Have project outputs lead to

research training and capability effects?

innovation (e.g. innovative new commercial products, profitable new services or starts-ups)? Which fields and which clients/segments of society have benefitted most in this regard?

What were the reasons for success, what are the areas where there is scope for improvement?

Has the programme sufficiently promoted the translation of research and innovation into market applications?

Has the programme supported the demonstration of the market potential of new products or processes?

Has the programme supported policy - making, including standardisation and legislation?

Has the programme had a positive leverage effect in promoting national research efforts? Has it contributed to a better exploitation of results?

Which socio-economic, environmental and other relevant impacts resulted from FP7-funded research projects? What is the causal link between them?

To what extent did FP7 Specific Programmes help address the main societal, environmental and economic challenges? To what extent has it led to innovations that contribute to improving quality of life?

Did FP7 Specific Programmes enable all research and innovation stakeholders – research institutions, researchers, citizens, policy makers, industry, and third sector organisations – to make a full contribution towards the realisation of its objectives?

Overall, did FP7 Specific Programmes help meet the needs, expectations and values of European citizens?

How have the FP7 Specific Programmes influenced research and related policies?

To what extent would researchers have been able to undertake the research project funded through FP7 in the absence of this EU-level funding?

To what extent has FP7 yielded outputs, results and impacts that intervention at Member State level alone could not have achieved?

How did EU support for research add value compared to purely national public funding in terms of elements such as the following?

Pooling of resources and creating EU-Networks(achieving critical mass; economies of scale and scope)

Leverage on public and private investment

Reduction of research and commercial risks

Improving of S&T capabilities and pan-European cooperation

Accelerating the generation of knowledge and research outputs

Increase competition in research

Tackling pan-European challenges

Coordination of national research policies.

6.Background to FP7

The Seventh Framework Programme was designed in a context of the reinvigorated Lisbon Strategy process which had set the European Union a strategy goal to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy of the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion
[28](#footnote28)
.

The overriding objective of FP7 was to contribute to the Union becoming the world's leading research area.
[29](#footnote29)
 FP7 was also intended to support progress towards the 3% GDP target in R&D by 2010, two-thirds of which should come from the private sector
[30](#footnote30)
, as established by the Barcelona European Council in March 2002. The specific objectives of FP7 were to support the creation of the European Research Area (ERA) and contribute to the development of a knowledge-based economy and society of Europe.

While building on the Sixth Framework Programme, FP7 was thus attributed more ambitious objectives more closely linked with the economic and societal challenges the EU was facing (decelerating economic growth, fiercer international competition supported by rapid advances of new technologies such as ICT, significant environmental degradation caused by global warming and climate change). These new objectives were also established to address three main challenges Europe was facing in the area of R&D: a low level of investment in R&D (1.97% of GDP) notably as compared with the USA (2.59%), a “brain drain” effect leading the best researchers to move abroad, and a deficient capacity in transforming basic research results into marketable innovations, making an economic success of them: "European companies apply for 170 patents each year per million inhabitants compared with 400 for American companies. And the Union's commercial deficit for high-tech products is approximately €23 billion per year
[31](#footnote31)
".

The following table gives an overview of the expected impacts of the "new FP7" compared with the "do nothing" option.

Expected impacts of the new FP7 and the do nothing option (business as usual scenario taken as a reference) 
[32](#footnote32)

  

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| IMPACTS | | POLICY OPTIONS | | |
|  | | "do nothing" | "new FP7" | |
| Expected aggregate impacts on the achievement of the Lisbon, Barcelona and other community objectives | LISBON OBJECTIVES | | | |
|  | Economic growth performance | In the long run, up to 0.84 percent of GDP lost compared to the business- as-usual scenario | In the long run, between 0.45 and 0.96 percent extra GDP is generated compared to the business-as-usual scenario, because of crowding-in and rates of return/multiplier effects. The literature shows that the crowding-in effect of €1 of public R&D funding allocated to business has been estimated to range between €0.7 and € 0.93. The private rates of return to private R&D can be as high as 43 percent, the social ones as high as 160 percent. The rates of return to publicly-funded research could be as high as 67 percent. | |
|  | Employment creation | In the long run, up to 800,000 jobs lost compared to the business-as-usual scenario | In the long run, between 400,000 and 925,000 extra jobs are created compared to the business-as-usual scenario. The literature shows that the rate of growth of total factor productivity (TFP - due to improvements in the efficiency of production or to pure technological progress) has a positive impact on the employment rate, with a one-year lag, and that both in the short- and long-term, countries with higher than average TFP growth tend also to have higher than average growth in employment. | |
|  | Competitiveness | In the long run, extra-European exports lower by up to 2 percent, imports higher by up to 1.43 percent compared to the business-as-usual scenario | In the long run, extra-European exports could be higher by between 0.64 and 1.57 percent; imports lower by between 0.3 and 0.9 percent compared to the business-as- usual scenario. The literature shows that publicly funded research is critical for the development of new products, processes and services. Increases in R&D also increase productivity. | |
|  | BARCELONA OBJECTIVES | | | |
|  | R&D intensity | In the long run, Europe's R&D intensity lower by up to 0.1 percent of GDP compared to the business-as-usual scenario | In the long run, Europe's R&D intensity higher by between 0.059 and 0.23 percent of GDP compared to the business-as-usual scenario. This is because of high crowding-in effects (see above under economic growth performance) | |
|  | Research employment | In the long run, up to 87,000 jobs lost compared to the business-as-usual scenario | In the long run, between 40,000 and 215,000 extra jobs compared to the business-as- usual scenario. | |
|  | OTHER COMMUNITY POLICIES | | | |
|  | Göteborg strategy | Less informed design of EU Sustainable Development Strategy and disorganised consideration of the three pillars of sustainability | Knowledge-based design of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy and more balanced consideration of the three pillars of sustainability in the decision-making process; EU evidence-based leadership in international negotiations | |
|  | Other Community Policies | More ad hoc and inefficient development of perhaps less effective Community policies | Easier development of more evidence-based and effective policies in the fields of agriculture, economic and financial affairs, employment, enterprises, environment, fisheries, food, health, maritime affairs, etc. | |
| Expected impacts of Specific Programmes | SPECIFIC PROGRAMME: PEOPLE | | | |
|  | People | Less European mobility and cooperation; less attractive scientific careers for European citizens (in particular women); Europe less attractive to the best foreign researchers; reduced level and diversity of skills of individual researchers; less sustainable linkages between academia and industry, and across disciplines | More research can be carried out in Europe; research will generally be of higher quality, more inter-disciplinary, and where appropriate take industry better into account | |
|  | SPECIFIC PROGRAMME: IDEAS | | | |
|  | Ideas | More national, non-competitive and overlapping funding; fewer scientific publications; publications of lower quality and fewer citations as the competition for basic research funding between individual research teams remains organised at national level, i.e. essentially meaningless in highly specialised fields of science in most countries | A better and enlarged knowledge base for European enterprises on which the innovation of products and process can be based; levelling-up effects as incentives are provided to increase institutional and researcher capabilities, produce better research proposals, and carry out higher-level research; structuring effects (dissemination; increased attractiveness ERA) | |
|  | SPECIFIC PROGRAMME: COOPERATION | | | |
| Expected impacts of Specific Programmes | Collaborative research | Greater fragmentation and inefficiency of research efforts in Europe; fewer projects carried out by research teams on a European scale and limited to resources and knowledge available at national level; more slow advance in important fields of science; in some countries, capabilities in particular research fields declining due to inadequate interaction with top teams located elsewhere | | Some research activities are of such a scale that no single Member State can provide the necessary resources and expertise. In these cases, EU projects can allow research to achieve the required "critical mass", while lowering commercial risk and producing a leverage effect on private investment. EU-scale actions also play an important role in transferring skills and knowledge across frontiers. This helps to foster excellence in research and development through enhancing capability, quality and EU-wide competition, as well as improving human capacity in S&T through training, mobility and European career development. EU support can also contribute to a better integration of European R&D, by encouraging the coordination of national policies, by the EU-wide dissemination of results, and by funding research for pan-European policy challenges. |
|  | JTIs | Reduced competitiveness of European industries; reduced participation of industry in the FP; negative signal given to knowledge-intensive and hightech industries | | Important contribution made to the achievement of the Lisbon and Barcelona agenda through the formulation for areas critical for European competitiveness of ambitious, long-term and strategic research and wider policy agenda, the commitment of a critical mass of financial, organisational and human resources under public-private partnerships, indicatively sharing costs in a 1/3-2/3 format. |
|  | International cooperation | Europe reneges on its commitments in international fora and goes entirely against the trend whereby other industrialised countries/regions are seeking to expand their international S&T cooperation. | | Socio-economic development and global competitiveness stimulated; contributions made to Europe's many key international commitments (e.g. Kyoto, Convention on Biological Diversity, Biosafety Protocol, the plan of Implementation adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development). |
|  | Coordination of national research programmes | Return to the complete fragmentation of the pre-ERA period, with 25 MS and numerous regions defining their research priorities independently from each other and from the EU; waste of already scarce resources; opportunity lost to restructure the European research fabric so as to enhance EU competitiveness | | Strong contribution made to the restructuring of the European research fabric in a coordinated and organised way and to the development of ERA. |
| Expected impacts of Specific Programmes | SPECIFIC PROGRAMME: CAPACITIES | | | |
|  | Research infrastructures; Research for the benefit of SMEs; Regions of knowledge; Research potential; Science in society; Specific activities of international cooperation  • Realising full potential | Increased inefficiency and fragmentation of the European research landscape; less coordination of efforts, less possibility to share costs and access, potential duplication, loss of research capability  European SMEs deprived of important resources and opportunities to remain competitive in a global economy | | Better efficiency of public funds and stimulation of increased synergies between public and private funds; seamless access to all kinds of resources spread throughout Europe and the world.  The exploitation by SMEs of their research improved, EU-wide transfer of technology; research results potentially transformed into products and services |
| Expected impacts of management choices | Administrative burden | No administrative burden | | Limited administrative burden; cost of participation reduced; procedures simplified and rationalised |

The R&D policy context evolved during the implementation of FP7 with the adoption of new initiatives to stimulate the European Research Area on the one hand, and of the Europe 2020 Strategy and Europe Economic Recovery Plan on the other hand.

A first batch of initiatives to stimulate the ERA was launched in 2007-2008 as a follow-up of the ERA Green Paper published on 4 April 2007
[33](#footnote33)
:

Recommendation on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations
[34](#footnote34)
. This recommendation was endorsed by a resolution adopted by the Competitiveness Council on 30 May 2008
[35](#footnote35)
.

In June 2008 launch of EURAXESS branding to adapt to new initiatives and ERA needs and to duly respond to users' needs.

Communication 'Better careers and more mobility: a European partnership for researchers'.
[36](#footnote36)
 Related Council conclusions were adopted on 26 September 2008
[37](#footnote37)
.

In November 2008 the Commission launched the Human Resources Strategy for Researchers implementing the Commission Recommendation 2005 of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for their Recruitment.

Communication 'Towards Joint Programming in Research: Working together to tackle common challenges more effectively'
[38](#footnote38)
. The Competitiveness Council adopted conclusions on this issue on 2 December 2008
[39](#footnote39)
.

Proposal for a Council regulation on the Community legal framework for a European Research Infrastructure (ERI)
[40](#footnote40)
. This regulation was adopted by the Council on 25 June 2009
[41](#footnote41)
.

Communication 'A Strategic European Framework for international science and technology Cooperation'
[42](#footnote42)
. It was endorsed by Council conclusions adopted on 2 December 2008
[43](#footnote43)
.

Building on these elements and aiming at meeting the demand of the European Council (ERA to be completed by the end of 2014), the Commission adopted on 17.7.2012 the Communication 'A Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth'
[44](#footnote44)
. Related Council conclusions were adopted on 12.12.2012
[45](#footnote45)
. A first Progress Report was published before the end of FP7
[46](#footnote46)
. Most of the actions by the Commission that were announced in the Communication have been completed such as the establishment of open access to scientific publications as a general principle for Horizon 2020, a Communication on access to and preservation of scientific information in the digital age, the launch of RESAVER or are still ongoing as they are part of a continuous process like open access to scientific data, e-science, open innovation, Joint Programming, ESFRI etc.

Furthermore, as a response to the economic crisis, the following initiatives were adopted that had an impact on the objectives and activities of FP7:

As part of the European Economic Recovery Plan
[47](#footnote47)
, three contractual Public-Private Partnerships (Factories of the Future, Energy-efficient Buildings and Green Cars) were established in 2009 to develop new technologies for sectors which have experience significant downturns in demand a s a result of the economic crisis and to foster the transition to a sustainable economy.

The Europe 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth
[48](#footnote48)
 was adopted in March 2010 to foster growth and competitiveness by developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation, which would be more resource efficient and greener, and achieve high employment, social and territorial cohesion.

Amongst the seven Europe 2020 flagship initiatives, the Innovation Union was launched in October 2010
[49](#footnote49)
.

Simplification measures
[50](#footnote50)
 were introduced to facilitate the award and management of grants in order to realise European research potential both in Europe and elsewhere.

A detailed intervention logic is presented hereafter.

Intervention Logic of FP7

  

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14002.jpg)
  
Source: DG RTD

FP7 was the cornerstone of EU research policy and a major component of the EU innovation system which includes the following other programmes
[51](#footnote51)
, smaller by their budgets and scopes, which ran in parallel, with their specific objectives, creating a complex governance structure:

The Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) included three programmes: Enterprise and Innovation, Intelligent Energy Europe, and ICT policy (EU budget contribution of €3.6 billion for 2007-2013).

The European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) brought together higher education, research and business to stimulate innovation in Knowledge and Innovation Communities (EU budget contribution of €309 million for 2007-2013).

The Structural Funds (ERDF, ESF, Cohesion Fund) allocated to R&D and innovation, entrepreneurship, ICT and human capital development (EU budget contribution of €86 billion for 2007-2013)

Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) included Comenius, Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, Grundtvig, E twinning, Transversal Actions (EU budget contribution of € 6.2 billion for 2007-2013).

The range of funding schemes implemented in FP7 was wide, including six schemes:

- Collaborative projects were focused research projects with clearly defined scientific and technological objectives and specific expected results (such as developing new knowledge or technology to improve European competitiveness). They were carried out by consortia made up of participants from different countries, and from industry and academia.

- The Networks of Excellence were designed for research institutions willing to combine and functionally integrate a substantial part of their activities and capacities in a given field, in order to create a European "virtual research centre" in this field.

- Coordination and Support actions covered not the research itself, but the coordination and networking of projects, programmes and policies. This included, for example coordination and networking activities, dissemination and use of knowledge, support for transnational access to major research infrastructures, actions to stimulate the participation of SMEs, civil society and their networks, support for cooperation with other European research schemes (e.g. "frontier research").

- Individual projects were carried out by individual national or multinational research teams, led by a "principal investigator", funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

- Support for training and career development of researchers from across the European Union and its research partners were implemented in the Marie Curie action.

- Research for the benefit of specific groups – in particular SMEs targeted research and technological development projects where the bulk of the research was carried out by actors such as universities, research centers or other legal entities, for the benefit of specific groups, in particular SMEs, or for civil society organisations and their networks.

In FP7, the cost calculation regime saw a number of changes as compared with FP7, as illustrated in the tables below. In particular: each beneficiary has a specific Indirect Cost Model (ICM), and the use of lump sums, flat rates and average personnel costs were gradually implemented. Furthemore, a participants guarantee fund was introduced, the number of ex-ante financial capacity checks was reduced (in FP6, all non-public beneficiaries had to be checked, in FP7 only the ones requesting EU contributions > € 500,000), and the number of certificates on financial statements to be provided decreased (in FP6 each cost claim had to be accompanied by a certificate of an auditor, in FP7 a threshold of € 375,000 was introduced).

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | RTD Schemes | CSA Schemes |
| Real Indirect Costs  (if analytical accounting system) | Real Indirect Costs | Real Indirect costs  (to be declared with justification and method calculation) |
| Simplified Method  (if accounting system allows to identify all indirect costs) | Real Indirect Costs | Real Indirect costs  (to be declared with justification and method calculation) |
| Provisional flat rate | 60% | 20% |
| Standard flat rate | 20% | 20%  (to be declared – single exception to actual/real costs declaration) |
| Maximum reimbursement Indirect Costs CSA Scheme | | 7% (applied by EC during calculation of payment) |

Indirect Costs in FP7

Source: DG RTD

  

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Maximum reimbursement rates | Research and Technological Development Activities (\*) | Demonstration Activities | Other Activities |
| Network of excellence | 50%  75% (\*\*) |  | 100% |
| Collaborative project (\*\*\*\*) | 50%  75% (\*\*) | 50% | 100% |
| Coordination and support action |  |  | 100% (\*\*\*) |

Reimbursement Rates in FP7

Source: DG RTD

(\*) Research and Technological Development includes scientific coordination.

(\*\*) For beneficiaries that are non-profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs

(\*\*\*) The reimbursement of indirect eligible costs, in the case of coordination and support actions, may reach a maximum 7% of the direct eligible costs, excluding the direct eligible costs for subcontracting and the costs of resources made available by third parties which are not used on the premises of the beneficiary.

(\*\*\*\*) Including research for the benefit of specific groups (in particular SMEs).

  

7.Overview of FP7 indicators

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Indicator | | Target | Results/latest state of play |
| 1 | Projects that achieved all or most of their objectives… | 90% (by 2013) | 98 % by Sep 2015  Source: CORDA/SESAM |
| 2 | ... of which projects that achieved all of their objectives | 75% (by 2013) | 47 % by Sep 2015  Source: CORDA/SESAM |
| 3 | Share of EU financial contribution to Industry (\*) | The target depends on the specific thematic area under the Specific Programme "Cooperation" (between 40% for NMP and 3 % for SSH)   (by 2013) | 24,6 % by Oct 2014  Source: CORDA |
| 4 | Share of EU financial contribution to SMEs | 15% (by 2013)1 | 17.4 % by Oct 20132  Source :  AAR 2013 |
| 5 | Projects producing specific outputs disseminated to policy makers | 75% (by 2013) | 95% by Nov 2013  Source :  AAR 2013 |
| 6 | Number of international prizes and awards to ERC grant holders | 200 (by 2020) | 134 by July 2013  Source :  AAR 2013 |
| 7 | Number of scientific publications by ERC grant holders | ~40,000-60,000 (by 2020) | ~20,000 by Dec 2013  Source :  AAR 2013 |
| 8 | Number of international scientific users having benefited from access to Research Infrastructures | 30,000 (by 2013) | 18,300 by Nov 2013  Source :  AAR 2013 |
| 9 | Percentage of users satisfied with services offered by research infrastructures participating in Integrating Activities (good to very good overall appreciation) | >97% (by 2013) | 97% by Nov 2013  Source :  AAR 2013 |

1 = For the budget of the Cooperation SP, the following activities are not included: grants to the European Space Agency (ESA), JTIs, General Activities such as the CORDIS services, the horizontal ERA-NET scheme, research organisations in the EU, strengthened coordination with EUREKA, scientific and technological cooperation activities carried out in the COST and the European Metrology Research Programme.

  

8.Background on current situation

Since the launch of FP7, the economic context has changed dramatically. A recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis led to the adoption of stimulus packages to kick-start the economy. The key challenge is to stabilise the financial and economic system in the short term while also taking measures to create the economic opportunities of tomorrow.

The successor of FP7, Horizon 2020, was launched in the beginning of 2014. It brings together all existing Union research and innovation funding, including the framework programme for research, the innovation related activities of the competitiveness and innovation framework programme and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

Horizon 2020 has a number of new features that make it fit for purpose to promote growth and tackle societal challenges. These include:

- Major simplification through a simpler programme architecture, a single set of rules, less red tape through an easy to use cost reimbursement model, a single point of access for participants, less paperwork in preparing proposals, fewer controls and audits, with the overall aim to reduce the average time to grant by 100 days;

- An inclusive approach open to new participants, including those with ideas outside of the mainstream, ensuring that excellent researchers and innovators from across Europe and beyond can and do participate;

- The integration of research and innovation by providing seamless and coherent funding from idea to market;

- More support for innovation and activities close to the market, leading to a direct economic stimulus;

- A strong focus on creating business opportunities out of our response to the major concerns common to people in Europe and beyond, i.e. ‘societal challenges’;

- More possibilities for new entrants and young, promising scientists to put forward their ideas and obtain funding.

Horizon 2020 focuses resources on three distinct, yet mutually reinforcing, priorities, where there is clear Union added value: i) Excellent Science, ii) Industrial Leadership and iii) Societal Challenges.

9. The Cooperation Specific Programme 

Objectives

The Cooperation Programme was the largest single component of FP7, and invested just over € 32 500 million (65% of the total available budget) across a 7-year term, through a combination of collaborative research and various coordination actions across 10 thematic areas:

Health;

Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology;

Information and Communication Technologies;

Nano-sciences, Nano-technologies;

Energy;

Environment (including Climate Change);

Transport (including Aeronautics);

Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities;

Space;

Security.

The overarching aim of the Cooperation Specific Programme was to contribute to sustainable development. The overall objective was to help Europe gain or consolidate international leadership in a wide range of key scientific and technology areas, in order to ensure European competitiveness at the global level.

The main objectives of the Cooperation Programme were to support:

–collaborative research (through collaborative projects, networks of excellence and coordination and support actions);

–public-private partnerships in research (through Joint Technology Initiatives
[52](#footnote52)
 set up as Joint Undertakings under Article 187 TFEU as well as contractual public-private partnerships directly under the Framework Programme);

–coordination of non-Community research programmes (through ERA-NET
[53](#footnote53)
 and ERA-NET Plus actions
[54](#footnote54)
 as well as joint programmes with Member States under Article 185 TFEU
[55](#footnote55)
); and international cooperation.

Effectiveness

Collaborative research

In the modern global economy, it can no longer be expected that single teams or even Member State can provide the necessary scale and scope of resources required to conduct research. For example, the average research expenditure of an EU-25 country is just over € 7 billion per year. (% of GDP)

FP-induced collaborative research encourages trans-national partnerships, brings together resources, disciplines, scientific excellence, thus achieving a critical mass which could not be attained at national level.

Participation of different actors - from university, industry and public research laboratories – and the interaction between these actors is also a key aim of EU collaborative RTD actions. The Cooperation Specific Programme was effective in attracting leading public research and private actors, with approximately 75% of participants from the public sector and 25% being from private entities.

Collaborative research projects enable those research teams wishing to develop their S&T capabilities in specific fields to participate in top transnational teams, benefit from learning and synergies. In this way, FP7 had an important structuring effect on the European research system. The Programme was also effective in increasing the breadth of networks and the engagement of players from EU13 countries. In this regard, a striking aspect of FP7 networks was the increase in participant numbers compared to FP6. There were 450,000 new collaborations recorded under FP7. Moreover, almost three-quarters of organisations participating in FP7 were new to the networks, not having participated under FP6.

Moreover, cross-disciplinarity of research is growing, and no Member State can be expert in all fields, especially the emerging ones. Hence researchers must increasingly look beyond their own frontiers if they want to find high-quality expertise in complementary disciplines.

JTIs and contractual Public-Private Partnerships

The establishment of the five Joint Technology Initiatives under Article 187 TFEU for Innovative Medicines, Clean Sky, ARTEMIS, ENIAC and Fuel Cells and Hydrogen and the contractual Public-Private Partnerships set up under the European Economic Recovery Plan in the areas of the Green Car, Energy Efficient Buildings and Factories of the Future involved the commitment of massive financial, organisational and human resources through public-private partnerships.

The JTIs and contractual Public-Private Partnerships contributed to increasing industry participation and implementing industry-driven research agendas. They fostered innovation, by bringing together all the stakeholders along the innovation chain, and supporting market uptake.

See Annex 15 and 17

Coordination of non-Community research programmes

The importance of the coordination of the national programmes is obvious when one considers the amount of funding concerned. The Framework Programme accounts for only 6% of the total public R&D expenditure in the EU, while, for example, the annual budget of DFG in Germany is over € 1 000 million and that of CNRS in France is over € 2 000 million. However, prior to the adoption of FP7, publicly financed research and innovation programmes remain largely uncoordinated and are still defined separately in each Member State in many regions.

Before the crisis, EU funding represented more than 20 % of project based funding in Europe, and this has increased since then thanks to higher annual budgets in the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7)
[56](#footnote56)
. But the bulk of research remains funded at national level. This shows the necessity to better coordinate research in Europe. A significant effort has been accomplished to coordinate MS activities by developing common strategic research agendas, aligning national plans, defining and implementing joint calls.

The new “ERA-NET PLUS” contributed more strongly to the restructuring of the European research fabric in a coordinated and organised way and thus to the development of the ERA. As for Article 169, the number of joint programmes increased and other fields of research were included, thus strengthening the impact on the ERA.

ERA-NETs and Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) received positive feedback from national policy makers as regards the value of coordinating national research activities. The KBBE theme noted clear indications of important ‘critical mass’ formed as a result of collaboration.

Success of these schemes can be demonstrated for example in the Health theme: The neurodegenerative disease research (JPND), with a €2 million EU contribution, leveraged €75 million, the AMR JPI leveraged €13.8 million via a €1.9 million EU contribution. Six Era-NETs leveraged €119 million via an EU contribution of €15 million.

Overall, in ERA-NETs and ERA-NET Plus, the five most active participating countries accounted for 40% of the participations (FR, DE, NL, AT, DK).

See Annex 16 and examples in the following Annexes.

International cooperation

Through the Cooperation programme, contributions was made to Europe's many key international commitments, in particular FP7-Environment played a key role in the development and aggregation of climate change models, with a strong contribution to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). While models could be developed at national level, FP7-Environment provided a unique coordination role, allowing models to be run together, ensuring the completeness of the systems. FP7-Environment thus facilitated the international co-development of climate change models, creating a process of mutual learning and efficient knowledge creation. With its funding activities in this field, the Commission contributes to the creation of international standards that avoid fragmentation of research and funding. Similar progress is apparent in areas such as greenhouse gases (GHG) measurement and ocean acidification and carbon sequestration, where the EU is a leader thanks to its coordination and standardisation role – not to mention the impact of research in these fields on policy and Directives.

Contribution to sustainable development

According to the monitoring system FP7-4-SD
[57](#footnote57)
, designed to measure how the FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme contributed to sustainable development (measured by the EU Sustainable Development Strategy - EU SDS), about 75 % of the topics, 69 % of the projects and 76 % of the funding (i.e. € 19.6 billion out of € 25.7 billion) provided by ‘Cooperation’ live up to the programme’s objective of “contributing to sustainable development”.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
|  |  |

Share of projects and of EC contribution to project cost contributing to at least one of the 78 EU SDS operational objectives in the Cooperation Work Programmes 2007-2013

From a longitudinal perspective, and as figure below illustrates, the share of the European Commission contribution to projects with expected impacts on EU SDS objectives over the Work Programmes 2007 and 2013 has significantly increased, shifting from 57,7% to 77,5%. In the meantime, the share of projects with positive impacts on EU SDS objectives has increased from 53% in 2007 to 69% in 2013.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14005.jpg)

Share of projects (%) and share of European Commission contribution to projects (%) contributing to EU SDS objectives in the Work programmes 2007 – 2013

  

Publications

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Theme | No. of processed projects | Percentage without reported publications | Number of publications | Publications by project | Pub. in High-Impact Journals | % |
| Health - HEALTH | 337 | 15% | 9614 | 28,53 | 5536 | 57,58% |
| Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology - KBBE | 125 | 22% | 1551 | 12,41 | 666 | 42,94% |
| Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies - NMP | 289 | 28% | 3628 | 12,55 | 1795 | 49,48% |
| Energy - ENERGY | 88 | 35% | 566 | 6,43 | 242 | 42,76% |
| Environment (including Climate Change) - ENV | 164 | 35% | 2154 | 13,13 | 955 | 44,34% |
| Transport (including Aeronautics) - TPT | 227 | 61% | 447 | 1,97 | 134 | 29,98% |
| Socio-economic sciences and Humanities - SSH | 117 | 36% | 544 | 4,65 | 140 | 25,74% |
| Space - SPA | 73 | 51% | 347 | 4,75 | 152 | 43,80% |
| Security - SEC | 52 | 58% | 191 | 3,67 | 26 | 13,61% |
| General Activities - GA | 10 | 90% | 252 | 25,20 | 57 | 22,62% |
| Joint Technology Initiatives (Annex IV-SP1) - SP1-JTI | 54 | 93% | 10 | 0,19 | 5 | 50,00% |
| TOTAL COOPERATION | 1536 | 36% | 19304 | 12,57 | 9708 | 50,29% |

Source: SESAM RESPIR

Efficiency

The two-stage proposal process introduced under FP7 was perceived by Cooperation Specific Programme participants as having lowered significantly the burden for applicants.

The simplification measures introduced were also found to be efficient in most cases. Those rated most favourably by Cooperation Programme participants included:

- introduction of a unique registration facility;

- major reduction in the number of certificates related to financial statements to be provided with periodic claims;

- major reduction in ex-ante controls and revised protective measures for financially weaker participants;

- extension of lump sum financing for subsistence and accommodation costs;

- application of business costs in a manner integrated to the business accountancy system;

- resolution in payments for participation in research by SME owners and individuals without a salary;

- establishment of the Research Clearing Committee.

An area where simplification was found to be less effective was in facilitating information exchange between projects and themes.

  

10.Thematic areas of the Cooperation Programme

10.1. Health

Please note that IMI is presented in a separate annex.

Objectives

The objective of FP7 Health was to improve the health of European and global citizens and the competitiveness of health-related business and industry.

While FP7 Health strongly corresponded to key EU policies and initiatives, the objectives and coverage of the topics evolved over time to ensure coherence with the ongoing economic, social and health developments. For example, FP7 Health’s strategic framework was reinforced in 2011 to increase innovation and competitiveness of European health-related industries and services by attracting higher SME participation and funding more research activities aimed at delivering new and innovative products, processes and services
[58](#footnote58)
. Another example is FP7 Health contribution towards the replacement of animals in better human safety testing as requested by EU law. SEURAT-1
[59](#footnote59)
, a cluster of six large projects was co-financed with Cosmetics Europe as a € 50 million public-private initiative.

How did FP7 Health contribute to the competitiveness of European health industry?

FP7 Health contributed to the competitiveness of European health industry by fostering innovations and supporting the demonstration and development of new products with high market potential.

On average 33% of the FP7 Health projects generated patents applications by the end of the contract
[60](#footnote60)
. More than half of the projects under Biotechnology, generic tools and technologies for human health reported at least one IPR (a patent application in 97% of the cases). The figure is 29% for projects under Translating research for human health (a patent application in 86% of cases)
[61](#footnote61)
. By extrapolation, it is estimated that at least 650 patents will be filed as a result of collaborative FP7 Health projects
[62](#footnote62)
. Evidence from FP7 Health Survey 2014 indicates that at least 65% of the patents have been licensed at this stage. Of the patents filed by SMEs, 47% have been granted at this stage, and 29% have been licensed already
[63](#footnote63)
.

FP7 Health contributed to the development of innovations: 85% of FP7 Health projects them led to new methodologies, 40% to new instruments, 38% to new prototypes and 33% to new demonstrators
[64](#footnote64)
. 29% of the completed projects reported evidence of commercialisation activities
[65](#footnote65)
. As a significant number of projects was undergoing when this survey was carried out, it is expected that these percentages will increase.

According to a survey of R&D SMEs which participated in a FP7 Health project, 87,5% of respondents indicated that their EU funding project contributed to advance their product(s) development pipeline
[66](#footnote66)
.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14006.jpg)

Development stage of deliverables of FP7 Health projects involving SMEs

Furthermore, FP7 Health supported the key role of SMEs in the health innovation process to an unprecedented level. Under FP7 Health, one billion € was invested on SMEs (including in IMI), 1,200 SMEs received EU funding, accounting for 1,800 participations. About 75% of projects have at least one SME, and SMEs are increasingly scientifically leading in projects. The share of industry participation reached 20.7%, with 18% for SMEs. The fact that out of the portfolio of SMEs supported under FP6 and FP7, 30% have fewer than 10 employees, and about 30% do not yet generate a turnover
[67](#footnote67)
 indicates that the FP7 Health programme has targeted one of the gaps in innovation cycle funding, which are the very high risk and early-stage SMEs. The average EU contribution per SME has doubled from € 300 k to € 600 k throughout FP7 Health. This shows to what extent FP7 Health helps SMEs securing significant funding over reasonably long period of time (3 to 5 years) while ensuring support for ground-breaking research and technologies.

How did FP7 Health contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

FP7 Health contributed to increasing European S&T collaboration. FP7 Health accounts for the quasi totality of the 2 750 cross-country links established under FP7 in health-related projects (i.e., including with a health component in other priorities)
[68](#footnote68)
. There is a significant concentration of links between EU15 countries. In 2011, in FP7, links between EU15 countries accounted for 92.2% of links between all MS. From FP6 to FP7, EU12 countries have increased their proportion of links (by 1.4% in 2011). The overall figures, however, might mask some trends, for example, while the three most highly linked EU12 countries in FP6 (PL, CZ and HU) currently have fewer links in FP7, RO, SI, EE and BG have increased their links by 193%, 101%, 100% and 96%, respectively. Among EU15 countries, as early as 2011 in FP7, EL, FI and NL had already increased their number of links by 40%, 32% and 24%, respectively, compared with FP6.

FP7 Health has been very effective in bringing together public and private sectors to collaborate all along the innovation chain. In particular, the involvement of SMEs has been strong (see above).

Overall, FP7 Health had high structuring effect on the development of a single ERA by creating a closely interconnected network of organisations and thereby facilitating knowledge flow in the ERA and beyond
[69](#footnote69)
.

Another example of public-private collaboration is the SEURAT-1 initiative funded by FP7 Health with matching funds from the Cosmetics Europe industry to develop a strategy to replace animal use in toxicity testing.

A main characteristic of the cooperation initiated and strengthened by FP7 Health research is the durability of the collaborations. New, durable research partnerships are a clear outcome of EU funded health research. 60% of participants declare that their research network(s) formally continued to operate after the end of the project
[70](#footnote70)
.

FP7 Health produces a considerable amount of sustainable collaborations. Its structuring effect is exemplified by the establishment of the European Malaria Graduate School, created under EVIMalaR, an FP7 Network of Excellence, as a follow-up to FP6 Network BioMalPar. BioMalPar has been the basis of a truly European PhD school that has already produced more than 50 European and African PhD candidates in the field of malaria research
[71](#footnote71)
. Europe is now recognised as the world leader in the biology malaria. No euro spent at national level could have had such an impact; only the funding provided at EU level can support this structuring effect.

At the international level, FP7 Health programme succeeded in developing a single network connecting all the major continents and countries of the World. The top 30 most central countries in terms of their overall number of research collaboration ties developed in FP7 Health between 2007 and 2013 included five third countries [essentially] the US, Australia, India, Russia and Canada. European organisations played the key role as the hubs interconnecting other countries and continents into a single research network
[72](#footnote72)
.

During FP7, FP7 Health provided the lion's share of the EC contribution to Third Countries: 29% (accounting for 40% of the Cooperation specific programme). It amounted to € 210 million, that is, 2.5% of the overall EC contribution to FP7 Health projects. A total of 123 countries participated in FP7 Health, 35 more than those involved in the FP6-LifeSciHealth programme.

The impact was therefore quite high: African countries, for instance, received € 65 million (30% of the contribution to Third Countries) following, notably, a specific call for proposals aimed at strengthening local S&T capacities in Africa. In terms of structuring the cooperation between the EU and Third Countries, FP7 Health introduced the concept of programme level cooperation on topics mutually agreed with given Third Countries' funding agencies, thereby enhancing the reach and possible scope of our funded projects by leveraging of 3rd country investments. Another large portion of this EU contribution went to USA (€ 52 million), largely thanks to the special reciprocity agreement between the EC and the National Institute of Health, an agreement that strongly benefits, in absolute terms, to the community of EU health researchers
[73](#footnote73)
.

How did FP7 Health contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional health research policies?

FP7 Health played a major role in coordinating national health research policies, structuring EU research and providing EU standards.

At European level FP7 Health played a pioneer role in launching the first EU Joint Programming Initiative (for neurodegenerative diseases), the first inducement prize (in vaccines) and a pilot scheme for involving SMEs, inspired by the US SBIR experience. At national level, evidence has accumulated that health research is often fragmented and lacking coordination. This leads to unnecessary duplication of efforts. Another example is the ERA-NET project on Cancer Registries EUROCOURSE that has tackled fragmentation and streamlined cancer data collection in Member States by linking national and/or regional cancer registries and enabling exchange of technical expertise and best practices. This has led to the establishment of the European Cancer Observatory, a comprehensive resource combining all the information currently available in Europe on cancer incidence, mortality, survival and prevalence.
[74](#footnote74)
.

Through its ERA-net and JPI schemes, aimed at aligning national research agendas and facilitating cross-fertilization, FP7 has substantially contributed to reinforce coordination and alignment of national research efforts as regards complex chronic and degenerative disorders and AMR
[75](#footnote75)
.

Several support actions were also funded to develop strategic European research agendas. An example is project PerMed
[76](#footnote76)
 where MS research funders in personalised medicine came together with other stakeholders to develop a research agenda for their future co-investments. Other examples are ROAMER (roadmap for mental health research) that is influencing national research agendas (of Italy and Spain, notably), WhyWeAge
[77](#footnote77)
 and FUTURAGE
[78](#footnote78)
, that develop RTD roadmaps, respectively, on the molecular biology of ageing and on all aspects of ageing.

Furthermore, FP7 Health has had a positive leverage effect: its investments in programme-level cooperations have catalysed national funders to join and co-invest towards common objectives. For ageing research, EU funding had a clear positive leverage effect resulting in increased national funding. Regional and national initiatives for ageing-related research started in a number of MS. Examples are the Centre for Membrane proteomics of the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Forum für interdisziplinäre Alternsforschung (FFA), or the European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA), officially opened in 2013 at UMC Groningen
[79](#footnote79)
.

FP7 Health has supported the development of standards. The Eurogentest project
[80](#footnote80)
 has contributed to harmonization and quality standards for genetic testing in Europe and beyond. Through international consortia such as IHEC or IRDiRC etc., FP7 Health contributed to developing standards and quality control for data gathering, and in providing safe access to data.

How did FP7 Health strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

FP7 Health attracted the best research organisations in the field, both as coordinators and project participants
[81](#footnote81)
 and excellent researchers. Two EU Nobel laureates were involved in the EDICT project
[82](#footnote82)
, Hartmut Michel and Sir John Walker
[83](#footnote83)
.

FP7 Health achieved excellent results as regards scientific outputs: the programme has generated so far 18,600 peer reviewed publications, many of them in top-ranking scientific journals with an SJR value of at least 10, including Nature Genetics, Nature, Cell, Science, Neuron, Immunity and others
[84](#footnote84)
. Data shows that on average, one FP7 Health project produces 34 peer-reviewed publications, completed by an estimated 14 publications arising after the end of the project. 57% of these publications are published in high-impact journals
[85](#footnote85)
. By the end of all projects, 35,500 articles will have been published with an average impact factor of 9, an indicator of quality which is well above the European average of 2.

FP7 Health contributed to a significant increase in the stock of useful knowledge. 54% of project participants valued as one of the main reason for their participation The research field significantly expanded beyond the initial state of the art
[86](#footnote86)
. The average number of PubMed-listed publications generated with a member of a participant's group as first author, as estimated by the participants themselves, is about seven publications per project (though approximately 5% of participants published 15 papers or more). By extrapolation, the total number of PubMed-listed publications generated by Health research in FP6 and FP7 up to 2011 can be estimated at more than 70 000
[87](#footnote87)
. This volume of research publications indicates a very significant output of original and innovative knowledge in return for public funding of health research in FP6 and FP7. In addition its average impact factor of 9 is indicative of quality of the knowledge generated.

FP7 Health significantly contributed to the generation of new knowledge in various FP7 call topics, particularly cancer research, systems biology, large-scale data gathering and research on the brain and brain-related diseases. The research in these areas was both highly productive and of high scientific quality. The knowledge generated in other Health topics which did not receive as much funding as the aforementioned scientific areas was also of particularly high scientific quality. These areas are: high-throughput research, diabetes and obesity, innovative therapeutic approaches and interventions, rare diseases
[88](#footnote88)
.

After completion of 39% of the projects, FP7 Health has already delivered remarkable results: 

One billion € has been devoted to enabling technologies for the development of personalised medicines (e.g. omics, diagnostics, biomarkers), paving the way for more accurate preventative and predictive approaches
[89](#footnote89)
. Projects have developed generic tools and knowledge that will impact directly on progress in personalised medicine for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, brain diseases and cancer. Advances include the identification of susceptibility genes to predict diseases, novel targets to overcome drug resistance and biomarkers to stratify patient populations in subgroups. In the MultiMod project, new techniques were developed to help researchers quickly analyse medical databases to identify diagnostic markers and design tailor-made medication for allergy sufferers.

About € 770 million have been invested to create, consolidate or integrate cohort studies, which have the unique potential to relate genetic variants with complex diseases and interactions with environmental/lifestyle factors. Europe is leading the world in this area.

The FP7 Health projects portfolio has advanced the knowledge in important areas of brain diseases, which represent a high societal burden: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson diseases, epilepsy and sleep disorders, brain trauma, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, autism, depression and bipolar disorders. The comparative effectiveness of existing healthcare interventions has also been addressed: InTBIR, the FP7 Health-initiated International initiative on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is instrumental in identifying the best available treatment for the best outcome, by coordinating and harmonising clinical research activities across the full spectrum of TBI.

FP7 Health has promoted the development of novel therapies, of regenerative medicine, of devices, tools and technologies and supported their transfer to real-world medical use.

Examples of FP7 Health key results

ESN, the European Stroke Network
[90](#footnote90)
 brings together 30 pre-clinical and clinical leading centres, as well as industrial partners and patient organisations, to speed up the discovery and implementation of new treatments for stroke and to tackle the translational roadblocks. The main objective of this multidisciplinary consortium is to further elucidate the role of inflammation in stroke and to clarify why such clinical studies addressing inflammation have failed in the past. First results challenged some dogma of stroke pathophysiology and led to a new approach for targeted, non-invasive gene therapy to the brain. Further ESN research also demonstrated that stroke outcome can be improved by enriching the treatment environment what leads to a remarkable formation of new brain connections.

The Plasticise project
[91](#footnote91)
 identified treatments that can restore plasticity in adults back to the level seen in children. The discovery that plasticity can be restored following illness or injury, and that the ability to remember can be restored to Alzheimer's patients, makes a powerful promise that enhancing plasticity will be one of the key approaches for effective treatment of these conditions in the future.

The Persist project successful developed new viral and non viral vectors for gene therapy that will be of use to treat rare disease and cancers.

How did FP7 Health promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

FP7 Health has supported science education, scientific literacy and training in health research as precursors of growth and jobs. PhD and post-doctoral fellowships were all generated through participation of a team in collaborative research projects of the Health Programme. Around two thirds of participants claim that they had created new positions. Extrapolation indicates that about 3 630 PhD
[92](#footnote92)
 and 3 130 post-docs positions were or are being created specifically under these FP7 Health projects
[93](#footnote93)
, ensuring the education and advanced training of tomorrow's high potential innovators. 

As to FP7-health's attractivity, the review of the successful projects led to the identification of over 300 leading researchers participating in the research teams who were laureates of prestigious national and international scientific prizes (e.g. Lasker Award, Leibniz Prize, Spinoza Award, Louis-Jeantet Prize). At least four laureates of the Nobel Prize participated in the programme: professors Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard, Stefan Hell, John Walker and Harmut Michel. The laureate of 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, prof. Stefan Hell, was awarded the prize for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. In FP7 Health prof. Hell and his colleagues developed ultra-high resolution and ultra-sensitive methods for objective diagnosis of early disease and disease progression in breast and prostate cancer
[94](#footnote94)
.

How did FP7 Health provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

The results or deliverable of several projects are produced specifically to inform policy-makers making informed decisions, especially for public health issues. The projects portfolio related to the health workforce; projects in the field of occupational health, projects related to patient safety directly fed into EU legislation
[95](#footnote95)
.

"Around half of finalized research projects reported on engagement with civil society actors or policy makers. Around 25% of these were identified as having had an impact on EU policy
[96](#footnote96)
. An example is the projects under SEURAT-1 initiative funded by FP7 Health with matching funds from the Cosmetics Europe industry to develop a strategy to replace animal use in toxicity testing. The scientific evidence of these projects will be feeding into a new legislation limiting the use of animals in toxicity testing.

FP7 Health has fostered new approaches to predictive human safety assessment, including reduction of animals use in research (3R strategy). Through the support provided to research on dementia, the Health Theme has generated a critical mass of data and resources that will support future policy making
[97](#footnote97)
.

Supported by FP7 Health, hESCreg, Europe’s unique human embryonic stem cell registry was set up to inform all stakeholders about technical details and availability of existing stem cell lines to avoid duplication of efforts and unnecessary derivation of new lines.

How much did FP7 Health contribute to job creation?

As of October 2014 (a stage when only 40% of the project were completed), FP7 Health projects had already generated or were generating around 274 new SMEs and an estimated 9 770 jobs. An average of 11% of the participants were involved in the creation of one SME or more in relation to their work in the project, 90% of which continued to operate after the end of the project, and 13% of the participants declared that they envisaged creating one or more SMEs in relation to their work in the project
[98](#footnote98)
.

Already 10% of these are considered to be long-term jobs, regardless of additional comparable positions that will emerge at later stage in the projects or of jobs linked to the creation of spin-offs.
[99](#footnote99)

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14007.jpg)

Employment growth of SMEs participating EU projects

To what extent the results of FP7 Health contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

FP7 Health has addressed the main societal and economic challenges identified in the 2007-2013 period: the ageing of the population and the responses to the economic crisis.

Over the years covered by FP7, with an ageing population, the impact of major chronic and degenerative diseases became gradually stronger. Cardiovascular disease currently accounts for 2 million deaths per annum in the EU and costs around € 192 billion yearly; by 2050, one in three Europeans will be over 60 and over 115 million worldwide will suffer from Alzheimer's disease or another dementia. Objectives of FP7 Health such as the delivery of better and earlier diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic approaches for major chronic and degenerative diseases and the improvement of the quality of life of European citizens, especially the elderly population, have been achieved by supporting many projects in this area. Translational research was central in this achievement. Also, by launching the first Joint Programming Initiative (JPI), targeted on Neurodegenerative diseases (including Alzheimer's) the EU initiated a crucial process of alignment of its Member states (MS)' RTD priorities.

FP7 Health also contributed to the economic recovery process. € 875 million have been injected into almost 1 100 research-intensive SMEs, 75 % of which have less than 25 employees or a turnover smaller than € 1 million. This contribution has been instrumental in attracting private fund: the project NABATIVI helped the small biotech company Polyphor to develop a promising new antibiotic compound, which was recently licensed to Roche in a deal worth hundreds of millions of €. By the end of the FP7 projects, 650 patents will have been submitted, and around 100 start-ups created. In addition some 100 000 researchers from Europe and beyond will have worked on the 1 050 projects financed under FP7 Health.

FP7 Health contributed to increase the knowledge base, to create products, SMEs and jobs and increase the competitiveness of EU health industries and services, supporting the objectives of the Lisbon Strategy.

While a majority of participants in the FP7 Health come from academia, industry also participates actively: specific incentives in annual work programmes, including SME-targeted topics, succeeded in increasing SME participation. This effective public-private partnership in FP7 Health has contributed to fostering innovations, developing new instruments, methodologies, prototypes and demonstrators which address European societal challenges. More processes and products will be generated from the FP7 projects in the coming years.

As of October 2014 (a stage when only 40% of the project were completed), FP7 Health projects had already generated or were generating around 274 new SMEs
[100](#footnote100)
. These spin-offs and the jobs created in this context illustrate the contribution of FP7 Health to the competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy targeted by the Lisbon Strategy.

At the same time, all products developed and the increased knowledge-base contributed to improving health care for the benefit of all. Concrete success stories include the generation of an important tool for diabetes research: the first ever human pancreatic beta cell line. It can be exploited to cross-validate animal models, which are used as a key step in drug discovery research, thus saving time and money. Involving patients in the research projects has made it possible to validate patient-reported outcomes in the difficult to treat chronic lung disease chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Generating the largest ever collection of pooled data from clinical trials in schizophrenia has made it possible to arrive at new algorithms for running such trials, again saving time, money and reducing the need to expose patients to medicines of unknown safety and efficacy.

Strongly based on the portfolio of projects funded under FP7, a policy initiative on personalized medicine is being developed under the mandate of the Juncker Commission.

To what extent was FP7 Health coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The ex-post FP7-health study concluded, in its preliminary report, that the specific activities and research topics funded under FP7 Health were consistent with the key policy initiatives and strategic frameworks related to the programme, including the objectives of the EU Health Strategy and the Second Programme of Community Action in the Field of Health (2008-2013). The programme, as well as the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, were significant contributors to key policy initiatives at the EU level, particularly the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, the Europe 2020 strategy and the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative. In line with the actions foreseen in Innovation Union, FP7 Health was instrumental in developing the flagship European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. The funded research activities of FP7 Health were found to be fully corresponding to the framework set in the legislative basis for FP7
[101](#footnote101)
.

The Health theme also shared several cross-thematic approaches and objectives with other priorities of the Cooperation Specific Programme, e.g., it implemented two special calls, FP7-AFRICA and FP7-INFLUENZA, through cross thematic collaboration with KBBE and ENV themes.

The special call for Influenza was implemented in 2010 through collaboration with the KBBE theme to address the sudden outbreak of avian influenza.

It should be noted that FP7 Health did not develop the articulation with Regional policy that could provide substantial opportunities. However, in the area of Public Health, around 30 project reported to have effect on regional policy
[102](#footnote102)
.

What was the added value of FP7 Health when compared with national health research and innovation programmes?

The main added value of collaborative Health research at EU level derives from transnational cooperation, the integration of relevant activities and participants, and the concentration of European effort on fewer, but more important priorities. Practically, EU health research:

- Removes barriers to research co-operation between countries, provides structures and incentives to establish multinational consortia and coordinates MS and associated country national funding programmes.

- Provides structures and incentives for cooperation between different types of organisations and disciplines: universities, research centres, hospitals, small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), large companies, foundations, patients' organisations etc, and researchers, engineers, clinicians and industrialists, etc.

- Focuses efforts on issues with a scale which can only be tackled at a European (or global) level, or for which there is significant added value in acting in this manner.

- Generates added value from transnational cooperation, integration of teams and activities, and concentration of efforts on a few important priorities

- Tackling pan-European and global challenges via new types of collaboration

Health issues are global ones. In recent years, the EU has engaged in different types of partnerships that allow tackling complex issues with a bigger impact. This approach has been pioneered by the FP7 Health theme with the private sector and the MS.

To address the global health and major societal challenges, the EU, via the RTD\_Health services has initiated a number of such initiatives that involve partnerships with funding agencies, MS and other stakeholders. Eight programme level initiatives have been initiated within FP7 that involve partners from USA, Canada, BRIC countries, Japan among others. These programmes are valued as platforms for research complementarity, protocol harmonization, data and findings integration into common databases and faster result generation with a lower use of resources. Some of the collaborations have already produced significant results
[103](#footnote103)
.

An example is the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R) where funders come together to create a fast and efficient global research response to a new emerging infectious disease. The EU has established five such international consortia
[104](#footnote104)
. Its experience in coordinating MS activities proved a real asset to address global issues, as demonstrated in the G7 dementia initiative led by PM Cameron, aimed at identifying a therapy for Alzheimer's disease by 2025: the 2013 G7 Summit called to build on the existing work and capability of the EU, in particular the JPND, to identify priorities and develop a co-ordinated international action plan for dementia research.

- Pooling of resources, achieving critical mass and economies of scale and scope

Some health research activities are of such a scale and complexity that no single MS can provide the necessary resources. They need to be carried out at EU level achieve the required critical mass. In Health research, pooling patient cohorts and constituting biobanks are a significant challenge at MS level. Recruiting sufficient numbers of patients is made easier by trans-European research co-operation. This is notably the case for rare diseases research, where patient cohorts need to be pooled from several MS to constitute statistically relevant sample groups.

Bio-banking is also an excellent illustration of the merits of EU-induced critical mass. A number of EU-supported projects (GenomeEUtwin, ENGAGE, GEN2PHEN, MOLPAGE, Phoebe) have brought together large amounts of data on patients, permitting the identification of susceptibility genes and biomarkers for common diseases. Conducted at national level, the studies would not have the same analytical power. Furthermore, these projects bring together European excellence in the field and develop a pan-European infrastructure for medical research, the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure
[105](#footnote105)
, through the ESFRI initiative. Projects such as EUROGLYCANET and the European Network of Rare Bleeding Disorders developed extensive databases and bio-banks for patients affected by groups of rare diseases, with diagnosis and management capabilities, and an invaluable resource for patients and clinicians alike, with partners in 20+ countries.

In addition to other merits previously exposed, EDCTP, the two JPIs as well as the ERA-nets funded all provide significant, obvious, added-value in terms of pooling if resources.

- Reducing research risk and commercial risk. Added value is also conferred by the reduction of research or commercial risk.

Without FP7 Health support, several clinical trials would never have been set up: EU-funded research in those areas requiring multinational input, such as clinical trials on medicines and devices for major chronic diseases, which have seen a decrease of industry input due to their complexity, definitely supported innovation and contributed lowering risk of later product development failure. It also helped reducing the risk for patients by providing crucial information on the potential adverse effects of otherwise useful medicines and medical devices.

This is also valid for academic clinical trials, aiming at the comparative assessment of efficiency and cost-efficiency of given therapies. They can lead to discard expensive treatments, thereby strongly benefiting to national health systems. Industry may not be inclined to invest significant resources in such potentially unrewarding trials, hence the relevance of EU intervention.

- FP7 Health for Synergy: complementing and leveraging

Leverage on private investment. Through EU research schemes, private companies can collaborate with foreign partners at a scale not possible at national level, in projects tested for excellence, which induces them to invest more than they would under national funding schemes. One example of this is IMI. An evaluation performed by a panel of independent experts found that "Europe has succeeded in establishing a new business model between public and private sectors, which unites research strengths across European pharmaceutical industry, academia and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) […] very important in developing open innovation in the health sector as it has enabled an unprecedented pooling of industrial research assets allowing scientific challenges to be tackled in a manner that could not be done otherwise […] In many respects IMI is an incubator for changing minds on how parties can work together across traditional boundaries and is therefore likely to have an important structuring effect in Europe, fully in line with the Innovation Union objectives".

Improving of S&T capabilities. All of these projects evidently contribute to the improvement of S&T capabilities of the participants: by participating in top trans-national teams, researchers can form world centres of excellence. This is clearly acknowledged and extremely valued by the survey of FP7 Health participants
[106](#footnote106)
.

- Synergies are established with relevant other EU policies and programmes.

"FP7 Health was highly consistent with the overall EU policy context and responsive to the changing needs of its key stakeholders. The specific activities and research topics funded under FP7 Health were consistent with the key policy initiatives and strategic frameworks related to the programme, including the objectives of the EU Health Strategy and the Second Programme of Community Action in the Field of Health (2008-2013). The programme, as well as the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, were significant contributors to key policy initiatives at the EU level, particularly the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, the Europe 2020 strategy and the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative. In line with the actions foreseen in Innovation Union, FP7 Health was instrumental in developing the flagship European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. Overall, the funded research activities of FP7 Health were found to be fully corresponding to the framework set in the legislative basis for FP7
[107](#footnote107)
".

FP7 Health also provided research support for performing clinical trials in children with medicines that are not approved in this age group but for which a strong rationale exists that they may be useful. This support is complementary to the EU paediatrics regulation which provides incentives and obligations for entities submitting requests for marketing authorisation to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Coordination was also notably ensured with the latter for initiatives relevant to Alzheimer's disease. The Communication from the Commission on a European initiative on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias
[108](#footnote108)
 called for better coordination of research on dementias and promote cooperation in public research efforts, targeting key priorities related to neurodegenerative diseases. The Commission supported the concept of a JPI on combating neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer's, for pooling and coordinating the efforts of European basic and clinical researchers in this field. This support materialised during FP7 via a € 2 million grant to help MS develop their initiative
[109](#footnote109)
.

Synergies were also noted with the EC action plan against the threats of AMR where, in a coherent fashion and via a one-health approach, research and policy actions are proposed and implemented.

During the implementation of FP7 the feedback from stakeholders implementing legislation proved essential in order to help shaping new or revised European legislation concerning notably clinical trials, personal data protection or medical devices. Likewise, such feedback was also useful to contribute to the debate on the data transparency policy of the European Medicines Agency or on the funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells.

- Leverage effect of FP7 on additional funds

EU funding from the Health programme leverages other sources of support to research in the health field. Around 56% of participants, regardless of their affiliation, indicate that EU funding helped access other funding to expand or continue their research with up to 64% of their current research funding being derived from this leverage effect 
[110](#footnote110)
. As a further indicator of the importance of EU funding, 75% of participants acknowledge that EU funding represents up to 50% of their total research budget.

The extra funding reported to have been obtained included national or regional sources (72% of respondents), other FP programmes (30%), private foundations and charities (24%), industry (19%) and international programmes and agencies (15%). By contrast, only 3% of all respondents who indicated leveraging by FP funding, reported business angel or venture capital sources. Unlike academic researchers, however, 14% of the SMEs with leveraged funds obtained these from business angels or venture capitalists. The RSFF was not reported to be useful to these SMEs, however.

Health in H2020: continuity or evolution?

While retaining the successful features of FP7-health : collaborative research, IMI, EDCTP, the new Health, demographic change and wellbeing societal challenge under Horizon 2020 will better integrate EU RTD&I funding in health-related areas, as recommended by the 2011 report of an independent group of expert, with the integration of ICT for health and Health and Environment aspects. It will have an increased focus in innovation and the trend toward broad, bottom-up, of less prescriptive, topics will be continued to better help creative ideas emerge. It will fund research and innovation activities with the following fields:

Understanding health, wellbeing and disease;

Preventing disease;

Treating and managing disease;

Active ageing and self-management of health;

Methods and data;

Health care provision and integrated care.

It will also continue to contribute to the development of the European Research Area through progress in joint programming of national research and innovation activities and through the fostering of international research consortia

10.2. Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology

Objectives

Securing food production for the increasing human population through sustainable and efficient production systems, protecting the environment and biodiversity are the main challenges addressed in the FAFB programme.

The specific objectives are:

- The growing demand for safer, healthier, higher quality food;

- The growing demand for sustainable use and production of renewable bioresources;

- The increasing risk of epizootic and zoonotic diseases and food related disorders;

- Threats to the sustainability and security of agricultural, aquaculture and fisheries production; and

- The increasing demand for high quality food, taking into account animal welfare and rural and coastal context and response to specific dietary needs of consumers.

The programme’s origins were to be found mostly in 2005 and 2006, predating Europe 2020 and flagship initiatives. It was also developed prior to two crises that now dominate thinking: the global food crisis of 2007-2008 and the financial crisis. The Work Programmes priorities evolved over FP7, taking into account the focus on addressing societal challenges and contributing to economic recovery.

  

How did FP7 KBBE contribute to the competitiveness of European KBBE industry?

The FP7 KBBE projects have delivered innovations, contributing to the development of new products, processes and prototypes thus helping Europe address global societal challenges.

Proof of concept and prototyping was the most typical way of exploiting results. A highlight was PLAPROVA: Evaluation of potential plant-based vaccines against a number of diseases of great and increasing importance to both the EU and Russia. This project has been flagged as success story by the Commission and the coordinator has been awarded the prize as Innovator of the Year and Most Promising Innovator winner by BBSRC (UK).

Example of a commercial development and new start-up: one of the academic partners in LIFECYCLE launched a spin-off company in February 2013, specialised in aquaculture genetics services. This commercial development represents the commercialisation of over 30 years of basic research on the physiology and genetics of fish muscle growth and flesh quality and was made possible by continuous support from the UK Research Councils and the European Commission, the later through SEAFOODplus (FP6) and LIFECYCLE (FP7). The core business of Xelect is the developing of genetic markers for brood stock selection. Xelect has licensed genetic markers for superior meat yield in Atlantic salmon to SalmoBreed A/s and Landcatch Natural selection and several other license opportunities for this and other traits are currently under negotiation.

20% of the 107 projects report to have taken at least one patent, the total number of intellectual property “protections” is 64 with 52 being reported as patent applications. 47 of the 52 patent applications came from the Biotechnology area of the programme, which is to be expected. This can also be reported as 6.2 patent applications per Euros 10 Million invested although this is a crude measure when there are other forms of exploitation which are effective such as copyright, design rights, trade secrets etc. Exploitation and commercialisation are different things. The non -technological forms of innovation may lead to significant benefits in company or social enterprise performance without any patent being filed. Not all projects are intended to produce new products services or patentable items. Indeed, many fisheries, agriculture and food projects do not produce outputs amenable to traditional technology transfer via the protection of proprietary intellectual property, e.g. patenting.

  

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14008.jpg)

Foreground data for completed FP7 projects

The majority of patent applications were submitted to the European Patent Office (EPO). Although the FP7 programme is open to private industry there seems to be no patent applications or intellectual property protection was initiated by the participating industry. As all the projects are not completed yet, these are note deinfitive conclusions, and it is expected that these figures will increase.

An example being one Biotechnology project, MAMBA, where filed patents have already been successfully licensed to industry. The MAMBA project was aimed at the mining of enzymes and metabolic pathways from extremophilic marine organisms and metagenomes from microbial communities from peculiar marine environments and consequent funnelling the new enzymatic reactions and processes towards new biotechnological applications. The MAMBA consortium has more than doubled the number of structures of cold-adapted proteins available in public databases and provided so far the largest set of protein structures from a single cold-adapted organism. 27 peer-reviewed papers have been published in high-impact journals. One patent application has been filed and licensed, with a few more applications pending. The screening platform developed has been useful for functional elucidation of unknown proteins (and potential drug targets) in the important human pathogen H. pylori. Interest has been expressed by a number of companies seeking to use the resources generated.

The standard EU collaboration agreement provides a clear framework for managing IPR and there are good examples of this being used well (e.g. TriticeaeGenome). This supports a wide range of approaches including revenue sharing and licensing; license of the technology where partners do not have the production capacity to meet market demand, or joint ownership with access rights granted on a royal-free basis.

Organisations participating in the EU FP7 tend to have more patent applications than organisations which do not take part in the EU FP. The indicator 'average number of patent applications per researcher', which was used in the counter-factual analysis provides a comparison between the innovation performance of organisations which are part of the EU FP and those who are not. On average, researchers in organisations participating in the EU FP7 tend to apply for patents twice as much as researchers in organisations which do not take part in the EU FP.

For instance, the EU-PEARLS project resulted in the production and testing of medicinal gloves and car tyres made of Russian dandelion and guayule, which can constitute an alternative source of natural rubber. The agricultural productivity of Russian dandelion and guayule was investigated in order to allow for the setting up of the production chain for natural latex and rubber in Europe.

The ANIMPOL project used waste streams from slaughterhouses (i.e. resides from animal-processing industries) to produce improved biodiesel (fatty acid methyl esters - FAME). The development of novel biodegradable high-value polymeric materials which are environmentally-friendly was also undertaken, thus achieving cost-efficient and sound alternative products for the polymer industry.

The SPLASH project supported the development of algae biorefineries (i.e. third generation biorefineries) for the production of cups, bottles, cutlery, plates, bags, bedding, furnishings, carpets, film, textiles and packaging materials which are biobased (vs. petroleum-based). The project identified alternative feedstocks for polymers which are renewable and less harmful to the climate and the environment.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14009.jpg)

Average number of patent applications per R&D personnel EU FP participating and non EU FP participating research performing organisations (organisations active in the agricultural sciences field, 2013)

  

How did FP7 KBBE contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The impact of projects on the development and consolidation of the ERA is found to be very high: 84% of coordinators consider that participation in FP projects has consolidated their permanent network of partners, and half of them stated that their participation has contributed to launching new European projects.

Good examples of long standing cooperation reported include:

- Animal health projects which build on the previous project results and consortia (e.g. STAR-IDAZ-EMIDA-ANIHWA; DISCONTOOLS-ICONZ). Thus we could find a growing amount of shared knowledge and a growing number of researchers working together regularly, providing real added value for the EU.

- Linked to the concentration of biological research (e.g. Strategic support to crop improvement, IPM, PRA) in the EU15, we see long-standing collaborations between particular major public sector research establishments and Universities in The Netherlands, France, The UK, France and Germany in various constellations across the programme.

In contrast to FP6, FP7 includes some very notable ERA-NET success stories in ‘agriculture’. These include the animal health and welfare ERA-NET (EMIDA and ANIHWA) and the food security, agriculture, climate change ERA-NET plus (linked to the FACCE JPI).

ANIHWA and EMIDA are particularly noteworthy in investing significantly in animal health and welfare research almost fully compensating for the drop in EU funding (with about €54 million). The FACCE JPI project is also an excellent example of clear collaboration between funders delivering synergies in national funding across Europe. It shows a strong interaction with the ERA-NET Plus on Climate Smart Agriculture. In food, the SUSFOOD ERA-NET resulted in a joint European Strategic Research Strategy and a research funding “organisation” in the area of sustainable food production. This organisation is already in operation with nineteen new projects started with national funding agencies jointly financing the European funding. 

Participation to the EU FP7 is also linked to increased linkages and stronger cooperation between the public and private sector. The counter-factual analysis shows that organisations which take part in the EU FP tend on average to collaborate more with the private sector. By and large, research performing organisations have collaborative agreements with the private sector, however more organisations participating in the EU FP (+15%) tend to have this type of agreements as shown in figure below.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14010.jpg)

EU FP participating and non EU FP participating research performing organisations having collaborative agreements with the private sector (organisations active in the agricultural sciences field, in percentage of organisations, 2013)

As regards international cooperation, the top participating countries were China, Russia, the USA, South Africa, India, and Brazil. BRIC countries accounted for 160 participations, 10 of which were SMEs. Regarding the thematic distribution of the 128 projects which reported having a link with one or several of these regions, it should be noted that the distribution is relatively even: 30% of projects in agriculture, another 30% in biotechnologies, 24% in fisheries and aquaculture and 15% in food.

How did FP7 KBBE contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

The Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) played an essential part in improving the coordination of European and national research policies in the agriculture and bioeconomy sector. Through its support to the ERA-Nets, SCAR fostered the development of common research agendas amongst Member States. The ERA-Nets schemes within the KBBE programme mobilised on average the largest number of countries (12.8 countries per call against an average number of 10 for the whole FP7) , had the fourth highest leverage effect (factor 8.6 in FP7) and mobilised a total public funding amount of EUR 348 million. Through its support to the ERA-Nets schemes and the Joint Programming initiatives (e.g. 'Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change' – FACCE - and 'A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life' - HDHL), SCAR helped structuring European and national research policies.

  

How did FP7 KBBE strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

Overall, FP projects have had a substantial impact on improving the knowledge base in Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnologies, through high scientific productivity combined with novel technological output. For instance, biotechnology publications in 2010 ‘Nature’ journals cited US and Canadian authors in 486 cases and European authors in 641 cases.

Amongst all the projects which have been finalised (107), 80% of them report at least one publication, whilst 20% report no publication yet. The total of the publication at the reporting date of 3rd of March 2014 was 1414, of which 43% are in a high level journal.

The KBBE FP7 programme generated until now 54 publications per Euros 10 million invested, of which almost half are in high impact journals. Around 3% of publications were published in the top 20 journals (based on the Journal Rank Indicator). Table below shows a significant number of publications in high impact journals in environmental microbiology, science and medicine (PLoS One), plant sciences and commodity based research as in the Journal of Dairy Science.

  

Top 20 Peer Reviewed Journals by Number of Publications from FP7 KBBE Projects

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| KBBE | | | | |
|  |  | SJR [111](#footnote111) | No. of | % of all |
|  |  |  | Publications | publications |
| 1 | Environmental Microbiology | 2.7 | 24 | 1,70% |
| 2 | PLoS One | 1.8 | 23 | 1,63% |
| 3 | Applied and Environmental Microbiology | 1.6 | 20 | 1,41% |
| 4 | Journal of Dairy Science | 1.2 | 20 | 1,41% |
| 5 | Plant Physiology | 3.1 | 18 | 1,27% |
| 6 | Plant Journal | 3.5 | 16 | 1,13% |
| 7 | New Phytologist | 2.5 | 15 | 1,06% |
| 8 | Plant Cell | 4.8 | 15 | 1,06% |
| 9 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States | 5.4 | 14 | 0,99% |
| 10 | Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology | 1.2 | 13 | 0,92% |
| 11 | Mutagenesis | 0.9 | 13 | 0,92% |
| 12 | Food Chemistry | 1.7 | 12 | 0,85% |
| 13 | Plant Biotechnology Journal | 1.8 | 12 | 0,85% |
| 14 | Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases | 0.9 | 12 | 0,85% |
| 15 | Acta Horticulturae | 0.2 | 11 | 0,78% |
| 16 | Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining | 1.8 | 11 | 0,78% |
| 17 | Journal of Virological Methods | 0.8 | 11 | 0,78% |
| 18 | Animal | 0.9 | 10 | 0,71% |
| 19 | Bioresource Technology | 2 | 10 | 0,71% |
| 20 | Journal of Biological Chemistry | 2.8 | 10 | 0,71% |
|  | | | | |
|  | Total |  | 290 | 20,51% |

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | | | | |
| Publications in high impact factor journals are mostly in the areas of molecular biology and genetics.  Scientific Articles resulting from KBBE Projects in Peer Reviewed Journals by top 10 Journal Rank indicator (SJR) | | | | |
| No. | Journal title | Journal Subject Area | SJR\* | Number of publications |
|  |  |  |  | (papers) |
| 1 | Nature Genetics | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 19.9 | 2 |
| 2 | Cell | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 1.,8 | 1 |
| 3 | Annual Review of Plant Biology | Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 14.7 | 1 |
| 4 | Nature | Multidisciplinary | 14.5 | 6 |
| 5 | Science | Multidisciplinary | 11.2 | 1 |
| 6 | Genome Research | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 10.8 | 1 |
| 7 | Developmental Cell | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 9.2 | 1 |
| 8 | Nature Biotechnology | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 9.2 | 1 |
| 9 | Trends in Ecology and Evolution | Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 8.7 | 1 |
| 10 | Annual Review of Microbiology | Immunology and Microbiology | 8.1 | 1 |
| 11 | Ecology Letters | Environmental Science | 7.9 | 4 |
| 12 | Cell Metabolism | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 7.7 | 1 |
| 13 | Nature Reviews Microbiology | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 7.2 | 2 |
| 14 | Trends in Biochemical Sciences | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 7 | 1 |
| 15 | EMBO Journal | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 6.6 | 2 |
| 16 | Trends in Genetics | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 6.3 | 2 |
| 17 | Molecular Systems Biology | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 5.9 | 3 |
| 18 | Nature Protocols | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 5.8 | 2 |
| 19 | Advanced Materials | Materials Science | 5.7 | 1 |
| 20 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States | Multidisciplinary | 5.4 | 14 |
|  | | | |  |
|  | Total |  |  | 48 |
|  | | | | |

How did FP7 KBBE promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

An important number of KBBE projects included a clear training and career development component. For instance, the KBBE/OCEAN calls specifically offered academic and training courses for research participants. The coordinators of the 31 'The Ocean of Tomorrow' projects involved Ph.D. students who gained on-the-job experience, whilst exchange programmes between partners were also implemented. Projects such as VECTORS and COCONETs organised training activities, notably for PhD researchers (DEVOTES project).

In the area of food, the project KBBE-227220 TRACK\_FAST aimed at the identification of training and career requirements for future European food scientists and technologists (e.g. skills required for the food job market, continuous professional training, etc.) destined to work for the food industry sector. Moreover, the project also supported the implementation of a European strategy to recruit the next generation of food scientists and technologist leaders.

Training activities and joint programmes with researchers in third countries were also implemented as part of the KBBE programme.

How did FP7 KBBE provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

The projects funded under the Agriculture, Food, Fisheries, Biotechnology programme led to several types of policy impacts, as follows:

Development of scientific evidence to support policy and legislative actions: this was notably the case in agriculture, food and animal health and welfare related projects. By way of example, more than one third of the development and demonstration research in agriculture contributed to standardisation and legislation; Several biotechnology projects provided scientific data for supporting the development of guidelines and standards. For instance, projects such as KBBPPS and OPEN-BIO supported the creation of new markets for bioproducts through standardisation and labelling (KBBPPS, OPEN-BIO), Regulatory activities in the field of biotechnology, such as GMO risk assessment research, were also supported through the AMIGA, GRACE and G-Twyst projects. FP7-funded projects on organic farming provided research-based recommendations to the EC and national competent, such as the contribution to the Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 of 28 June 2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products and repealing Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91.

Formulation of research and/or policy agendas: this is notably the case of fisheries projects (JAKEFISH and ECOFISHMAN projects). For instance, the JAKEFISH and ECOFISHMAN projects supported the Common Fisheries Policy, by involving stakeholders in jointly formulating the research and policy questions and identifying approaches to address the latter. A contribution to the reform of the CFP and to the development of the Ecosystem Based Fishery Management (EBFM) came also from the MEFEPO project, whose main aim was to improve fisheries management with regards to sustainability of resources.

Fundamental research oriented projects supported practices and regulations within the pillar 'Better framework for aquaculture' of the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy with a focus on species selection (DIVERSIFY project), domestication (FISHBOOST project) and seed validation (REPROSEED project), disease prevention and safety regulations (AquaInnova and PROMICROBE project), management of natural resources by moving away from capture-based aquaculture (PRO-EEL, SELFDOTT, TRANSDOTT projects) and traceability of wild vs farmed individuals (SELFDOTT, AQUATRACE projects).

Development of tools and mechanisms for communicating to the public on health and well-being issues: this was the case in food related projects. Horizontal projects seeking the involvement of African and European organisations (CSOs), for example, contributed to the formulation and implementation of policies on agricultural research for development (ARD) in relation to the bioeconomy. The projects have provided an opportunity to enhance their capacity to influence the ARD by focusing on the coordination and communication with Europe.

There are other policy related outcomes. For example, the KBBE Conference witnessed Member States (such as Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands) adapting their transition plans with respect to the KBBE was a major success.

In terms of up-take of policy results, policy makers were involved in relevant projects as members of advisory groups. In some cases, researchers served as expert policy advisors and in others there was direct interaction with the policy-making process. Additionally, workshops with key policy-makers were organised and tools were provided over the internet, or as working documents for EU policy-development panels and ministerial conferences (such as the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCoFCAH), the Standing Committee on Organic Farming as well as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Co-operative Programme (ICP) on forests).

How did FP7 KBBE increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

In the marine sector, access to marine infrastructure was funded under the Research Infrastructure programme (Capacity). The project AQUAEXCEL (Aquaculture Infrastructure for Excellence in European Fish Research) was particularly successful in integrating 27 top class aquaculture infrastructures and 17 key partners.

In the food sector, the EURO-DISH and FoodManufuture projects have resulted into a common infrastructure project in Horizon 2020, RICHFIELDS , whose objective is to design a world class research infrastructure on food and health consumer behaviour and lifestyle. For instance, the FoodManufuture project identified solutions to tackle the needs of the European research infrastructure of the food processing and manufacturing industries. It introduced the Food Factory of the Future (FFoF) concept, a novel research infrastructure which meets the current and future needs of the European food and manufacturing industries and accelerates their innovation potential. A Food Tech Innovation Portal was set up as part of the HighTech Europe project. The portal serves industry's needs and offers tools and information (e.g. 1,500 linked datasheets) to support the development of a innovative food industry.

A tangible example of an ERA impact is the project HIGHTECH EUROPE where a number of food research laboratories provided access to each other’s unique food processing equipment, thereby facilitating the dissemination of novel technologies and providing the opportunity for more research and innovation to be done with these pieces of equipment.

How much did FP KBBE contribute to job creation?

82% of projects created temporary jobs during the project's implementation and 35% created new posts after the end of the project.

Moreover, the counter-factual analysis shows that organisations which participated in the EU FP7 tend on average to employ more researchers whose primary activity is in the private sector. As shown in figure below, on average, organisations taking part in the EU FP tend to hire more researchers whose primary occupation is in the private sector (+82%) than organisations not participating in the EU FP.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14011.jpg)

Share of researchers whose primary occupation is in the private sector, in EU FP participating and non EU FP participating research performing organisations (organisations active in the agricultural sciences field, 2013)

Source: DG RTD calculations, 2014 ERA Survey

  

To what extent the results of FP7 KBBE contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

Sustainability is a central aspect of the programme. The overall aim of the programme has been to provide new, safer, affordable, eco-efficient and competitive products from European agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture, feed, food, health, forest based and related industries. FP7 reintroduced agricultural production research and includes projects that address clear tangible farming and agricultural system targets. 49% of FP funded project coordinators stated that their project had positive environmental impacts. The bio-based economy, addressing the key societal global challenges of limited resources, food security, health and climate change contributes to Europe 2020 on a broad front.

To what extent was FP7 KBBE coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The general objectives of the KBBE programme were fully aligned with the objectives of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), the Common Fisheries Policy as well as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the EU Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP): improve agricultural productivity and sustainability and achieve sustainable production and management of biological resources from aquatic environments.

The specific activities of the KBBE programme in relation to agriculture, fisheries and marine supported risk-oriented research within a wider economic, social and environmental agenda. These activities reflect the CAP's activities (focusing on food security, climate change, sustainable management of natural resources and rural development) and Common Fisheries Policy' activities (focusing on ensuring a sustainable fishing industry and fair standard of living for fishing communities). FP7-funded projects on organic farming provided research-based recommendations to the EC and national competent, such as the contribution to the Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 of 28 June 2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products and repealing Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91.

In the area of biotechnology, the rationale of the KBBE programme stemmed from the need to remove innovation barriers to emerging market segments such as industrial biotech and accelerate the market entry of innovative bioproducts and bioprocesses. This was fully aligned with the objectives of DG ENTR (now DG GROW) Lead Market Initiative for bio-based products (e.g. work on standardisation). Moreover, the biotech-related activities under the KBBE programme focused on the threats to the sustainability and security of primary non-food production (i.e. environmental and economic impact of an overreliance on dwindling fossil-based resources, degradation of ecosystems, soil and water resources, biomass supply for bioenergy/bioindustry sector) which is in line with the CAP's activities. The KBBE programme complemented DG SANCO policy in relation to GMO risk assessment and on biosafety of GMOs. As such, several FP7-funded projects (e.g. GRACE, G-Twyst) provided inputs for the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) work.

In the area of food and nutrition, the general objective of the KBBE programme of ensuring safer, healthier and higher quality food was aligned with DG SANTE (formerly DG SANCO) 2007 'Strategy on nutrition, overweight and obesity-related health issues' and the 'EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health'. At the level of the specific objectives and activities implemented, the KBBE programme complements DG SANTE's policy in relation to nutrition, healthy lifestyles, food safety and development of new food products. As such, several FP7-funded projects (e.g. ASFRISK, CALLISTO) provided direct inputs for the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) work. The results of the AFRISK project were used for EFSA scientific opinion forming the basis of the Commission Implementing Decision of 27 March 2014 concerning animal health control measures relating to African swine fever in certain Member States (notified under document C(2014) 1979).

What was the added value of FP7 KBBE when compared with national KBBE research and innovation programmes?

An important part of the added-value of the KBBE programme lies in its cross-cutting nature. The KBBE programme was the first programme which integrated all aspects of the bioeconomy (e.g. sustainable agriculture, biomass production, food and nutrition, industrial biotech and non-food products, fisheries). It is worth nothing that there was no similar national programme exhibiting this level of integration.

In the marine field, the majority of the 'Ocean for Tomorrow' projects facilitated the pooling of resources and achieving critical mass. This is illustrated by the fact that more than the half of the 'Ocean for Tomorrow' projects had a budget exceeding €10 million (the maximum being €17 million per project) and 15 projects included partners originating from more than 10 countries (with a maximum number of 39 partners from 23 countries per project). The reduction of research risk was achieved by the multi-disciplinary and cross-border consortia in all 'Ocean for Tomorrow' projects, whilst the reduction of commercial risk was achieved through the participation of one or more leading market players.

Many projects use extensive fieldwork using cohort studies, specifically designed questionnaires, etc. This kind of research is very expensive and time consuming, and could hardly be executed on the same scale outside of the setting of a FP7 project. As a way of example, bringing together national cohorts from many EU countries was done in the EFRAIM project, thereby providing a better foundation for the research results, has very clear European added value.

KBBE in H2020: continuity or evolution?

The new KBBE programme under Horizon2020, Societal Challenge 2 (SC2) will continue to support R&D activities covered under the KBBE programme. Overall, the key objective is to accelerate the transition to a sustainable European bioeconomy through sufficient supplies of safe and high quality food and bio-based products, productive and resource-efficient primary production systems and competitive and low carbon supply chains.

At the same time, greater emphasis is put on innovation and stakeholder involvement. This is illustrated by the newly launched Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU), which is expected to leverage EUR 2.7 billion of private investments. The multi-actor approach underpinning the agricultural productivity and sustainability agendas will also be key for linking knowledge generation with dissemination, demonstration and innovation.

10.3. Information and Communication Technologies

Please note that ENIAC and ARTEMIS JTIs as well as PPPs are presented in a separate annex.

Objectives

Under FP7, the objective of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) research was to improve the competitiveness of European industry as well as to enable Europe to master and shape the future developments of these technologies so that the demands of its society and economy could be met. FP7 funded research in ICT aimed at helping European leadership in generic and applied technologies, stimulating and driving innovation through ICT use, and aspired to transform ICT progress into benefits for all European stakeholders, including citizens, businesses, and governments.

After 2010 there has been an attempt in the framing the new calls and related expected impact to add emphasis to the realisation and commercialisation of innovative products. In fact, the Europe 2020 strategy recognised low investment in R&D and innovation and insufficient use of ICT as two structural weaknesses in European competitiveness. It is for this reason that the Digital Agenda for Europe and the Innovation Union were created with the aim of boosting research, development and deployment of ICT.

How did FP7 ICT contribute to the competitiveness of European ICT industry?

Based on a survey of project coordinators, over the period 2007-2013, FP7 ICT funded projects resulted in total 295 patents, with a very skewed distribution: in general, only a small proportion of projects reported patenting activity (only 139 projects resulted in at least one patent), and most of those reported applied for fewer than 5 patents for the whole period. Of this, about 6% of the projects filed applications for five or more patents, whereas majority of the projects applied for either one patent (52%), or two patents (27%). More than 90% of the patents were accounted for by two funding instruments, namely Strep and IP, accounting for 60% and 30% of patents respectively.

More than 50% of the focal patents were owned by corporations, with the remaining patents shared among universities and public research organisations. About one fifth of the patents resulted from projects with the Strategic Objective (SO) Future Networks and Internet, with 7% coming from Photonic components and subsystems, and 6% from Micro/nanosystems. The vast number of remaining SOs accounted for only small shares of the total focal patents.

Concerning other forms of exploitable foregrounds, information available from the projects final reports showed the following:

- 56% of projects within the SO ICT for the Enterprise and 44% of SO Photonics projects reported as results Commercial Exploitation of R&D. Conversely, less than 10% of exploitable foreground is related to Commercial exploitation of R&D results in FET, International Cooperation; Accompanying Measures; Language Technologies and ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling projects.

- General advancement of knowledge has the highest average (30%). This percentage is higher than 35% in case of ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling, ICT and Ageing, Embedded Systems, Intelligent Information Management, Accompanying Measures, Future Networks and Internet, FET, Nanoelectronics and Organic and large area Electronics.

- Exploitation of R&D results via standards has been quoted by more than 4% of the projects related to the SOs Photonics, Trustworthy ICT; Future Networks and Internet; ICT for Transport and ICT for Inclusion.

- Exploitation of results through (social) innovation has been selected by 22% of Language Technologies projects and 10% of eInfrastructures projects. However the average for this type of the result is just 3% for all topics

- Exploitation of results through EU policies has been quoted by 16% of the 16 ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling projects. The average of this type of result is just 1% for all topics.

Based on the information extracted from the 821 final reports, 125 spin-off companies were created as a result of the FP7 ICT projects. There is also some evidence of SMEs that have been active in the Programme and have grown as a result both in terms of employees and turnover. Furthermore, evidence from projects reviewed
[112](#footnote112)
 in the context of the Innovation Radar indicates that on average, there are nearly two new or substantially improved products or services developed within each ICT FP7/CIP project. However, further nurturing is needed to bring them to the market and exploit their commercial potential. This can be achieved by addressing the shortcomings of the innovations and/ or the needs of the innovators that are vital to deliver these innovations to the market.

  

Examples of projects that delivered innovations and are being developed into products or commercial exploitation:

- New business models have emerged due to applications tackling challenges such as traffic management (SmartTaxi) and based on an open platform.

- In the area of computing systems, the Time Triggered Architecture (TTA) technology - a ground-breaking safety technology for aerospace, automotive, energy, railway and industrial domains in airplanes and cars has been validated thanks to EU funding and is being commercially exploited by leading innovative companies, such as TTTech, a spin-off of the Technical University of Vienna or ESTEREL Technology. The Airbus A380 for instance has already flown more than 5 million passengers across the world using EU-funded ICT technology that has developed a new control system for cabin pressure.

- In the field of electronics, many spin-offs have been created to commercialise products and technologies developed thanks to EU-funded projects: POC MicroSOLUTIONS in Spain works on smart diagnostics systems that can monitor colon cancer or identify bacteria in food. The French spin-off Primo1D deals with electronic textiles that can be used in various sectors such as healthcare, sports, transport and construction. ATLAS neuroengineering, a spin-off company of Imec (Belgium) and IMTEK (Germany), develops technologies to better understand the human brain. The spin-off Graphensic AB in Sweden is the first business in the world commercialising a specific and efficient type of graphene wafers. EU investment aslo helped companies, such as ARM to thrive. The company has been involved in ca. 30 EU projects, benefitting from €17 Mio. of EU investment. This support has been key for the start-up to become a world leader in the design of low power micro-processors. More than 95% of world mobile and smart phones are equipped with ARM microprocessors and ARM employs 1,500 people in Europe.

- Half the added value in the automotive sector today comes from the integration of new technologies within cars and the use of new technologies in the design and production of cars. Car electronics help reduce fuel consumption, increase safety and comfort. Several EU-funded projects prepare tomorrow's mobility, boosting electric vehicles, such as V-CHARGE (recent successful tests took place at Stuttgart airport) or OpEneR (led by Bosch). Car electronics needs to be extremely safe and the world standard in the field was developed thanks to an EU-funded project CESAR. This puts EU manufacturers who have worked together on this standard at the leading edge world-wide. It also puts car electronics suppliers such as Bosch and Infineon in the pole position.

- In the area of ICT for Health, the achievements of the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) were found to be significant and succeeded in placing the European research area firmly at the centre of S&T for personalised medicine. The main achievements of VPH programmes include successful demonstrator projects with particular practical impact on personalised cardiovascular care through the development of detailed computational models of biophysics, implemented with user-friendly workflow management. Another example already has practical impact for comparing antiretroviral HIV drugs. Moreover, a comprehensive set of infrastructure tools has also been built including powerful ontologies that are necessary for the integration of multi-scale, multi-disciplinary ICT models.

How did FP7 ICT contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

Several studies
[113](#footnote113)
 found that the network generated by the FP7 ICT is very stable and resilient, indicating that a critical mass for a European Research Area is fairly consolidated. The network is scale-free (few hubs with hundreds of projects and a majority of organisations involved in only one project
[114](#footnote114)
) and has the characteristics of a small world ("a friend of a friend is my friend"), showing no difference with what observed for FP6 and FP5. Findings from a study
[115](#footnote115)
 show that the organisations that were involved in FP6 acted as facilitators to bring in new organisations into FP7 projects and that most SMEs that had participated in FP6 experienced an increase of the number of projects they participated in, and the total number of partners they collaborated with in FP7.

Differently from FP6, large (private) organisations tend to dominate among organisations having participated in numerous projects. The networks are dominated by hubs representing about 5% of all the organisations, with the majority of these hubs being large public research and academic organisations, ranking in the top 20% organisations in terms of links both in FP6 and FP7 ICT. The hub role of public research and academic organisations is due to the fact that since its inception the Programme was considered an instrument to promote pre-competitive research.

It must be noticed that research organisations from new Member States have increased their participation and ranking. This is a positive fact from the perspective of cohesion policy goals. Furthermore, during the programme the network extension was particularly strong with around half of the participating organisations being new actors in EC-funded ICT research. The role of the ‘core’ partners in attracting such new actors is illustrated by the fact that most of the ‘new’ ICT research actors joined already pre-established partnerships.

The programme contributed to strengthening the existing networks of cooperation among projects participants. According to participants
[116](#footnote116)
, the main benefits of participation in FP7 have been the networking effects, especially in terms of creation of new partnerships and improved R&D linkages with universities and research centres, confirming the results of the FP7 Interim Evaluation
[117](#footnote117)
.

In terms of research outputs and their characteristics, it was noted that whereas most of the patents in the ICT industry (in general and EU based)
[118](#footnote118)
 originate in a single organization
[119](#footnote119)
, more than half of the patents from ICT FP7 projects were associated with very high inter-organizational collaboration, either with another organisation within an EU country, or between EU countries and between EU, Japan or the US. For most European organizations involved in patenting, the most important source of knowledge outside Europe was the US. Interestingly, the only two European countries that use inventors from BRICS countries are France (inventors from China) and Spain (inventors from India).The patents from ICT FP7 projects displayed a unique EU bias also in regard to the location of both applicants and inventors: although a couple of EU countries dominated in both of these dimensions, a broad spectrum of EU countries is represented among inventors and applicants. In general, in the focal sample (ICT FP7 projects) it was observed a dominant presence of the EU-28 countries with seven or eight leaders accounting for a majority of the focal patents. This is in sharp contrast to what is observed in the control sample, where only a few large EU economies such as Germany and France had a noticeable presence, while small EU economies were barely visible (e.g. Belgium accounts for 8% of patents in the focal sample but has only about 0.5% share in the control sample). These trends suggest a substantially higher involvement of EU organizations in ICT research due to the FP7 programme than what one observes in the industry as a whole
[120](#footnote120)
.

How did FP7 ICT contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

The programme has successfully contributed to setting national agendas on specific themes pioneered at EU level. Networks as cloud for instance had not appeared in national programmes until FP7 introduced it; this demonstrates the influence the Programme on national programmes for research. Another spill over effect is to have set the European Agenda, as for 5G, where for example Member States are following. Likewise, areas such as e-health, independent living and robotics were all pioneered by the European Commission before they were developed nationally. In the case of Ageing and Healthy Living, the AAL Programme programme has had a catalytic effect on national initiatives and activity, including leveraging of national funding and a strong commitment shown by Participating Countries, with financial contributions running at around 25-30% above the required minimum. A number of national programmes and initiatives on ambient assisted living have emerged as a direct result of, or stimulated by, the AAL JP60. One of the Programme’s most visible impacts has been in building synergies with other European initiatives and programmes. Programme representatives have contributed actively to the EIP-AHA, ensuring that the AAL JP is better known within the policy community and that its calls are broadly aligned with the EIP-AHA’s strategic priorities. The FIWARE platform in Horizon 2020 is also leveraging national efforts. The FET Flagships also influence national choices when defining research programmes; they have a continuous structuring effect of research communities at national and European levels around flagship themes, with national structures for each flagship appearing to act as information providers and points of access. Member States financing and private funding will also be leveraged (half of the budget is expected to be invested by MS and private funding into Partnering Projects).

How did FP7 ICT strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

Over the period 2007-2013, out of the 2,448 projects surveyed, 1,160 resulted in 18,169 publications
[121](#footnote121)
, out of which 63% were conference proceedings and 37% journal articles (peer reviewed publications). The average number of publications per project was 15.7; however, the distribution was very skewed, with the majority of projects producing only few publications, while a few generated a large amount of publications
[122](#footnote122)
. In FP6, 927 projects had reported 5,681 articles (the number of articles only for FP7 was 6,687
[123](#footnote123)
).

As for the quality of research, 80% of the FP7 ICT scientific articles were cited at least once, whereas only 42% of the FP7 proceedings were cited at least once, with an average of 1.98 citations per proceeding paper and 11.18 citations per journal article.

By means of comparison to a control group, the study that examined publication output from FP7 ICT projects concluded that the FP7 ICT research published in the popular and high impact journals and conference proceedings received on average more citations than other research. This is also testament of the high scientific knowledge produced by EU funded research (collaboration at the EU level produces better quality research). As expected, academic organisations led in generating most of the scientific output (93.1%
[124](#footnote124)
), with total corporate research activity accounting for 6.9%.

International recognition is granted to European funded research in several fields. The EU robotics programme is the largest research civilian programme in the world. A similar programme, based on the European model, was launched in the US. Likewise, in the field of photonics, the US has been closely following the EU Programme. In the field of SmartCities the US looked at Europe to set up a similar grant scheme, and cooperation is ongoing with China.

In addition to the high quality of publications resulting from FP7 ICT projects, the experts and POs interviewed in the context of the support study
[125](#footnote125)
 (PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming) also gave generally positive reviews of the overall scientific/technological impact of the complete portfolio of projects funded. Experts pointed out that the scientific impact is particularly strong, and that the programme was successful from a scientific point of view. With regard to advancing the state of the art of knowledge areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Media, Quantum Computing were cited as best examples.

- The European leadership in the field of eInfrastructures is shown by the fact that Cooperation in Latin America Research (CLARA, Cooperación Latino Americana de Redes Avanzadas - Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks) was developed on the basis of the European model of GEANT.

- 
   FIWARE Platform is used in Brazil and Mexico and FIRE is well known in the US.

- Highlight of international collaboration are the coordinated calls with Japan and Brazil, and the targeted openings with Korea, South Africa and China. A collaborative project with the NSF (US) – GENI involving FIRE facilities and researchers from both sides has been launched. The international collaboration activities are aimed to achieve global impact. Currently Europe is leading in the field, one aim is to set standards and convince the international partners to use the same or similar tools, as well as expand activities more globally through federation of large scale facilities.

- 
   Europe has been recognised as global leader in research targeting ICT for ageing well, with more than €1billion funding and the systemic approach from long-term research (FP7) to applied research (JPI – AAL, PCP) to pilot (CIP), deployment and large scale uptake (EIP and PPI). European researchers are leading in new scientific areas on AAL, which is supported by a large number of conferences and scientific papers accepted in journals world-wide. Cooperation is being established with Japan, Canada and US through OECD.

The Human Brain Project FET Flagship has also triggered or accelerated akin initiatives in US, China, Australia and Japan.

How did FP7 ICT provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

Some developments resulting from FP7 ICT projects have either directly or indirectly contributed to policy formation and supported policy objectives beyond research.

In the field of radio spectrum, for instance, EU projects have pioneered the operational usability of TV white spaces, with the research results from FP7 ICT projects supporting actions in future spectrum regulations. The project COGEU analysed the gaps between frequencies used for television, known as ‘white spaces’, and developed a solution that can help all citizens gain access to broadband through the airwaves. It has implemented a proof-of-concept tool with which local and short-term spectrum licences are traded through an online auction mechanism and inspired a Commission Decision..

Another example of research results feeding into policy is in the area of Future Internet, where the results of the project CREW, concentrating on the efficient use of spectrum and considering aspects of interference, have been shared with the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), to provide cross-fertilisation and policy learning

In the field of cloud computing, the link between research and policy-making is also evident. The research pogramme has been supporting the European industry in a key technology revolution that is transforming the way IT is developed and delivered, and that has a strong impact not only in the software sector but also in the productivity of most other sectors which are highly dependent on software. In 2011 the Commission launched a policy initiative on cloud computing, which repositioned Europe on the world policy scene on cloud. Select industry groups were created for: a) service level agreements, b) contractual clauses, c) code of conduct, and d) research. The policy initiative fed then back into research.

The launch on the web-entrepreneurs initiative is another policy result. Web entrepreneurs have been recognised as crucial in creating new business opportunities in the digital age. This has resulted in developing specific actions which reinforce positive entrepreneurial culture, funding and incentives schemes, retaining talent and understanding the web entrepreneurs' ecosystem in Europe.

In general, the loop between policy and research has effectively worked in several domains, and it should be supported in the future, with proper dissemination activities.

Examples of Policy contributions

- The FET part of FP7 ICT has found wider acclaim and has been extended to all areas of the new Framework Programme – Horizon 2020, with a budget increase from 824m Euro in FP7 ICT to 2.6bn Euro in Horizon 2020. Innovation in instruments has also taken place by targeting part of the programme to young researchers and innovative SMEs. The original 2-step submission procedure was adopted by some parts of the new Horizon 2020 programme.

- The launch on the web-entrepreneurs initiative is another policy result. Web entrepreneurs have been recognised as crucial in creating new business opportunities in the digital age. This has resulted in developing specific actions which reinforce positive entrepreneurial culture, funding and incentives schemes, retaining talent and understanding the web entrepreneurs' ecosystem in Europe.

- Research result feed continuously into policy: e.g. in the area of Future Internet, the results of the project CREW, concentrating on the efficient use of spectrum, considering aspects of interference, have been shared with the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), to provide cross-fertilisation and policy learning.

- Operational usability of TV white spaces is a particular domain that EU projects have pioneered. The project COGEU analysed the gaps between frequencies used for television, known as ‘white spaces’, and developed a solution that can help all citizens gain access to broadband through the airwaves. It has implemented a proof-of-concept tool with which local and short-term spectrum licences are traded through an online auction mechanism and inspired actions in future spectrum regulations, notably a Commission decision.

- The link between research and policy-making is evident in areas such as cloud computing. In 2011 the Commission launched a policy initiative on cloud computing, which repositioned Europe on the world policy scene on cloud. Select industry groups were created for: a) service level agreements, b) contractual clauses, c) code of conduct, and d) research. The policy initiative fed then back into research. The strategy also included ETSI action for identifying and mapping existing standards. Another project in this field is Cloud for Europe (C4E) – pre-commercial public procurement of cloud at national level with 12-13 countries.

How did FP7 ICT increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

The FP7 Research infrastructure programme has made a significant step forward in the efficiency and effectiveness of its support to the European research infrastructure compared to the programme in FP6. An important facilitator for this highly positive evolution was the more coordinated approach to the funding of existing and new distributed research infrastructures or networks of research infrastructures in Europe, based on the ESFRI roadmap. The shift in focus towards the delivery of user-tailored e-Infrastructure services and the development of a multi-layer e-Infrastructure ecosystem resulted crucial for the creation of the globally connected European Research Area in Research Infrastructure. The Programme has brought e-Science into the European research system, helping researchers and engineers to stay at the forefront
[126](#footnote126)
.

FP7 ICT contributed to increasing the top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure in the different areas of the Theme:

- GÉANT gives access to all-optical networks, guarantees interconnectedness with the US, China, Central Caucasus, Japan and South America. Thanks to the EU funding GÉANT remains the most advanced research network in the world and has become the mainstream infrastructure, conceptually and in practice. In the early days of GÉANT, average bandwidths were 155Mbps but with the advent of the hybrid GEANT architecture in 2004, GÉANT became able to transmit data at speeds of up to 10Gbps as standard. Today it operates at speeds of up to 500 Gbps, connects over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across Europe, and offers unrivalled geographical coverage (43 countries in Europe + 65 beyond).

- The expertise of different computing centres in Europe has allowed the creation of a network of high performance computing centres and to launch the race towards exascale. Consortia like PRACE have ensured access to facilities, where resource intensive simulations could be done by partners to whom these facilities were previously inaccessible.

- GÉANT, EGI and PRACE give access to innovative infrastructures that offer high capacity services not matched by any commercial or national offer. In the case of horizontal eInfrastructures and services, European collaboration has led to the development of new methodologies and tools, which make the management and provisioning of advanced services easier and more systematic. In addition, it has fostered a stronger and more integrated NREN community. For sub-areas such as High performance computing, collaboration across the EU has helped bring on board smaller and less resourced countries that otherwise could not afford these advanced systems, minimising internal disparities. Researchers in small, not so well resourced Member States profited from FP7 HPC and communication network funding the most, stressing the relevance of the programme for European cohesion. Coordinated procurement throughout Europe and transnational access has supported specialisation in architectures. As the HPC community is small, major hardware developments are based on activities at the European level. In addition, European collaboration in this area has helped establish a user and provider community, lowering the barriers of entry to access HPC resources and developing unified services that allow researchers to seamlessly switch between centres or relocate computing tasks (e.g. DEISA2 and PRACE). For grid and cloud activities, collaboration at the European level has allowed to train and build a user community of grid computing, to establish a production-quality grid infrastructure in Europe and to work towards the “gridificaction” of on-going research initiatives. In areas such as climate sciences, these grid projects have fostered new global research (e.g. E-Science Grid Facility for Europe and Latin America).

- In the area of Future internet, novel approaches towards capacity increase (spatial diversity) have been started in the optical fibre context, whilst several technologies to increase bandwidth flexibility have been validated. The work towards 400G core network capacity has progressed significantly and these technologies are getting closer to the market. In the software defined optical networks there was strong progress, where cross carrier/cross domain software management of capacity has been modelled and partly made its way into the standardisation domain. On the radio side, multiple projects have demonstrated technologies to use spectrum more efficiently and also to share radio resource better, which is one of the core objectives of the radio spectrum policy pursued by the Union. Also in the 5G domain, projects have started to validate technological options for next generation radio access, whilst system oriented projects have defined the use cases and their requirements with international recognition.

- Energy efficiency solutions for wireless communication networks have been developed, optimising the energy use of 4G/LTE (Long-Term Evolution) base stations, which accounts for the highest energy consumption in the mobile network.

- The Internet of Things domain has delivered important results, for instance a fully specified IoT platform architecture which is now becoming a reference for standardisation.

- Over the Framework Programmes, FET has contributed to enable Europe to take the lead in such areas as nano-electronics, microsystems, new computing paradigms, dependable embedded systems, photonics, and new materials. It is also pioneering research in promising research fields such as quantum information processing, complex systems and bio-inspired ICT systems. Quantum technology has been funded in FP5 to FP6, for €200 million in total of funding, and now the first niche market products are appearing (sensors, metrology, cryptography), with enormous expectations.

- The two FET Flagships on Graphene and the Human Brain Project (HBP) have been launched after a four years selection process, bringing back Europe to address big scientific challenges through long-term support. The creation of FET Flagships at DG CONNECT was unique within a whole FP7 landscape and demonstrates an important ability of the programme management to reflect on present situation and come up with a funding method that can better address emerging challenges (e.g. a need for a more intensive and long-term co-operation between academia and industry in the research).

How much did FP ICT contribute to job creation?

From the workforce statistics extracted by the final reports of the completed FP ICT projects
[127](#footnote127)
, it resulted that on aggregate, more than 52.000 people worked with these projects in different roles, with ~9,000 additional research jobs created by 821 projects. The employment effect in FP7 ICT projects was in line and possibly higher
[128](#footnote128)
 than the one resulting from other research themes (10.9 additional researchers vs. 7.8). Researchers (including experienced researchers, PhD students and temporary researchers) were the most represented category with more than half of workforce.

To what extent the results of FP7 ICT contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

FP7 ICT has contributed to strengthening competitiveness, with the objectives of supporting R&D for Industrial applications in key sectors, ICT application for the benefit of economy and society, research on long-term visionary research linked to ICT (FET) and eInfrastructures. The Programme has tried to support more strategic initiatives with future potential by identifying priorities in terms of roadmap based applied research, but also continued to support open and disruptive research and technologies. The emerging policy rationale behind this more strategic approach to research and development in ICT has been the realisation that there is an increasing need to share resources and expertise, to specialise in order to be able to compete with other global players in the years to come. This has been particularly evident, where Europe is lagging behind or at risk of losing its competitive position for instance in fields such as high performance computing, or embedded systems. FP7 ICT has also seen the rise of certain fields, such as photonics and robotics to prominence. In the areas where these fields open up new avenues for commercial exploitation closer links with industry have been established via Joint Technology Initiatives and Public-Private Partnerships.

The impact of the programme on community building is evident not only from the input side, but also in terms of outputs generated, such as patents and publications. SMEs participating in the programme showed higher productivity in terms of publications that those not participating. Moreover, research undertaken at the European level has been more-highly valued (in terms of citation of publications and further use) than research originating at the national level and has shown a higher degree of internationalization than their control sample counterparts, rather nationally focused. The programme has undoubtedly had high overall impact on knowledge creation, on the scientific and technological achievements.

Other impacts were in terms of policy transfer, as some policies and research have been pioneered at EU level and taken up by the national programmes, informing national policies in areas such as Future Internet, AAL, and in the areas defined as FET Flagships. FP7 ICT programme initiatives also provided examples to other countries and regions of the world e.g. the US and Latin America (robotics, photonics, Smart Cities, and GEANT). International collaborations are also paving the way for global standards and portraying Europe as leading technology hub. In this context need to be highlighted the coordinated calls with Brazil, Japan and targeted openings with China, Korea and South Africa.

Projects delivered valuable opportunities not only to the research community and direct beneficiaries of successful proposals but also enabled concrete solutions implemented in applicable cases for the benefits of European citizens.

To what extent was FP7 ICT coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

In relation to the synergies with CIP ICT PSP, it should be reminded that FP7 was more oriented towards research, whereas the former was providing specific support to innovation, but there was no clear link between the two programmes, i.e. CIP projects in general were not end of pipe projects relying on FP7 results. After four calls, about one fourth of the organisations participating in FP7 also participated to CIP ICT PSP. The second interim evaluation of CIP ICT PSP concluded that the programme "has not developed appropriate linkages with other EU programmes. In general there is a strong linkage to FP7, at least at the policy level, but when it comes to the EU Regional Programmes, national programmes and other CIP instruments and programmes (such as SME financing instruments) there is little evidence of such linkages
[129](#footnote129)
".

The tests carried out in CIP ICT PSP were mostly for public services and societal challenges, resulting in a good synergy. As pointed out by a DG CONNECT official, in the area of Active and Healthy Ageing there has been a systemic approach from long-term research to large scale uptake, with a shift across the innovation chain (FP7/AAL JP/CIP/European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing). In this area, returns on investment of the deployment of new products and services developed in FP7 and AAL have been measured in pilot projects financed by ICT PSP CIP with good results in relation to the quality and sustainability of the health and social care services for some of them. In the area of eHealth, large scale pilots have been funded aiming at facilitating cross border healthcare, with interoperable eHR and ePrescriptions (epSOS), citizens' access to their health records and deployment of telemedicine. In the future, further deployment of interoperable eHR and ePrescription services will be funded by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). Living Labs have been actively contributing to the Connected Smart Cities CIP pilot projects but the initiative reached a maturity that is providing them self-sufficiency. There existed a certain thematic overlap between CIP and FP7 as for Smart Cities, which is resolved by a clear situation in H2020, separated by research, innovation, take-up and policy.

The degree of synergy and coordination between funds for eInfrastructures from FP7 and Structural Funds is considered not very high, the main reason being the lack of alignment of objectives
[130](#footnote130)
. Overall, additional funding for eInfrastructures by means of the Structural Funds was 8% (7% for the overall research infrastructures).

Which was the added value of FP7 ICT when compared with national ICT research and innovation programmes?

The greatest impact of FP7 ICT has been the knowledge effects for its participants, where the required competences, resources, scale and scope could not have been achieved to the same degree at the national level. The programme has led to the generation of critical mass in key sectors, and it has overall also been able to attract a balanced set of players across different sectors.

There are pan-European challenges that have to be tackled at European level. One case is eInfrastructures: according to the recently completed evaluation
[131](#footnote131)
, the FP7 funded eInfrastructures GÉANT, EGI and PRACE give access to innovative infrastructures that offer high capacity services not matched by any commercial or national offer. In the case of horizontal eInfrastructures and services, European collaboration has led to the development of new methodologies and tools, which make the management and provisioning of advanced services easier and more systematic.

In areas, such as High performance computing, collaboration across the EU has helped bring on board smaller and less resourced countries that otherwise could not afford these advanced systems, minimising internal disparities.

Similarly, for the two FET Flagships, there was the need to create critical mass and to unify resources on a scale that no Member State alone could have afforded, both in terms of financial support and in cooperation among multi-disciplinary teams. The Flagships have been one of the main achievements of FP7 and have brought Europe back to the global context for research and innovation along with all the other industrialised countries.

The support study reported unanimous consensus that the scale of EU funding could not be reached by national and local funding. In particular, EU-level funding was considered unique with respect to eInfrastructures, FET flagships, JTIs. Furthermore, respondents confirmed that FP7 ICT funding has become more important due to the strong decrease in national funding, but because of the existence of specific research domains where EU-level intervention is able to make a difference by bringing together dispersed knowledge (e.g. quantum computing) and reducing costs (e.g. photonics).

In other areas, such as Future Internet, the EU has been having the role to set the agenda and help the industry coordinate the various streams of research. Big companies invest large shares of their turnover in R&D, so the level of funding is not comparable to EU resources, but these enterprises invest in technologies that are much closer to the market. The EC plays a key role in keeping open resources for long term risky domains, and it has to engage in strategic thinking and help the convergence process, giving prominence to certain areas. In the telecom area for instance, the main players in the provision of networks in Europe take part to the Programme, as they benefit from cooperation in order to maintain their global position. Core work on future generations of telecommunication networks is done in the FP projects, in order to give "breathing space" to these otherwise competitors for research and development work. In addition, this facilitates cooperation in standardisation.

In general telecom and Internet of Things are domains where standardisation is a very powerful incentive for collaboration among EU partners. Interoperability across infrastructures, players and service providers remain a very strong incentive for collaborative research in these domains. Even if the standards are eventually not developed by projects but by companies, their participation in projects allows them to diminish the risk of available options and lower the costs and the barriers. This observation found confirmation in the responses of participants interviewed (PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming), quoting the need for critical mass among the main reasons for seeking EU rather than national funding, and the fact that EU countries face largely similar challenges across Europe. For instance, in telecommunications, participants stated that “the technological challenges European incumbent operators are facing are quite similar (cost pressure and increasing traffic enabling the leading European Gigabit societies) […] Especially the collaboration on the transport network level allows to leverage on recently developed technology achieving improved network utilization at lower cost.”

Interviewees also noted that identifying top-level expertise is crucial, especially in new domains. One researcher explained that: “The key problem for my research group is building critical mass and critical expertise in strategic topics. National funding fails on this level because the projects are too short (ca. 2 years) and too small (ca. 1 FTE) to achieve this. We need EU projects in order to achieve the necessary scale as well as the necessary contact to international experts". Fostering collaboration between universities and industry players from different Member States was also seen as a crucial benefit, and the increased interaction and synergies with different types of stakeholders (universities, SMEs, large companies). Some participants further explained how FP7 ICT participation encouraged longer-term thinking and riskier investment also by SMEs. At the project level no interviewee envisaged that a given project would have been carried out in the same way in the absence of EU funding. In most cases the project would have been cancelled or implemented at smaller level, or it would have been less sophisticated, postponed or slower. This demonstrates the importance of EU funding. However, it could also be interpreted as revealing the limited strategic importance of the projects. This seems to imply (quite reasonably) that companies use FP7 ICT as a useful complement for innovative activities, but not to develop core strategic activities (PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming).

There was a broad consensus among interviewed participants in the context of the support study that there is a need for EU-level intervention in research funding. Most of the interviewees were able to indicate a project whose results could only have been reached through EU-level research effort. For instance, “with DOTFIVE Europe set the state-of-the-art in performances of Silicon-Germanium based semiconductors which was previously held by IBM (USA)”. With regard to research outcomes that would not have been achieved without FP7 ICT, interviewees mentioned some specific research topics such as higher fibre-optic broadband speeds, advances in Future Internet and open data. However, the value added appears to be greater in other more strategic aspects. Firstly, FP7 ICT is the main driver of European and international cooperation that is crucial to research across different fields. Secondly, some measures such as JTIs have changed the trade-offs between collaboration and competition, thereby accelerating discovery. The interest of participants, including large companies lied indeed in the fact that the “The aggregation of stakeholders with common goals generates benefits such as less competition and more money which enable them to develop solutions which otherwise would have been very expensive, deficient or hard to get done efficiently.

Setting the vision has also been the case in areas such as networked media, so as to include the use of social networks by the creative industry. According to DG CONNECT officials, work is still needed in this area, but the programme has so far achieved the result reinforcing the need of putting together technology in the media sector to move to the new era of convergence and interaction.

In areas such as Cloud Computing, the European added value has been in supporting the European industry in a key technology revolution that is transforming the way IT is developed and delivered, and that has a strong impact not only in the software sector but also in the productivity of most other sectors which are highly dependent on software. This is particularly important in an area where Europe has a strong industry but is not driving the developments, so it becomes critical to invest in advanced research in order to keep pace with the competitors.

In areas such as robotics, the EU funding has promoted multidisciplinarity and large scale development, achieving the objective to involve more industrial actors in a sector traditionally dominated by academia. Also, as robots have had a large growth, passing from assembly lines to uses in environment, health, home, transport, the providers participate in the projects to see how to explore new markets. Therefore in this field where in the past the aim was to develop less costly robots, now industry is involved and needs to take risks.

In areas such as ICT for language technologies, the EU has made a difference in breaching the language barriers and in breaking the national fragmentation, as the extreme diversity of the European landscape makes it difficult for any single provider to cope with it. In areas that are typically a national endeavour, such as ICT for cultural heritage, the benefits come from collaborating at EU level and pulling resources together.

With regard to research outcomes that would not have been achieved without FP7 ICT, interviewees mentioned some specific research topics such as higher fibre-optic broadband speeds, advances in Future Internet and open data. However, the value added appears to be greater in other more strategic aspects. Firstly, FP7 ICT is the main driver of European and international cooperation that is crucial to research across different fields. Secondly, some measures such as JTIs have changed the trade-offs between collaboration and competition, thereby accelerating discovery. The interest of participants, including large companies lied indeed in the fact that the “The aggregation of stakeholders with common goals generates benefits such as less competition and more money which enable them to develop solutions which otherwise would have been very expensive, deficient or hard to get done efficiently.

ICT in H2020 : continuity or evolution?

The approach to ICT research and innovation in Horizon 2020 brings together elements of continuity as well as the seeds for more fundamental paradigm changes. In fact, the overall structure of Horizon 2020 as a matrix of horizontal technological areas and vertical application domains dealing with topics such as health, mobility, energy / climate, learning / culture was already a very distinctive aspect of the ICT thematic priority in the previous framework programme (FP7). On the other side the wide dissemination of ICT developments now reaching maturity is opening new frontiers in almost every domain of our daily life: examples are the widespread use of intelligent handheld communicating devices (e.g. smartphones, 5G, cloud computing), the ability to make every single object or even person a connected entity (cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things), the possibility of smarter decision making by processing large amounts of apparently unrelated data (big data). ICT is indeed evolving from being solely a tool for functional efficiency in the management of a hospital, a government agency or manufacturing process to support a radical redesign of the business processes and paradigm changes in these same areas. Examples such as the 24h patient doctor hospital relationship, mobile access to government services, smart logistics or the digitisation / customisation of manufacturing processes illustrate the disruptive potential of ICT. In this context it is increasingly critical to replace the "silo thinking" by a more holistic and cross-cutting perspective overcoming the barriers to adoption created by the conservatism of traditional players. The focus areas that are emerging in Horizon 2020 reflect this thinking but what we have in place is just the tip of the iceberg.

Another challenge addressed by Horizon 2020 - especially acute in the ICT sector - is the need to reach the levels of investment of leading countries in this area (eg US, Japan, Korea). The public private partnerships in place in Horizon 2020, several of which in the ICT area (ECSEL, photonics, robotics, 5G, high performance computing and big data value) are an important instrument to align priorities and pool (public and private) resources and investment capacity in strategic areas exploring opportunities for economies of scale. This involves not only research activities but also the innovation processes resulting from the massive adoption of technology by consumers and other actors in various application sectors. This approach reflects the economics of the Internet era where as a result of Metcalfe's law market adoption readiness levels are becoming as important as the more traditional concept of technology readiness level.

10.4. Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and New Production (NMP)

Please note that PPPs are presented in a separate annex.

How did FP7 NMP contribute to the competitiveness of European NMP industry?

Although many FP7 NMP projects are still on-going and that results are reached after the end of the projects, there is evidence that FP7 NMP projects contributed to fostering the development of new products, processes and services, and to increasing the technology readiness level (TRL) during the implementation of the project.

Results from a survey of FP7 NMP participants whose projects are closed show that about 60% of these participants developed a new or significantly improved product
[132](#footnote132)
. Examples of new or significantly improved products are: new materials and products such as nanomedicine, adaptive components for machine tools, ceramics for Swatch watches, bioceramics for implants, textile for clothing and industrial applications and coatings for high temperature energy systems. Half of these participants reported the development of new or improved manufacturing processes, such as flexible production lines, additive manufacturing or high performance manufacturing, and 40% said they developed new services - such as Enterprise Resource Planning for high-tech manufacturing, demonstrated process guidelines or technological options for retrofitting of office buildings.

SME participants reported on a larger scale - compared to large firm participants - the development of new or significantly improved products and services reached during the project. Hence the FP7 NMP Theme succeeded in compensating the structural disadvantages of many SMEs compared to LE when it comes to the development of innovative solutions.

With regard to the market introduction of the developed products and services, one third of the respondents (34%) report that a new and improved product developed in the FP7 NMP closed projects is already introduced at the market. Another 13% expects that their product will be at the market in within two years after project end and 26% more than two years after the project end. When interpreting the figures it must be remembered that the technologies developed in NMP projects are often integrated in larger systems (e.g. complex manufacturing systems) and in this case the whole system has to be ready for market introduction. In those cases where market introduction has taken place, the median share of turnover reached with the new product innovation is 5% (n=103 companies).

There are also obviously differences between areas. The participants of Production projects are by far leaders in terms of market introduction (44% compared to only 23% in Materials projects and 26% in Nanotechnology projects). There seems to be a cut between limited economic impact areas (N, M, I) and more substantial or immediate economic impact areas (P).

On average more than half of the developed services from the FP7 NMP closed projects already reached market introduction. The median share of turnover reached with the new service is 3% (n=58 companies). Again, there are strong differences between the areas: services developed in projects in the Production area, are more marketed than for other area.

For the ongoing FP7 NMP projects, one fourth of product developments and half of new services that have been developed in these ongoing projects have already reached market introduction. Furthermore, half of the participants that have no market introduction yet of their finished or planned product innovation expect a market introduction within two years after project end.

Economic impact is more substantial and clearer for projects with high TRL levels. Survey results reveal that participant‘s self-estimated TRL at the beginning of their project was between 1-2 or 3-4 for over 88% of participants. Participant‘s TRL at end of project was between 5-6 or 7+ for 35% of participants. This means that overall the projects’ TRL clearly increased during the project.

SME participants are comparably more often active at TRL 5-6 or 7+, indicating that they are stronger involved in the later stages of the R&D process, and less in basic research activities as compared to large firms.

The analysis of FP7 NMP output in terms of patent applications reveals a total of 287 patents; EU28 contributed for 90% and non-EU28 the other 10%. The largest share of the different areas of NMP is contributed by Materials (31%).

More than half of participants of finished projects report in the survey a high or medium increase in the quality of their products. Relatively few improvements in productivity increases or cost savings could be realised, which is rather typical for early development stages of technology. The SME participants in the survey report higher improvements for improved flexibility, revenue growth and employment growth, than the large firms.

A small part of the participants (6%) reported that the NMP FP7 project led to the creation of a spin-off. For instance, a Tecnalia spin-off in the HARCO project (machine tools) and a Technical University of Vienna spin-off in the PHOCAM project (lithography-based 3D printing).

How did FP7 NMP contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

FP7 NMP contributed to increasing S&T collaboration across European countries. The analysis of the publications produced based on the results of the FP7 NMP projects shows that 75% are co-publications. Most of these were generated in a collaborative way (88% co-authored). Taking the areas together, a clear power network of knowledge transfer shows up between eight countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy Spain, Switzerland and the UK. These countries can be regarded as NMP collaboration hubs because most co-publications originate from there.

The co-publication analysis reveals that most collaboration activities are between universities (HES) and research organisations (REC). However, nearly half of the co-authored publications involve an industrial partner: 205 industry-universities co-publications were counted, against 89 industry-research organisation co-publications. Large firms more often publish with universities (confirming other research that they are relatively more active in basic research), while SMEs publish more often with (application oriented) research organisations.

Surprisingly we found that here are even more project-external co-publications than project-internal co-publications in almost all areas, except for Production and that 37% of all co-patents were with an external partner organisation. This means that a much larger community of research organisations and companies is involved in the FP7 NMP community than just the funded project participants and that knowledge diffusion from FP7 projects already takes place within the projects themselves.

The co-publication analysis shows that in the Materials area, LE are a central part of the network and SMEs play a smaller role. In the Nanotechnology area both LE and SME are strongly involved. Not surprisingly, in the New Production Technologies area, industry is hardy present as this is a more application-oriented field and - as was mentioned in the section on the patents output – the manufacturing industries are less tend to publish on their progress in process development.

Another indicator for collaboration and knowledge transfer across countries is co-patents. Our patent analysis reveals that from a total of 287 patents originating from the FP7 NMP Theme by October 2014, 38 have been applied by organisations from two different countries. Germany is the co-patenting hub with nine co-patent applications alone, but France, Spain and Italy also contribute strongly to this special technology transfer network. Interestingly, France, Spain and Ireland are countries in which the co-patenting partners are not from abroad but from the same country. However, these co-patenting partners are mainly external organisations, e.g. organisations which do not belong to the project consortium.

Collaboration in patenting is most intensive between universities and research organisations. Already existing, external research organisations networks profit from NMP projects as well: 37% of all co-patents were applied with an external partner, a research organisation that was not part of the project consortium of that NMP project.

Three main features regarding collaboration in FP7 NMP projects are:

Most new collaborations were made between SMEs and research organisations and between SMEs and large firms
[133](#footnote133)
. This concerned collaboration between actors from different countries but also from the same country.

Creating new consortia in FP7 NMP projects often means to continue existing consortia and collaborations (to follow-up FP6 and national projects). In fact, 79% of the project participants did cooperate in any form with their consortium partners already before the project
[134](#footnote134)
. Wherever new partners were asked to participate in the consortium, roughly 80% came from another country (20% from the same country. As such, nearly all consortia include ‘old friends’ and ‘new friends’.

Involving non-EU partners can provide a consortium with access to excellent knowledge, downstream partners or geographic markets. However, there have been reported delays and problems related to IPR negotiations and enforcement, inter-cultural collaboration and commitment. As such, collaboration with non-EU actors can be qualified as high risk, high gain.. Here, the case study analysis revealed a trade-off for project coordinators.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the diffusion of ideas, concepts and applications triggered by EU-projects outside the involved community works well. There are even more project-external co-publications than project-internal co-publications in almost all areas, except for New Production Technologies. This means first at all that a much larger community of research organisations and perhaps companies is involved in the FP7 NMP than just the funded project participants and secondly that project partners use existing (research) networks and that they build new connections to disseminate project results or to develop ideas further.

  

How did FP7 NMP contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

FP7 NMP has a positive yet modest impact on coordination of national policies. To some extent, this reflects that there are other coordination mechanisms at work. For example, European Technology Platforms (ETPs), leading universities and multinationals influence European and national policies. This increases coordination or alignment of national policies.

The case studies indicate that FP7 NMP is complementary to national policies and programmes (in most countries) rather than leads to increased coordination of national policies (e.g. in terms of technologies and application areas). For instance, several interviewees stressed that FP7 NMP has an emphasis on applied research, development and pilots (‘the heart of the research and innovation process’), whereas national programmes in several EU Member States have an emphasis on basic research (‘the source’) and on demonstrators, commercialisation and enablers such as cluster organisations and incubators (‘the final steps’). In these countries, EU funding is very complementary to national programmes. There are many exceptions. For example, Germany and the Netherlands were mentioned as countries that support the entire innovation process, whereas Spain, Hungary, Italy and EU accession countries were mentioned as countries with small budgets for supporting development and pilots but also demonstrators and commercialisation.

The analysis of national NMP policies in the five countries indicates that, at least in some countries, FP7 NMP has a direct and positive impact on coordination of national policies. However, this mostly means that national policies (and programmes) address also the technologies and application areas of FP7 NMP.

For instance, the priorities, timing and procedures of national programmes in Italy were adapted to better match FP7 NMP (and other parts of FP7). This approach should stimulate Italian actors to participate in FP7. In Ireland, one of the FP7 NMP effects mentioned was diversification of the technology base (not just nanotech), international collaboration partners (less emphasis on non-EU partners) and the industrial structure (adding manufacturing activities to service activities). In the Netherlands, FP7 NMP is perceived as an opportunity to share Dutch experiences with public-private collaboration and ethical aspects of new technologies. In addition, FP7 NMP allows for scaling up technology development and pilots.

For large countries that are among the leaders in the field of NMP, such as Germany and France, the impact of FP7 NMP on national policy is small. Both Germany and France already addressed, and will continue to address, a broad range of NMP topics at various TRL levels. In Germany, FP7 NMP is perceived as an opportunity to further increase collaboration between research organisations and industry, and to share knowledge with other countries. In France, FP7 NMP is considered as a mechanism to increase international collaboration.

How did FP7 NMP strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

About 75% of FP7 NMP funded projects produced peer reviewed publications. The bibliometric analysis of data in the SESAM database showed that 3,936 publications generated by the FP7 NMP funded projects until October 2014 could be identified also in the Web of Science (WoS). Most of these publications can be assigned to the Materials area (1,816), followed by Nanotechnology (1,211), Integration (455), and New Production (328).

The level of excellence of the scientific output was measured using highly cited papers as an indicator for excellence. In the Web of Science 0.36% of all NMP publications since 2008 obtained more than 100 citations and are considered as “highly cited”. Within this group of in total about 4,758 publications 22 publications emerged from FP7 NMP funded projects. These correspond to 0.56% of all FP7 NMP publications. This comparison indicates that the level of excellence of FP7 NMP publications as measured by the share of highly cited publications is at least as high as the average level in the whole NMP landscape.

How did FP7 NMP promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

The FP7 NMP projects stimulate the mobility of project team members between countries and their organisations. It showed that 41% of survey respondents state that the project has led to a temporal exchange of personnel with one or more project partners. While 53% of research organisations participants had a temporal exchange of personnel (where this is rather common), also 19% of SME participants had. Also the project contributed to improving the career prospects for young researchers (e.g. PhD programmes in research or talents promotion in industry), as 66% of the survey participants stated. This mostly applies for research participants (77%) but also for SME participants (44%).

The projects also contributed to the improvements of several competences of the participants. Improving scientific and technological capabilities by participating in top trans-national teams doing high-level research and benefiting from learning is one of the reasons for participating in FP7 NMP (compared to national programmes). When asked for what are specific R&D objectives to participate, 75% of the survey respondents of participants considered exploration of new S&T knowledge to be relevant; 35% of participants considered exploitation of new knowledge to be relevant
[135](#footnote135)
. This is of special relevance for actors from small countries and countries that are not leading in high-tech research and sectors.

  

How did FP7 NMP increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

The analysis of scientific impact based on results of the survey and the case studies indicates that building up thematic research databases or research platforms for improved networking as well as developing new instrumentation and new research methods are main impact dimensions generated by FP7 NMP funded projects. For example about one third of the participants in the FP7 NMP programme developed thematic research databases. About 46% of the participants and in particular CSA projects were involved in building up a research platform for improved networking of stakeholders. On the other hand contributions to setting up large-scale infrastructures were rather low. Almost 50% of participants indicate that development or substantial improvement of facilities or infrastructures was not at all achieved. In summary, most of the impact achievements were in line with the objectives set by the different projects.

To what extent the results of FP7 NMP contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

FP7 NMP contributes to strengthening the knowledge base in Europe, fostering innovation, and supports EU growth and competitiveness. In addition, FP7 NMP addresses European societal and environmental challenges.

A considerable part of the survey participants being asked about their project contributions to societal and environmental goals, says they contribute to energy and resources efficiency (63%, resp. 66%) and development of tools for sustainable development (56%). Contributing to better nanosafety is also considerable: almost 45% participants mention this (N = ca 1800).

Taking into account the different areas, the participants in the three PPPs and Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies contributed above-average on specific indicators.

- Participants in the PPPs contributed above-average to the four most addressed environmental effects. For energy efficiency PPP’s scored 39% versus all the other areas 17%; for resource efficiency this was 29% versus 16%; for the development of tools for supporting or monitoring sustainable developments this was 23% versus 13% and for the development of renewable and non-polluting energy sources: 22% versus 12%.

- Participants in Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies contributed above-average to ensuring safety of nanotechnology by 24% versus 10% and to ensuring safety of new/advanced materials, including industrial safety by 20% versus 14%.

We conclude that social and environmental impacts of FP7 NMP projects are considered as an intended side-effect of economic success (rather than the other way around).

  

What was the added value of FP7 NMP when compared with national NMP research and innovation programmes?

Most supporting evidence for the added value of FP7 NMP is that only 8% of the survey participants indicate the they would have undertaken the activities anyway.

An overall assessment by participants is that 46% of them would not have undertaken the research and innovation activities without FP7 NMP funding and another 46% would have looked for other funding, e.g. national programmes. Only 8% indicates that the respondent would have undertaken the activities anyway, e.g. by using private funding (this figure is much higher in evaluations of national programmes). No reportable differences between the areas were found, except for participants in PPPs as 37% of the participants in PPP project teams would not have undertaken the R&D activities. This percentage is lower than for all NMP projects (46%); this can be explained by the relatively higher TRL level of most PPP projects. The immediate economic relevance is higher which increases the chance that projects would also start without FP7 NMP funding.

EAV effectiveness

The FP7 NMP Theme addresses pan-European challenges. Although the scientific, technological and economic objectives of FP7 NMP are dominant, they are linked to social and environmental challenges such as renewable energy resources, energy efficiency, food safety, health, etc. Social and environmental challenges are an important background rationale for the development of projects.

A significant number of projects address truly pan-European challenges such as standards, energy efficiency of European sectors, the building of value chains with partners in different EU countries and, to some extent, international research infrastructures and European legislation. For example: 42% of the participants reported a major or medium contribution of the project to energy efficiency; also 42% to resources efficiency.

EU scale dissemination of research results is common practice in FP7 NMP projects. The scientific results are published in international journals, presented at international conferences and business events, shared via the project website, summarised in brochures, etc. Moreover, 46% of the participants is involved in building-up a research platform for improved networking (community of interest, online forum, social media, workshop series, etc.). This percentage is slightly higher for participants of CSA projects than for participants of various types of Integrated Projects.

EAV efficiency

The concept of critical mass reflects that some research activities require the scale, complexity and combination of different types of knowledge and skills (from different disciplines and sectors) that cannot be provided by an individual country.

Survey results indicate that several aspects of critical mass are considered relevant as a motivation for participating in FP7 NMP. Most specifically, this concerns access to additional funding (54%), to external knowledge (44%), the opportunity to work with strategically relevant research units/enterprises and access to networks (36%) and access to R&D networks or research organisations (35%).

The importance of critical mass also emerged from the response to the survey question on the reasons for participation in FP7 NMP as compared to national alternatives. Participants mentioned international networks, big consortia, high scientific levels (cf. excellence) and possibilities to work with all relevant stakeholders.

The case study results provide a similar yet richer picture with respect to critical mass, partly overlapping the survey results. In addition to the points listed above, case study interviewees mentioned:

- FP7 and Horizon 2020 provide more continuity than national or regional governmental programmes that respond to the economic crisis by means of budget cuts in science, innovation and other policy areas.

- FP7 NMP supports inter/trans-disciplinary research and cross-sectoral innovation. In national programmes, there are more ‘stove pipes’ and less options to include an entire value chain.

- A related point is that value chains often are international or even global, which implies that only a European or international programme can support research and innovation that involves the entire value chain.

- FP7 NMP allows actors from small countries and countries that are not leading in high-tech research and sectors, to collaborate with leading countries and actors. There are less barriers for getting into a good consortium than for developing a one-on-one partnership with leading actors. As such, FP7-NMP contributes to a level playing field.

- FP7 NMP consortia provide access to missing expertise that is available in other countries.

EAV synergy

The EAV of leverage on private investment refers to the attractiveness of EU research and innovation programmes (international collaboration, excellence, etc.) and the extent to which this induces firms to invest more of their own funds compared to their investments under national programmes. As such, this aspect of EAV builds on the aspects of EAV discussed above. Examples are the possibility to work in big consortia, in multi-disciplinary teams, with excellent researchers, different types of actors, from different parts of the value chain and from different countries.

The importance of commercialisation within FP7 NMP is most relevant for firms. The survey revealed that for firms specifically, three commercialisation objectives are highly or moderately important: opening-up new markets or new groups of customers (54% of the 822 industry participants that answered this question), improved market position in our existing market (49%) and establishment of a new business area (28%).

This was confirmed by the case studies. Because the size of specific downstream sectors and markets (such as automotive, semiconductors and energy production) differs between countries, and because many sectors and markets are spread across Europe, participation in FP7 NMP consortia provides upstream firms from one country with access to downstream markets in other countries. As such, actors can target a larger geographic market. Case studies also revealed that from the perspective of firms (and research organisations) FP7 NMP, in between FP6 and Horizon 2020, provided the continuity and predictability that is needed for securing private investments. In many EU Member States, the financial and economic crisis led to reduced public investments in research and innovation. Again, this is a mechanism via which FP7 NMP increased private investments in research and innovation activities.

Improving scientific and technological capabilities by participating in top trans-national teams doing high-level research and benefiting from learning is one of the reasons for participating in FP7 NMP (compared to national programmes). This is of special relevance for actors from small countries and countries that are not leading in high-tech research and sectors. Finally FP7 NMP facilitates the mobility of researchers between countries and their organisations.

NMP in H2020 : continuity or evolution?

The new ‘Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies’ (LEIT) part of Horizon 2020 will have an even stronger focus on developing European industrial technologies, with also industrial biotechnology next to nanotechnology, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing and processing technologies. The activities in the LEIT part will be based – as for the PPPs in FP7 NMP - on research and innovation agendas defined by industry together with the research community.

The balance within the new H2020 programme will even be more towards the higher TRL levels, with dedicated support for larger-scale pilot lines and demonstrator projects to facilitate industrial take-up and commercialisation. Also there is – extrapolating the trend already set in FP7 NMP – more involvement of industrial participants, and of SMEs in particular, in order to maximise the expected impact of the programme. Industry will take the lead and build the consortia.

The decision of the EC to have industry as the lead organisation in H2020 projects is very well justified from the perspective of funding projects that are oriented towards new and improved projects, processes and services. In case our preliminary results about the productiveness of PPPs will continue to be proven, H2020 is expected to gain more direct economic relevant results.

However, based on our findings we see a number of weaknesses in a system in which ‘the usual suspects’ (the larger European manufacturing companies) have the lead. This is not to say that this should not be done, as they are both in the forefront of technological development in the manufacturing industry as that they contribute to a large extent to Europe’s economic growth perspectives. 
  
10.5. Energy

Please note that FCH JU is presented in a separate annex.

Objectives

FP7 Energy Theme objectives were threefold:

- Adapting the current energy system into a more sustainable one, less dependent on imported fuels and based on a diverse mix of energy sources, in particular renewables, energy carriers and non-polluting sources;

- Enhancing energy efficiency, including by rationalising use and storage of energy;

- Addressing the pressing challenges of security of supply and climate change, whilst increasing the competitiveness of Europe's industries.

During the course of the programme, new policy objectives have been integrated into the rationale of the FP7 Energy Theme: Building on the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative and taking into account the crucial role of innovations in bringing down the costs of low-carbon energy technologies, more emphasis has been given to supporting the translation of research results into innovations. In addition, based on the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) launched in 2007, the FP7 Energy Theme concentrated its support on a fewer number of topics and stimulated joint actions between the EU and national programmes in order to increase leverage of EU funding and bringing coherence to the fragmented European RD&D landscape.

How did FP7 Energy contribute to the competitiveness of European energy industry?

FP7 Energy theme contributed to fostering innovations by achieving technological breakthroughs and developing new products, processes or services.

The great majority of project participants (73%) reported a concrete marketable outcome as a result of the project (around 20% a new product or process or service, 7% a new business model). Interestingly, demonstration projects show relatively less new processes, but more new services and business models. For more than half of the concrete outcomes (55%), participants expect that they enter the market within five years.

As regards the number of patents generated in FP7 Energy projects, the FP6/FP7 impact study estimates that one in ten participants (11%) applied for at least one patent or has been granted at least one patent
[136](#footnote136)
.

According to RESPIR data, almost one third of all processed projects reported at least one IPR (almost exclusively patents). The average number of IPRs for projects reporting IPRs was two.

The majority of projects funded under the FP7 Energy Theme targeted technology development. By using the concept of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), it is possible to estimate the technological impacts and outcomes of funded projects. The FP6/FP7 impact study
[137](#footnote137)
found that 75% of participants in technology-oriented projects could improve the TRL during the project. Typical research projects have started at TRL 3-4 (experimental proof of concept - technology validated in lab) and finished at TRL 6 (technology demonstrated in relevant environment) – bringing a technology from the validation phase to a model/prototype being tested in a relevant environment. Demonstration projects started at a higher TRL (typically TRL 6 (technology demonstrated in relevant environment) and finished at TRL 7-8 (system prototype demonstration in operational environment - system complete and qualified). On average, projects improved the TRL level of the technology by 2.5 steps. Half of the participants indicated that they expect to reach TRL9 (application phase) within the next 12 months.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14012.jpg)
  
Shift of Technological Readiness Level (TRL) due to participation in FP7 Energy project

Source: Technopolis, 2014

Compared to FP6, where most projects finished at TRL6, projects supported under FP7 have finished at higher TRL levels. Also, the number of projects that start at higher TRL levels (7 or higher) has increased significantly in FP7 underlining the increased focus on demonstration activities.

The investigation of the economic impact of supported FP7 projects can only be preliminary at this stage because many FP7 projects are still on-going and economic impacts normally need some time to materialise. Nevertheless, the FP6/FP7 impact study
[138](#footnote138)
 has estimated the economic impacts of FP funded energy projects based on a survey. One important finding was that the potential impacts are very unevenly distributed, i.e. a few projects have a very high potential impact dominating the overall estimations while the potential impact of most projects is rather small (10% of the participants account for 90% of the expected turnover). The survey showed that projects have, on average, an expected future annual turnover of between EUR 4.5 – EUR 28 million (mean value; due to the huge heterogeneity of projects, the median value is only between EUR 1 500 – 4000).

In terms of economic organisational impact so far, around 20-25% of participating companies see a substantial improvement of more than 5% for turnover and profit. The large majority (76%) of companies indicate that there has been an increase in their general competiveness. However, for only around 2% of participants their participation has had very large effects of more than 25% increase in turnover profit, FTE or market share.

The Framework Programme results in a large number of concrete outcomes in terms of potential innovations. Two-thirds of participants see a concrete marketable outcome, now or in the future. These innovations are roughly equally divided across products, services and processes (each around 20%), with business models only around 6%.

Concrete economic and energy impacts are at this moment still limited, but not absent. The aggregate expected annual turnover by participants related to these innovations, taking into account the probability of market entry, amounts to €18 billion - €75 billion by 2020. Note that these impacts will only take place under the condition of substantial additional private and/or public investment and no major negative shifts in policy and market conditions.

How did FP7 Energy contributed to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

Participants indicate that their participation has led to substantial organisational impacts, especially in terms of improved networks and knowledge position. For all these measures more than 50% of participants indicate that there is more than a small effect on their organisation for these two aspects.

Participants from 68 countries have been participating in the FP7 Energy Theme. The vast majority of participants have however been coming from EU Member States (86% in terms of participants, 89% in terms EU contribution) and countries associated to the FP (9% in terms of participants and EU contribution). Since the level of EU contribution to organisations from a specific country correlates closely with the country's economic performance and overall national research support, countries hosting the highest number of participants are mostly the big Member States. However, taking however into account the number of inhabitants (participants per million inhabitants) some middle-sized and smaller countries are heading the list.

Fostering international cooperation on the basis of mutual benefit was an important element of the FP7 Energy Theme. Thanks to openness to third countries, the Energy Theme contributed 1.4% of its budget to participants from third countries (If the EU contribution to the 4 coordinated calls funded by the FP7 Energy Theme is taken into account, the budget share for international cooperation reaches 2.3%). International cooperation was most prominent in the areas of bioenergy, solar energy and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

How did FP7 Energy contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional Energy research policies?

The FP7 Energy Theme has supported the creation of area-specific Technology Platforms and, in the context of the SET-Plan, European Industrial Initiatives. At the end of FP7, stakeholder groupings exist in all areas of energy. The structuring of stakeholder at European level has facilitated the definition of common objectives and Strategic Research Agendas that have become the basis for European priority setting and also influence national R&I agendas.

Fostering cooperation between national programme owners and developing trans-national research activities has been supported by the FP7 Energy Theme through five ERA-NET projects (in the area of smartgrids, ocean energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and wind energy) with a total of EUR 13.5 million. In addition, 2 ERA-NET Plus actions in the area of bioenergy with a total budget of EUR 22 million brought together national programmes and leveraged national resources.

The integration of research programs was fostered through a pilot action in 2013 aiming at bringing together and integrate on a European Scale, programmes of a critical mass of research performers from different Member States, Associated Countries, and, if appropriate other third countries, to advance the longer term research agenda of the SET Plan. As a result of this pilot activity, 4 projects have been supported with a total EU contribution of EUR 39.5 million.

How did FP7 Energy strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

Scientific outputs of FP7 Energy participants have been substantial. Scientific organisations reported on average around 8 scientific (peer reviewed) publications per participation, half of which were published in high impact journals. A (rough) extrapolation for (almost) finished projects shows that in total around 18,000 articles and 8000 articles in high impact journals.

In terms of scientific publications, the mid-term evaluation survey indicated that, on average, each public/private research institute or higher education institution published around 6.5 articles per participation of which 3 were in high-impact journals. The figure for FP6 was higher (9 publications of which 4.9 in high-impact journals) which could be due to fact that publications continue to be written also after the project, that Networks of Excellence (FP6) were particularly successful in publishing and that demonstration projects (increase in FP7) result in less scientific publications in general compared to the more basic research projects. Data from RESPIR points to lower figures – according to information provided by project coordinators, finished FP7 Energy projects resulted on average in around 6.6 scientific publications of which 2.8 were in high-impact journals (or 24 publications per EUR 10 million EU contribution of which 10 in high-impact journals).

Comparison with other programmes shows the excellence of FP7 Energy theme.

An average project funded under the FP7 Energy Theme resulted in some 24 scientific papers (of which half in high-impact journals), around 7.5 PhD students, one patent, and almost four expected new innovations. To put these figures into perspective, we can compare them to reference values of national programmes like the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council which covers similar research areas but misses of course the ‘European Research Area’-Dimension of the FP. Figures for the FP7 Energy Theme and the EPSRC (in terms of output per million EUR) are very close together, with the FP performing slightly better than the EPSRC. We can therefore conclude that the FP7 Energy Theme can compete with national programmes in terms of scientific outputs.

How did FP7 Energy promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

Research-oriented organisations trained, on average, one PhD student per participation resulting in around 2500 PhD students trained in FP7 Energy projects (the average figure is lower for industrial participants and demonstration projects)
[139](#footnote139)
. Data of RESPIR indicates around 6 PhD students per research project (of which one third was female) which supports the findings of the mid-term evaluation.

How did FP7 Energy provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

Activities supported under the FP7 Theme have reinforced EU energy policy by contributing to the triangle of EU energy and climate policy objectives: sustainability, security of supply and competitiveness (through low prices for energy consumers and by supporting a strong EU industry in low-carbon energy). It underpins the EU “20-20-20-10 targets” for 2020, the new set of targets for 2030 and the EU Energy Roadmap 2050 which calls for an almost decarbonised European energy system. European action is urgently needed – even within a 2050 time horizon – because investments now will define the nature of the energy system for typically 30 to 50 years.

During the course of FP7, 9 projects with a total budget of EUR 17.7 million have been supported aiming at providing knowledge for policy making, especially as regards energy security, foresight and transition planning. In addition the FP7 Energy Theme supported structuring of stakeholder at European level and facilitating the definition of common objectives and Strategic Research Agendas that have become the basis for European priority setting and also influence national R&I agendas.

Policy impact is difficult to estimate for participants, as it is often only an indirect consequence of the project activities and it is not easily traceable unless a proper follow up is made (which is often not the case). According to the survey carried out in the frame of the FP6/FP7 impact study
[140](#footnote140)
, 17% of the participants reported that their project impacted policy making at national level (15% on local level). The figure was slightly higher for FP6 participants, probably due to the more significant support for socio-economic projects which aim at providing knowledge for policy making.

How did FP7 Energy increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

Coordination and access to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure has been fostered through a pilot action in 2013 aiming at bringing together and integrate on a European Scale, programmes of a critical mass of research performers from different Member States, Associated Countries, and, if appropriate other third countries, to advance the longer term research agenda of the SET Plan. As a result of this pilot activity, 4 projects have been supported with a total EU contribution of EUR 39.5 million.

At the level of individual participants, there is clear evidence (as stated above) that projects had a strong positive effect on the participants’ capacity for trans-national cooperation and creation of a network of partners.

How much did FP Energy contribute to job creation?

Projects supported by the FP7 Energy Theme have been contributing to job creation within the participating organisations directly by offering job opportunities for researchers and (more indirectly) as a result of technological advancement and improved products/services.

Research-oriented organisations trained, on average, one PhD student per participation resulting in around 2500 PhD students trained in FP7 Energy projects (the average figure is lower for industrial participants and demonstration projects)
[141](#footnote141)
 . Data of RESPIR indicates around 6 PhD students per research project (of which one third was female) which supports the findings of the mid-term evaluation.

According to the FP6/FP7 impact study, around 20% of all participants increased their staff as a result of participating in an FP7 project (for around 10% of organisations, the increase was between 10%-50%).

  

To what extent the results of FP7 Energy contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

Establishing a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy, including strong ambitions as regards renewable energies, energy efficiency and industrial competitiveness, is among the top priorities of the new Commission.

FP7 Energy projects have been contributing to these priorities by supporting the technological advancement of renewable energy technologies with almost EUR 1 billion and boosting R&D for energy efficiency with more than EUR 280 million. This support will translate into improved technologies which contribute to a cleaner, more secure and cost-competitive energy system.

To what extent was FP7 Energy coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

FP7 Energy was the main instrument for implementing the technology pillar of the EU's energy and climate policy – the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. By addressing key technological bottlenecks for the transition to a low-carbon economy, FP7 Energy contributed directly to the EU's energy and climate targets (for 2030: at least 40% domestic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990, at least 27% for the share of renewable energy consumed in the EU, at least 27% improvement of energy efficiency and an electricity interconnection target of 10%).

Actions supported under FP7 Energy have been complemented by the Intelligent Energy Europe part of the CIP Programme which focussed on improving market uptake of existing technologies by removing non-technological barriers.

What was the added value of FP7 Energy when compared with national Energy research and innovation programmes?

The European Added Value of the FP was confirmed by the participant survey of the FP6/FP7 impact study
[142](#footnote142)
: 70% of survey participants indicated that their project would not have been carried out without funding from the EU. Unsuccessful participants reported that in more than 40% of cases, even unsuccessful proposal led to the establishment of business contacts leading to another FP proposal or cooperation activities. Since the percentage of unsuccessful participants seeking other forms of financing was not very high (21%), it can be assumed that project participants tend to develop research projects and ideas that are strictly pertinent to FP programmes rather than seeking financing for own research activities only.

Survey participants reported a high impact of the FP7 Energy Theme in terms of network development, supporting the development of transnational partnerships, providing funding on a large scale, particularly for infrastructures development missing at the national level and strengthening competitiveness of the Union. As regards the achievement of renewable energy, energy efficiency and emissions reduction targets, participants indicate a moderate impact. The impact on filling knowledge gaps between Member States and avoiding overlaps between research at the national and European level has been rated rather low.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14013.jpg)

Source: Technopolis, 2014

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14014.jpg)

Appraisal of European Added Value (EAV)

Source: Technopolis, 2014

  

Energy theme in H2020: continuity or evolution?

Activities supported under FP7 Energy continue to be supported in H2020 mainly under the Societal Challenge 'Secure, clean and efficient Energy'. To fully exploit the synergies between technological development and market uptake of innovative technologies, the previous Intelligent Energy for Europe (IEE) and FP7 Energy have been under Horizon 2020. In addition, H2020 has put stronger emphasis on a holistic system approach that aims at integrating the various components into an efficient and smart energy system.

  

10.6. Environment (including Climate Change)

The information provided in this chapter comes from the ex-post evaluation of FP7-Environment
[143](#footnote143)
.

Objectives

The objective of the theme Environment (including Climate Change) is defined in the Council Decision 2006/971/EC:

“Sustainable management of the environment and its resources through advancing our knowledge of the interactions between the climate, biosphere, ecosystems and human activities, and developing new technologies, tools and services, in order to address in an integrated way global environmental issues. Emphasis will be put on prediction of climate, ecological, earth and ocean systems changes, on tools and on technologies for monitoring, prevention, mitigation of and adaptation to environmental pressures and risks including on health, as well as for the sustainability of the natural and man-made environment.”

The Decision also specified the areas where FP7 Environment activities had to be conducted:

- Climate change, pollution and risks

- Sustainable management of resources

- Environmental technologies

- Earth observation and assessment tools for sustainable development

As the whole FP7, after the global economic crisis, the Environment theme underwent a re-orientation of its priorities in response to the economic crisis. The Europe 2020 Strategy establishes quantitative targets, which include for R&D and environment that the "20/20/20" climate/energy targets should be met (including an increase to 30% of emissions reduction if the conditions are right)
[144](#footnote144)
 and raises environment, climate change and resource efficiency as key issues
[145](#footnote145)

With regard to FP7, a strategic decision was made to integrate the research and innovation dimensions, strengthening the support to the whole chain of research and innovation, from blue sky research to market uptake, and also boosting the contribution to nurturing fast-growing SMEs. The evolution of the FP7 priorities has affected the Work Programmes for the Cooperation Theme “Environment (including Climate Change)”. Figure below shows the evolution of each call orientation, in million euros. The main conclusion is the constant increase of investments on innovation-oriented projects, especially after 2009.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Innovation | Science |
|  |  |
| Policy | Network/Coordination |
|  |  |

Historical evolution of the main and second focus of Work Programme calls, in € Mio.

  

How did FP7 Environment contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

FP7 Environment has contributed to developing innovations, and fostering the development of new products, processes and services.

According to projects’ report (Respir database), the 195 finalised projects produced 16 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR, including patents, trademarks, registered designs) applications: 12 patents, 2 utility models and 2 “others”. The figure (0.08 IPR per project) is below the Cooperation average (0.5). Probably, the late orientation of the FP7-Environment programme towards innovation influenced this score. Most IPR applications (13) came from projects funded by the sub-programme ENV.3 (Environmental technologies): W2PLASTICS, MUSECORR, MIDTAL, MODELPROBE, SOILCAM, AQUAFIT4USE, FIRESENSE, CLEARWATER, UPSOIL and NAMETEC. The three other IPR were produced by a single Earth Observation project, EUROSITES.

Furthermore, the innovation survey shows that between 32.4% and 48.6% of FP7-Environment projects should produce innovative outputs. Non-commercial innovation, like methods, processes or databases in public domain are rather widespread within FP7-Environment.

|  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Survey | Percentage of reported innovations | Exploited innovations (%): | | | Total exploited (%) |
|  |  | Commercialised | Internal to the firm | Other (e.g. public domain) |  |
| A | 80% | 40%\* | 6.7% | 6.7% | 53.3% |
| B | 40.5% | 3.4%\* | 0.6% | 10.2% | 14.2% |

(\*) Includes an innovation commercialised and internal to the firm.

Innovation results from FP7 Environment projects

If we take the 19 innovations declared in both samples A and B
[146](#footnote146)
, we observe that 42.1% are processes, 36.8% are products, 10.5% are services, 5.3% are the three of them and an additional 5.3% are organisational methods. Some examples of innovations (exploited or not yet) are presented in the box below.

Half of the respondents involved in innovations considered they worked on an adjacent innovation
[147](#footnote147)
, while 33.3% said they dealt with transformational innovations. Similar proportions apply amongst exploited (commercially, internal to the firm or other) innovations.

Projects that already commercialised their innovation stated that they have obtained a turnover between 50,000 and 90 million €, with a median between one and 3.5 million €. There are however very few projects that were able to provide such data, so the numbers are merely illustrative. These examples show that FP7-Environment projects can implement commercial innovations during their lifetime or short time after the end of the project, obtaining a significant income.

All innovations in the market are already exporting outside the EU. Export represents between 40% and 100% of their revenues, meaning that those new products, services or methods are competitive in global markets.

However projects dealing with innovations consider they will need 4.6 years in average to reach a relevant market share, which varies between 1% and 50% depending on the project
[148](#footnote148)
, with most of them under 10%. With the data provided, we can make a rough estimate of the economic impact of FP7-Environment supported innovations. The (few) projects surveyed that were able to give such information could reach, all together, an income of nearly € 700 million. The whole FP7-Environment could therefore produce revenues around an order of magnitude of € 1.9 billion which corresponds approximately to the budget of the whole FP7-Environment programme. In terms of cost-savings of raw materials and energy, innovations supported by FP7-Environment could reach € 2.6 billion
[149](#footnote149)
.

All projects that exploited an innovation carried-out a technical assessment from the environmental point of view (e.g. a life-cycle assessment). This sort of analysis is very common in projects that are in advanced stages to implement a commercial innovation: 83% of such projects did it. A life-cycle assessment or similar constitutes a commercial asset, since it demonstrates the benefits of the new technology or method, especially in terms of energy or resource efficiency. The data given through the survey show that commercially exploited innovations are already dealing to costs savings equivalent around 9 million € in raw materials and 13 million in energy.

Continuity of funding is key to fully implement the innovation on which projects were working. Around 57% of surveyed projects dealing with innovations said that there were already commitments to ensure such continuity. However, only 29% of such commitments come from industry – in principle the main player to go to the market.

How did FP7 Environment contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

FP7-Environment contributed to promoting transnational collaboration, contributing to the creation of the ERA. The programme supported 96,362 inter-institutional collaborations, of which 91,557 (94.75%) trans-national. Unsurprisingly, most links were established between Member States (80,775), but Switzerland and Norway, associated countries, had also a critical importance. A group of countries have created some critical axis for international networking: Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK; to a lesser extent, Switzerland and Norway. Their rows and columns in the matrix are the darkest. As expected, the more one country participates in FP7, the more it collaborates with organisations from abroad.

Amongst the post-2004 Member States, Poland appears as the one more linked with other countries, especially with Germany and the UK. The above-mentioned collaborative axis appears very clearly in Figure below. We clearly distinguish central and peripheral countries.

 

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14016.jpg)

FP7-Environment collaborative links. Member States, Associates and Candidate countries

Benefits from international collaboration were significantly pronounced in the projects’ review reports. In the vast majority reviewers agreed that participation in the projects enlarged the international networks of the participants. There were also several cases where this collaboration extended beyond the EU borders.

The international European and Asian cooperation has been fundamental in ISSOWAMA connecting European partners with counterparts from Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. In ORCHESTRA the cooperation across European countries was important as they face the same legislation (REACH). Nevertheless, the project has collected the experience of countries such as the US and Canada as they have a broad experience in using in silico methods to evaluate the toxicity of chemicals.

In addition, developing countries have shown interest in the research conducted and contacts were made with scientists in India, Thailand, Korea, Brazil and Argentina. The international collaboration under ICE2SEA enabled the conduct of research in Antarctica, the Arctic and Greenland, and in Chile. The CLUVA project facilitated collaboration between EU and African Universities, while POEM reached out to Chinese and Indian institutions. LIVEDIVERSE worked with societal organisations, NGOs and local residents in target communities in India, South Africa, Viet Nam and Costa Rica. SAFELAND included international collaborators and advisers from China, India, USA, Japan and Hong Kong. Based on the partners’ networks MARCOM+
[150](#footnote150)
 extended collaboration beyond the European Union with the US and Canada as well as Croatia, Montenegro, Turkey, Maghreb and Middle East.

How did FP7 Environment strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

Improving scientific excellence was one of the key objectives in FP7-Environment in order to build the evidence base for sustainable management of the environment.

For the purposes of this analysis a distinction is made between outcomes and impacts. At the level of outcomes the most common approach to scientific excellence is the number, quality and citations of scientific publications. The European Commission maintains a database on publications which made it possible to conduct a quantitative, bibliometric analysis. The analysis of scientific excellence at the impact level is not yet supported by quantitative indicators. Therefore, the review of the 90 projects was used for the analysis of impact
[151](#footnote151)
.

- Scientific excellence at the level of outcomes

The FP7-Environment programme produced 2,154 papers, of which 44.3% were in high ranked journals
[152](#footnote152)
. On average, each project made 13.1 publications. The number of publications by projects is just above the Cooperation average (12.6, all projects included), while the percentage of paper in high ranked journals is below the Cooperation Specific Programme average (50.3%).

|  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| No. of processed projects | Percentage without reported publications | Number of publications | Publications by project | Pub. in High-Impact Journals | % |
| 164 | 35% | 2154 | 13,13 | 955 | 44,34% |

Publications in FP7 Environment (including Climate Change) Theme

Source: SESAM RESPIR

Analysis of publications by areas shows that two main groups can be distinguished: at the forefront, the first group includes the areas ‘Climate change, pollution and risks’ (ENV. 1), ‘Natural Hazards’ and ‘Sustainable Management of Natural Resources’ (ENV. 2). The average number of publications per project is above 20 with about 70 publications per 10 M euro funding. Those scientific fields can be seen as mature, having a long tradition of international cooperation and a solid infrastructure of international scientific organisations, conference series and targeted scientific journals. Projects in this field are embedded in this infrastructure, which keeps the setup time to a minimum and allows immediate production of scientific outcome. Examples are the projects Carbo-Extreme, COMBINE, EPOCA, ICE2SEA, REDD-Alter (ENV 1), FUME, MICORE, MOTIVE, WISER (ENV 2).

The second group includes the areas ‘Environmental technologies’ and ‘earth observation and assessment tools for sustainable development’. The average number of publications per project is above 5-6 with about 30 publications per 10 M euro funding. Those scientific fields are less mature and are characterized by a much higher degree of interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary cooperation. Setup time for research is longer because it first requires the joint elaboration of a common analytical framework that is acceptable from multiple disciplinary standpoints.

For all fields, the average number of publications per 10M Euro FP7 funding is 55, which is higher than the numbers for the FP6 environment program, which were reported to be 25 for STREPs and 52 for IPs/NoEs (reference stock taking results of FP6, 2011).

  

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Projects with a Processed Final Report | No. of projects with at least one publication | Total No. of pubs. | No. of pubs. in High Impact Peer Reviewed Journals | % | Average No. of pubs. per project | No. of pubs. by 10M euro | No. of pubs. in High Impact Peer Reviewed Journals by 10M euro |
| Climate change, pollution, and risks - ENV.1 | 47 | 40 | 1112 | 570 | 51% | 23,66 | 76 | 39 |
| Sustainable management of resources - ENV.2. | 26 | 18 | 573 | 225 | 39% | 22,04 | 69 | 27 |
| Environmental technologies - ENV.3. | 44 | 27 | 282 | 78 | 28% | 6,41 | 30 | 8 |
| Earth observation and assessment tools for sustainable development - ENV.4. | 37 | 18 | 182 | 80 | 44% | 4,92 | 31 | 13 |
| Horizontal activities - ENV.5. | 10 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 40% | 0,50 | 6 | 2 |
| TOTAL ENV | 164 | 106 | 2154 | 955 | 44% | 13,13 | 55 | 24 |

Publications by FP7-Environment priority area

At the top of the list, there were 22 papers published in Nature and Science, with respectively SJR indexes 14.5 and 11.2. Those papers were produced by the projects HERMIONE, RECONCILE, CARBOEXTREME, THOR, EELIAD, MEECE, COMBINE, EUROSITES, MEGALOPOLI, COCOS, EPOCA and DEER.

The average journal rank indicator of all FP7-Environment publications is 1.58, which would correspond to the position 1,508 in the SJR classification (over 20,554 in the list). However, the variation is huge (coefficient of variation = 91.7%). Figure below shows this distribution. Most papers had a SJR index between 1 and 2, and 21% went above SJR index 2 (which corresponds to rank 963).

The information indicates that few projects reached a top level of scientific excellence, measured in terms of the ranking of the journal where they publish. Only 5.6% of all papers are in the top 450 journals (SJR index 3 or more). Only 1.1% reach a SJR higher than 9. This means that the programme was more successful on supporting the creation of critical mass of good research than on creating the top worldwide excellence. 

Percentage of FP7-Environment projects by SJR index

The impacts of research on scientific excellence are more difficult to measure. Until today there are neither commonly accepted indicators neither a monitoring system and databases available to answer this question. A qualitative analysis with help of the 90 project reviews was conducted to address this shortcoming
[153](#footnote153)
.

Impact on scientific excellence of individual participants
[154](#footnote154)

Among the 90 projects reviewed, approximately 20% reported an increase in the number of publications and journal impact factor through project collaboration. In most cases this was due to the pull effect of excellent key partners towards the other, less high ranking participants in the project. Examples are ATP and COMBINE, two projects of the priority area ENV.1 (Climate change, pollution and risk). The pull effect was made possible through the recruitment of early career researchers combined with a system of staff exchanges and joint training efforts. This finding substantiates the statistical analysis of the factors affecting publication outcomes of the projects, which identified the number of additional researchers hired by the project as a significant independent variable. Clearly, this impact is a valuable example for the implementation of the European Research Area, improving excellence through European cooperation.

|  |
| --- |
| HERMIONE, example of improving partners’ excellence through participation  HERMIONE (Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Man's Impact On European Seas) has involved a multi-disciplinary team of biologists, ecologists, microbiologists, biogeochemists, sedimentologists, physical oceanographers, modellers and socio-economists to make the nexus between the deep-sea assemblages and ecosystem services provided to humankind. The majority of the core scientists participating within the project are authorities in their respective academic fields, eminently established within the field of deep-sea research. HERMIONE has certainly caused a stir within the scientific community through its pro-active approach, with a remarkable total of 761 conference participations and numerous other workshop ones. The project provided a lot of fodder for thought for policy-makers who must contend with the designation of revised policy instruments to address newly-discovered human impacts on deep-sea assemblages, such as the fact that cold-water coral communities are already under stress due to bottom trawling in many areas. |

Impact on scientific excellence and maturity of the scientific community of a certain research area

Approximately 20% of the reviewed projects reported active interaction with and impact on international communities. Among those, IPCC interaction was most frequently reported. As noted above, climate change is the priority area with best performance in scientific outcome. Obviously, the maturity of this community in terms of international scientific self-organisation is a factor of success in scientific excellence; European researchers play a dominant role in this.

Active interaction in international platforms can be seen as one measure of impact of FP7 environment research on excellence and leadership at international level. Indeed, it is about implementing ‘European schools of thought’ in coping with societal challenges. Thereby, the key element of maturity lies in the integration of scientific excellence with societal relevance.

|  |
| --- |
| Carbo-EXTREME, example of excellent impact on international research agenda  Carbo-EXTREME (The terrestrial Carbon cycle under Climate Variability and Extremes – a Pan-European synthesis) had the objective to obtain a better and more predictive understanding of the European terrestrial carbon cycle responses to climate variability and extreme weather events. The consortium consisted of 82 researchers from 26 organisations. The most excellent researchers have h-factor of 55. Many of the other researchers’ h-factor varies around 40. The consortium contributed to the IPCC and IGBP activities. CARBO-Extreme researchers in many high-level policy relevant boards and contribution to the IPCC reports as lead authors. Significant interactions were developed between the CARBO-Extreme EME sites and the infrastructure Project EXPEER (FP7). |

Some projects managed to interact with numerous international research organisations. Examples are CLIMSAVE and KNOWSEAS. A few projects reported active interaction with international organisations acting at the science-policy interface such as UNEP, UNDP, FAO. In those cases, influence on the international environmental policy debate and a combined impact of the research cooperation on scientific excellence and policy support is likely to be expected.

|  |
| --- |
| LiveDiverse, example of excellent impact on international organisations acting at the science-policy interface  LiveDiverse (Sustainable Livelihoods and Biodiversity in Riparian Areas in Developing Countries) focused on producing knowledge that would contribute to improving strategies to promote sustainable livelihoods and the protection and preservation of ecosystems. The partners involved in LiveDiverse collectively had well-established long-term linkages with UNEP, UNESCO, UNDP, FAO, GEF, Global Water Partnership, World Bank, Secretariats of Biodiversity Convention, Ramsar, Climate Change Convention, WWF, Birdlife International, Conservation International, Flora and Fauna International, Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society. Informally, when possible the lessons and results of the project have been communicated in the events or interactions with these fora. During the project implementation stronger links have been established with the following international for a:  IUCN, IASC, OECD Water Governance initiative, UNWC. |

How did FP7 Environment promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

Most of the FP7 Environment projects reviewed stated that a number of PhD students were involved. This number ranged from five PhD theses and two BSc theses in the case of IMPRINTS, to more than 20 PhD researchers in the case of HITEA and CONGRESS or around 30 PhD students (SECOA, WISER or AQUAFIT4USE).

Inclusion of senior researchers was also of interest to the Expert Group. In absence of any relevant data
[155](#footnote155)
 however, this was mainly based on the expertise level and age in case the CVs were available. In many cases seniority of expertise prevailed while there were some projects where the number of senior researchers was around the same as that of junior researchers. Given the scarcity of cases where this information was available however, no sound conclusions can be drawn.

Mobility was not among the main aims of the projects per se. However, there have been cases worth noting that organised study visits and exchange programmes across the different participating institutions (COPHES, LIVEDIVERSE, W2PLASTICS, ENNAH). In addition, training events or summer schools were organised (ORCHESTRA, ICE2SEA) while there have also been cases of switch of researchers between consortium partners (CCTAME, MOTIVE) with relevant benefits in their careers.

How did FP7 Environment provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

In line with its objectives (to Improve the science-based understanding of the challenges in the environment-climate change system and to provide the policy support to the Union and Member States
[156](#footnote156)
, the FP7-Environment work programme was designed so that the insights and knowledge derived from the research findings would inform the development of new policies, which would then become more effective, efficient and equitable, as well as sustainable from an economic, environmental and ethical perspective. FP7- Environment represented a regular investment on policy actions, between €100 million and €140 million per annum, (except in 2010 and 2011), with an increase (from FP6) in the number of CSAs supported.

The FP7-Environment Work Programme calls for proposals were developed around the specific need to address and support EU adherence to international and EU policies, including international policy commitments
[157](#footnote157)
 and EU policy commitments
[158](#footnote158)
.

Furthermore, environmental technologies have been chosen as one of Europe’s key tools for leading the green revolution and moving towards a low-carbon economy. The area of protection, conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage is also considered an integral part of this domain. Environmental and cultural heritage preservation technologies research in FP7 use a system approach aiming to integrate all components of the process while taking into account external factors, thus helping to decouple growth from resource depletion.

The review of 90 FP7 Environment projects shows that activities funded through the FP7 Environment theme contributed strongly to addressing the increasingly global scale environmental challenges. Research projects were implemented on major and urgent social, scientific and economic issues. Successes include:

- Multi-scale analysis of biological diversity and development of economic activities from ecosystem services.

- Promotion of European excellence in key domains to foster the implementation of GEOSS.

- Support to the development of environmental technologies in the area of water treatment and water and soil rehabilitation and protection with clear economic, environmental and social potential impacts.

- Enhanced links with the UN IPCC to foster EU contribution to future Assessment Reports, including strong advocacy for timely publication of results of FP7 projects.

Examples of FP7 Environment policy contributions

- Strong contribution to the Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package, the Floods Directive, the Droughts and Water Scarcity Communication, the Communication and Action Plan on Disaster Prevention and Early Warning, the Environmental and Health Action Plan, the Environmental technologies Action Plan, the Sustainable Consumption and Production, and Sustainable Industrial Action Plan.

- The Commission Communication on A European Strategy for Marine and Maritime Research (2008) highlights the importance of integration between established marine and maritime research disciplines in order to reinforce excellence in science and to boost our knowledge of the oceans and our ability to manage sea-related activities in a sustainable manner. As a key pillar of the European Maritime Policy, this strategy was welcomed by the Competitiveness Council (2 December 2008) and recognised as a significant progress towards the development of the ERA. The 2009 Work Programme, with 11 marine and maritime topics under “Sustainable use of seas and oceans” represented a major step towards a more integrated approach to marine and maritime research within FP7.

- Strong support to international initiatives, including the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)
[159](#footnote159)
, and the Biological Diversity Convention (BDC).

In most cases, the impact of FP7-Environement projects on policy development (e.g. Directives) is indirect due to the different timing of research and policy. Research projects take much longer. An example of this process is the recent European Commission’s public consultation on policy options to maximise water reuse in the EU, managed by DG Environment. The background document is based on two reports drafted by a consultancy (TYPSA), which makes extensive use of the information and analysis done by the FP5 project AQUAREC, finalised in 2006. This example shows how the policy impact of a project can appear after a long time lapse.

How did FP7 Environment increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

The majority of FP7 environment projects followed open access principles in relation to publication of papers, reports, etc. However, not all the papers were published in open access journals, the main reasons being inhibiting publishers‘ licensing agreements, high costs of open access publishing, or commercialization purposes.

There have been fewer cases for open access to data, databases, tools, etc. For instance, the Adaptive Forest Management toolbox produced in MOTIVE is open source while the also chose to publish some of its medium impact research in open access journals such as PLoS ONE and Ecology and Society. In COMBINE the lead partner established institutional repositories with all COMBINE publications being open access within six months from their publications. A large fraction of the model-data produced by COMBINE simulations are also on the public CMIP5 archive, thus available to the international scientific community for analysis. MARINETT has provided open access to all deliverables including information contained in the project’s database and knowledge transfer methodologies. EUCHIC has contributed to open access and transfer of scientific knowledge by producing the EU CHIC guidelines into 13 languages, which can be utilised to apply the developed CHICEBERG protocol on a wider scale. In addition the project developing a standardised documentation methodology for Cultural Heritage monitoring and preservation which is openly accessible.

There is no precise information about the actual impact of open access actions. However the review showed that some projects preferred not to follow an open access policy, in order to do not challenge the possibility of exploiting commercially their results
[160](#footnote160)
.

How much did FP Environment contribute to job creation?

Young researchers represented most of the new recruited staff and as mentioned above in this staff category women presented larger shares. Based on the overall workforce statistics for FP7-Environment, the additional researchers recruited formed 11.80% of the total reported workforce not different from the total average for the total Cooperation Programme (12.64%). Out of the 1,284 additional researchers recruited, 603 were women (47%).

To what extent was FP7 Environment coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The coordination between F7 Environment and other EU actions such as the Structural Funds, LIFE+, CIP or ESF was rather weak. The integration of FP7 and CIP was important when FP7 was re-orientated towards innovation. FP7 Environment and the CIP actions focused on environmental issues, with similar objectives but different constituencies. Synergies were not the most common situation.

Which was the added value of FP7 Environment when compared with Environment research and innovation programmes?

The ex post evaluation of FP7-Environment documented European added value of environmental research projects in a number of different occasions, i.e. in relation to:

- Infrastructures: Access to infrastructures and databases is important in environmental research. However this is sometimes hampered by different national rules and settings, or incompatibility and lack of interoperability of systems. Projects may lead to harmonising or enabling inter-connectedness of national infrastructures or contribute to creating (new) joint European infrastructures.

- Dealing with environmental challenges: Calling for bringing together resources and coordinating national policies. Although bound by context and natural specificities, environmental problems usually cross national borders. This coupled with shrinking public research budgets makes international collaboration imperative. Some projects may have been explicitly organised in partnerships including actors from several regions or countries facing similar environmental problems and jointly looking for possible solutions. In this regard coordination of national policies is also important to avoid duplication.

- Capacity building and development of critical mass: Projects may target geographical regions or research areas that need gathering of input data from a variety of (geographical) settings or call for a combination of various fields of expertise under a multidisciplinary research approach. This dimension of European added value also relates to building / increasing research capacity in specific countries in certain fields and by pooling of resources to attain the critical mass needed to deal with environmental issues.

- The potential for leveraging additional resources: Publicly funded research projects can leverage additional funds from the private sector. This is possible especially in the cases where exploitation of the research results can lead to market developments.

- Obtaining better results than National/sub-national R&D financing programmes: R&D and innovation activities carried-out through EU or international cooperation are supposed to bring better results: more ambitious projects, larger combination of skills and research traditions, complementarity of R&D systems, bigger markets for innovation, etc. However this hypothesis should be tested, comparing outputs and outcomes from different systems.

On an 1-5 Likert scale, around 40% of the projects that were eventually graded for European added value (32/81) scored equal or above 4, while the majority (61/81) scored 3 or above.
[161](#footnote161)
 The projects that scored 4 or above presented high added value in more than one of the above dimensions. The dimensions of added value usually documented in the projects’ justifications and results referred to the need for international collaboration in dealing with environmental challenges, for capacity building and development of the critical mass as well as for harmonising databases, procedures, measurements, models, etc.

Some intervention areas of FP7-Environment are perfect examples of European added value, in the sense that research would be inefficient if not coordinated at European and/or international level. This is clearly the case of Earth Observation. The FP7-Environment programme played an active role on implementing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS); while the European Commission is one of the four co-chairs of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO). GEO/GEOSS involves 90 governments and around 80 international organisations, which develop together projects and coordinate their strategies on earth observation. GEO is evaluated in a separate report
[162](#footnote162)
 that demonstrates the relevance to the EU of these actions: opening up of access to essential global, regional and national datasets; adoption of compatible data policies in EU Member States and pan-European organisations; direct and indirect contribution to the Europe 2020 Strategy and related policies (including capacity building in developing countries); mobilisation of the research community; or potential to foster and stimulate growth and innovation for industry (especialky SMEs). GEOSS is critical to tackle global challenges such as climate change, energy and food security, and health.

FP7-Environment played also a key role in the development and aggregation of climate change models, with a strong impact at the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Models could be developed at national level, but FP7-Environment is unique because of its coordination role. It puts and run them together, ensuring the completeness of the systems. FP7-Environment allows an international co-development of climate change models, creating a process of mutual learning and an efficient knowledge creation. With its funding activities in this field, the Commission contributes to the creation of international standards that avoid fragmentation of research and funding. Something similar happens in other areas, like greenhouse gases (GHG) measurement or carbon in the sea, where the EU is leader thanks to its coordination and standardisation role – not to mention the impact of research in these field on policy (e.g. Directives).

|  |
| --- |
| Examples of European added value in FP7 Environment projects  LIVEDIVERSE: The project provided an important added value in strengthening the capacities of international partners (in India, Viet Nam, South Africa and Costa Rica) by enabling them to access the state-of-the-art knowledge in the field. At the same time the EU funding allowed to push the knowledge boundaries in the field for the European partners and afford doing field research in developing countries. The project was implemented at such a big scale that it enabled the conduct of comparative parallel studies in four countries and three continents. Such research, while being important, cannot always acquire funding from national governments (European and developing countries).  FUME presents a great potential of European added value as it can lead to significantly greater harmonisation, provided that the database created continues to be expanded and data format/type is harmonised. The environmental challenge that the project was designed to investigate is very much a pan-European one, as well as being relevant in many areas throughout Europe. FUME could lead to greater coordination of national policies, as relevant countries will have access to harmonised information upon which to base their policies. The project is also likely to have enhanced research capacity by benefiting less well-funded areas, and it was successful in achieving a critical mass, as it was successful as a large-scale integrating project.  W2PLASTICS also reflects several dimensions of the European added value including dealing with cross border environmental challenges, pooling resources to attain a critical mass and leveraging additional resources from the private sector. W2PLASTICS deals with environmental burden from complex industrial and household waste which is a serious problem common for many if not all European countries. Joint efforts to develop a breakthrough recycling technology is imperative in this case. The project demonstrates successful pooling of resources for research, innovations and exploitation especially investments from the private sector to establish spin-offs.  MESMA is a good example of all the different dimensions of European added value. MESMA provided access to a new open access database that is available through the MESMA Geoportal. The database has been built in harmony with existing and emerging EU and international standards for interoperability, data delivery, data visualization, and data integration (the INSPIRE directive). Second, the environmental challenges tackled in the project relate to the continuous nature of the marine environment and the variability in marine habitats, which may shift and change over time and be influenced by external factors that originate in one jurisdiction and have an effect on another. In this regard international co-operation was essential for developing a generic and not case-specific framework for marine Spatially Managed Areas. Third, MESMA may have an impact on developing policies such as the proposed EC Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning and Integrated Coastal Zone Management. Fourth, because of the potential commercial exploitation of the MESMA framework, associated web-based application and developed or modified tools the project also has the potential to leveraging some funds from the private sector, either to support the development of a more mature application or through expert consulting services provided by the academic partners. |

Environment in H2020: continuity or evolution?

The successor of the FP7's Cooperation Theme Environment (including Climate Change) is the Horizon 2020's Societal Challenge 5, "Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials", which includes the following broad areas of activity:

- Fighting and adapting to climate change;

- Protecting the environment, sustainably managing natural resources, water, biodiversity and ecosystems;

- Ensuring the sustainable supply of non-energy and non-agricultural raw materials;

- Enabling the transition towards a green economy and society through eco-innovation;

- Developing comprehensive and sustained global environmental observation and information systems; and

- Cultural heritage.

Compared with the activities covered by FP7-Environment we can observe that marine has been moved to Societal Challenge 2 ("Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime and Inland Water Research and the Bioeconomy"), while raw materials have been added.

The main changes are, however:

- Administrative: Under Horizon 2020, Societal Challenge 5's projects are managed by the Executive Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises (EASME). DG RTD focuses in policy, including the preparation of the bi-annual Strategic Programme.

- Stronger focus on delivering solutions: Horizon 2020 follows and deepens the trend initiated during FP7, when innovation became the main priority. Horizon 2020's SC5 calls aim at promoting large-scale demonstrations instead of single, often fragmented technological innovations. The goal is to increase the societal impact of Horizon 2020 action, which requires (i) more ambitious projects, (ii) a systemic innovation approach , and (iii) calls and topics structured along promising innovative areas such as Nature-Based Solutions, Re-Naturing Cities or Climate Services. In addition, due to the cross-cutting nature of environment, a higher number of calls are launched together with other Horizon 2020 parts (e.g. Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies and other Societal Challenges like "Bioeconomy").

10.7. Transport (including Aeronautics)

Please note that Clean Sky will be presented in a separate annex.

Objectives

Original objectives

The successive Work Programmes of theme 7 "Transport (including Aeronautics)" in the Cooperation programme defined the objective of transport research as follows:

Based on technological and operational advances and on the European transport policy, developing integrated, safer, “greener” and “smarter” pan-European transport systems for the benefit of all citizens and society and climate policy, respecting the environment and natural resources; and securing and further developing the competitiveness attained by the European industries in the global market

Consequently, the results from work programmes and projects are intended to serve a broad spectrum of European policies. At the same time transport research and innovation is an area of application for many of the results from curiosity driven research into future and emerging technologies to key enabling technologies and application-oriented solutions for industry.

Evolution of objectives to respond to the crisis

The economic recovery package, presented by the Commission in 2008, aimed at boosting growth and the creation of jobs. The development and market uptake of new and more environmentally friendly technologies in new vehicles was stimulated by financial support to research into the green technologies.

Beyond the European Green Cars Initiative (EGCI) as such, growing emphasis was put on innovation and deployable results over time. In 2011, as the economic crisis moved jobs and growth to the top of the political agenda, the focus of FP7 shifted from “Research and Development” to innovation, deeper attention was paid to the market orientation of activities. The 2011 call was strongly marked by the Europe 2020 strategy, placing a strong emphasis on Innovation and particularly on the uptake of EU research results. In 2012, the Work Programme was influenced by the issuing of the 2011 Transport White Paper and its medium and long-term targets. In 2013, the last work programme of FP7 built a bridge towards the new Horizon 2020, with particular care being put on balancing all the components of the innovation cycle.

How did FP7 Transport contribute to the competitiveness of European Transport industry?

Through the European Technology Platforms (ETPs), the Transport industry was involved as from the early stages. ETPs were actively engaged in providing input towards the setting of priorities. Via Strategic Research Agendas (SRAs), the ETPs provided strategic orientations to the work programme design by establishing research objectives and development priorities, timeframes and action plans (Roadmaps) tackling the challenges of the respective industrial sectors. Thereby, the industry needs in terms of competitiveness were well reflected in the design of the successive work programmes.

At project level, data from the Tri-Value programme assessment study shows that approximately half of project coordinators have engaged with developing a business plan and analysed markets (54% during the project and 34% after the project). About 40% of the respondents undertook technology transfer activities during the project period, increasing to almost 50% after the project conclusion. Three quarters made contact with potential clients during the project period. About 4% have succeeded in signing up agreements with private investors.

FP7 Transport contributed to supporting the development of new methods and applications. More than half of the FP7 Transport projects (>60%) delivered testing activities (validations and verifications) often linked to activities related to development of new products or services. Development of software, tools, models and applications (not marketed) is also very common (i.e. occurs in more than half of the projects).

A small proportion of projects (<20%) delivered new services, new products, new norms and standards or patents, which may reflect the fact that transport research and innovation in FP7 focused much more on early stage development rather than closer to market applications.

On average, one in five projects reported filing an application for a patent. Patent applications accounted for three in four reported Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). However, these figures only reflect IPR and patent applications filed during the lifetime of the project.

To assess the competitiveness needs and innovation propensity of European Transport research beneficiaries, a survey reviewed – amongst other things – the indicators of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). The 1.477 respondents reported a total of 440 commercial IPRs. These consist of 236 patents, 108 copyrights, 26 trade rights, and 70 trade secrets. 27% of all IPRs are already granted and 35% are submitted. Half of the patents and copyrights belong to commercial enterprises PRC (148) and SMEs (74).

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Within the Galileo sub-theme under the "Transport" theme, EU funded projects have produced commercial products or services, realised and tested prototypes, and registered patents/ trademarks.

According to the responses of the Transport Survey 2015,

60% of the outcomes of R&I activities led to incremental improvements of innovative solutions

“Disruptive” results were indicated by 40% of the respondents

47% of the outcomes belong to Private Commercial organisations (incl. SMEs), which reflects the industrial/ application oriented nature of Transport research

The respondents indicated that the outcomes of their R&I activities led to:

Innovative Methods (25%)

Innovative Technologies (24%)

Innovative Solutions such as Processes (20%), Products (16%), Services (15%).

Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) indicate the maturity of the outcomes in terms of their exploitation potential. The level relevant for a commercial exploitation of project results starts from TRL 4-6. Several respondents gave multiple indications on Technology Readiness Levels reached:

- 49% of the respondents declared TRL 1-3

- 37% related to TRL 4-6

- 14% to TRL 7-9

When analysing the overall distribution of Technology Readiness Levels, higher TRLs are reached in the following areas:

AAT - Aeronautics and air transport - AAT:

- The greening of air transport (Green Aircraft)

- Improving cost efficiency (Aircraft Operational Cost)

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Sustainable surface transport (rail, road and waterborne) - SST areas:

- The greening of products and operations

- Integrated safety and security for surface transport systems

- Competitive surface transport products and services

The highest TRL 7-9 is reached by 104 participants, mostly in the SST areas (81%).

Concerning Market Readiness, 34% of the respondents carried out demonstration and testing activities, of which 46% are PRC, 28% are HES, and 23% are REC. The highest incidence of demonstration and testing activities is found in the areas: Green Aircraft, and Aircraft Development Cost (AAT); The greening of products and operations, New transport and mobility concepts, Integrated safety and security for surface transport systems, and Competitive surface transport products and services (SST).

Further activities relate to prototyping (23%), technology transfer (18%), and feasibility & market studies (16%). Activities to develop business plans relate in particular to areas on “Improving safety and security” in SST.

  

The Transport Survey 2015 gave also evidence that project participants undertake efforts on both an individual level and also within the project consortium to valorise the research results and inventions. From 1.280 survey participants that provided an answer, 48% respondents stated that results are exploited internally by the organisation itself. Further 32% of the respondents stated that the results were used within the consortium (vertical exploitation). 20% of the respondents declared to target third parties outside the consortium to valorise the use of their results.

The project AdMap-GAS illustrates well the contribution of FP7 transport towards fostering the competitiveness of the European Transport industry. The main impact of this project was to show how a critical bottleneck in aero engine production could be overcome by developing an alternative process which would potentially give EU manufacturers an international competitive advantage. Furthermore, processes developed within the process can also be transferred into other industries, such as the motorsport sector. Along with high-level scientific publications and the application for patents as an output, the peculiarity of this project resides within the coordinating institution setting up a new department to promote further development of this manufacturing technology.

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How did FP7 Transport contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

As reported by beneficiaries interviewed in the framework of the TRI-VALUE evaluation, more than a third of FP7 Transport projects have been successful in creating a formal network within the scope of the project. Nearly 75% of the respondents also developed contacts with external organisations as a result of the project.

The access to complementary expertise and “network” effect from FP7 projects is one of the most intangible but important assets generated by the transport research. The TRI-VALUE analysis showed that more than a third of projects have been successful in creating a formal network within the scope of the project, and an overwhelming majority of participants (>86%) continued to cooperate even after completing the project for which they originally formed a consortium. Nearly 75% of the respondents also developed contacts with external organisations as a result of a project. This reflects a great support and considerable success by FP7 in building skills and knowledge networks for transport research across Europe.

The collaborative follow-up with members of the consortium or with external organisations is also not influenced by mode or project orientation. However, transport mode and policy orientation seem to exert some influence in relation to establishment of formal networks, compared with technological oriented projects. This seems to be a particularly relevant result in waterborne transport related projects, with nearly 75% of projects in that category referring to this type of networking. On the contrary, for aviation/aeronautics projects, formal networks look to be a relevant result in technological projects, but none of the air policy project coordinators reported such a type of collaborative effect. The difference may be due to the fact that networking was already a standing practice in aviation/aeronautics and relatively a new phenomenon in the waterborne sector. For the other modes (road and rail), no significant differences relative to their orientation were noticed.

Examples of networks originating from FP7 projects include the following:

- An End Users’ Platform working as a pool of accessibility experts from EU networks representing the elderly and people with different types of disabilities, with the aim of providing advice on the accessibility of public transport within European projects and beyond was established in the context of the MEDIATE project

- EDINNA, an educational network of inland waterway navigation schools and training institutes founded within the PLATINA project

- ITxPT, an initiative aiming to further cooperate on the implementation of standards for plug-and-play IT-systems applied to public transport, formed from the X-NOISE EV project

- DELTA Network of Regions, originated in the framework of the DELTA project

- LivingRAIL extended panel of experts including professionals, researchers and customers

ERANETs

As one of the tools of the Seventh Framework Programme, the ERA-NET scheme performed a pivotal role in enhancing coherence and scale in the European research landscape via the improved coordination and cooperation of national and regional research programmes.

Between 2007 and 2013, one project a year was financed under the Transport ERA-NET calls. Broad in scope, the ERA-NET scheme covered all transport modes, with six projects financed in Surface Transport and one in Aviation. The cumulated EC contribution over the whole period amounted to about EUR 20,7 MIO for a total project value of about EUR 43,6 MIO. ERA-NET projects entailed a higher-than-average number of beneficiaries: about 20, compared to an overall average of 13,6 participants / project for Transport projects in FP7.

ELECTROMOBILITY+ and INFRAVATION were "ERA-NET Plus" projects. Under such scheme, national research programmes were “topped-up” with EC funding in order to support R&I projects in the fields covered in such ERA-NET Plus. With the INFRAVATION ERA-NET Plus there was also a contribution from the USA, amounting to 1 million euro.

International cooperation

International cooperation in Transport research is primarily aimed at facing global challenges while strengthening the European transport research area.

The added value in terms of helping the European transport industry lead at international level is particularly noticeable in major maritime and air projects with partners such as Korea, China and USA. Furthermore, given the complex and global nature of air transport, European funding plays a key role in supporting this kind of research.

International cooperation focussed on cross-cutting issues (HERMES - 2014, EU-TRAIN - 2013, ENABLE - 2011 and TRANSBONUS - 2010) and mode-specific cooperation in aviation/aeronautics (CANNAPE - 2013, AERA-PRO - 2013, AEROAFRICA-EU - 2011, AERO-UKRAINE - 2011, COPAIR-LA - 2010 and AEROCHINA2 - 2009), road (SIMBA II - 2010, TRANSAFRICA - 2010, EAGAR - 2010), rail (NEAR2 - 2014) and waterborne (-).

Examples of international cooperation with a thematic focus are greening in aviation (GRAIN - 2012, SUNJET - 2012), sustainable urban road transport (SOLUTIONS - 2016, VIAJEO PLUS - 2016 and STADIUM - 2013), improved mobility of people and freight (Enhanced WISETRIP -2014), safety in aviation (COOPERATEUS - 2012) and road safety (SAFERBRAIN - 2012). There are many more projects to be mentioned if we take the participation of international cooperation partners in regular research and innovation projects into account.

The number of international cooperation actions supported throughout the programme has increased. More than 200 international participants were involved and 118 projects that included international participants were funded. Four "coordinated calls" resulted in 12 funded projects. The evaluation showed that challenges remain in this area, notably concerning the assessment of the added-value of the engagement of international partners and the extent to which this allows, for example, the establishment of networks at global level similar to those that are being established at European level. The Interim Report on FP7 noted that participation of the strategically important BRICS countries in FP7 is still weak, despite efforts to increase collaboration and raise awareness about FP7 in these countries. In addition to direct funding of participants in projects, the instruments with strong potential for further development are the coordinated calls and the synchronised calls.

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Collaborations in FP7 Transport projects

How did FP7 Transport contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional Transport research policies?

Coordination of European, national and regional Transport research policies was reinforced through:

- ETPs, that provided a good basis for interaction between the Commission and the national and regional levels through the operations of the mirror groups and the National Platforms

- The ERA-NET scheme, enhancing coordination and cooperation of national and regional research programmes

- The convergence and complementarity in national priority setting, involving both Transport and Research authorities

The FP7 Transport programme strengthened the existing well-structured research community. Pre-existing partnerships form the core of the projects, which were completed by new partners with complementary competences according to specific project needs. For two thirds of the projects, the level of cooperation between the partners was strong and effective. The FP7 Transport programme also had a broadening effect: the programme involved participants beyond the pattern of national specialisation in R&D. FP7 funded projects that were too complex and risky to be funded without public support, although these projects were normally related to the core business of the companies involved.

FP7 transport successfully complemented national funding schemes for research. A number of FP7 project coordinators reported that the activities they were involved in would simply not have been performed without funding from the European Commission. This is reported to be particularly true for aviation and shipping, which are by nature trans-national.

Annual work programmes were adopted by the European Commission with the assistance of the Programme Committee, thereby ensuring the coordination with MS activities and implementing ERA in terms of optimal co-operation and competition, optimal circulation and transfer of scientific knowledge, and more effective national research systems.

All in all, FP7 Transport had a positive leverage effect in promoting national research efforts. EU funding catalysed national funders to join and co-invest towards common objectives.

How did FP7 Transport strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

While strongly geared towards application, FP7 transport activities showed a high degree of scientific excellence and have had a significant impact on knowledge generation, measurable in terms of number of publications and patents. Within the reference population of the projects included in the Commission's SESAM – RESPIR database, the number of peer-reviewed publications per project totalled 324 – or an average of about 1,9 publications per project (about 2 publications per project in Aviation projects and about 1,7 in Surface Transport projects
[163](#footnote163)
 ).

Open access was granted for about one in two publications. Most publications occurred in Surface Transport projects:

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | % of projects with at least one publication | Number of publications |
| Aviation | 28% | 124 |
| Surface Transport | 33% | 187 |
| Cross-cutting | 16% | 13 |
| Overall | 29% | 324 |

However, based on the Transport Survey 2015 carried out amongst participants in FP7 Transport projects, these figures need to be revised upwards. Considering a reply rate of 25%, the numbers are considerably higher. Indeed, publications included in the Commission's databases are only those occurring during the lifetime of the projects. Later publications can hardly be tracked.

Almost 3.250 scientific publications were reported from the survey, i.e. an average of 6,5 publications per project (out of the 501 projects represented in the survey). About 40% of the publications are declared by HES, and 31% are from industries.

There is a balanced share for the published and submitted publications between Aeronautics (55%) and Surface Transport (42%):

From the AAT publications 3/4 relate to the areas

- The greening of air transport (Green Aircraft)

- Improving cost efficiency (Aircraft Operational Cost)

- Pioneering the air transport of the future

From the SST publications 3/4 relate to the areas:

- The ‘European Green Cars Initiative’

- The greening of surface transport

- Improving safety and security

- Strengthening competitiveness (Competitive surface transport products and services)

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Concerning patents, figures were comparable in both Aeronautics and air transport (AAT) and Sustainable surface transport (rail, road and waterborne) (SST)

The highest number of patents in Aviation were declared under two areas:

- Green Aircraft

- Promising Pioneering Ideas in Air Transport

One quarter of the patents in Surface transport were declared under the areas:

- Optimised thermal engine development and integration

- The greening of products and operations

- Competitive surface transport products and services

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Outputs from FP7 Transport projects

How did FP7 Transport promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

In FP7 transport, education and technology transfer in the area of transport focussed on the innovations and improvements in the systems for education and research themselves for transport in general (-) and more specifically aviation/aeronautics (E-CAERO - 2013), road (-), rail (SKILLRAIL - 2011, CETRRA - 2010) and waterborne (EUROVIP - 2014, KNOW-ME - 2014).

PhD and post-doctoral fellowships were generated through participation in collaborative research projects of the Transport Programme. Extrapolation indicates that about 2300 additional positions – including Scientific managers, Experienced researchers (i.e. PhD holders) and PhD students – were created specifically under FP7 Transport projects, ensuring the education and advanced training of tomorrow's high potential innovators.

Efforts to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers included, at the international level, International Cooperation activities carried out under the FP7 Transport theme, with all calls open to researchers and research institutions from third countries. For areas of mutual interest, enhanced participation of certain third countries was emphasized, namely with Eastern Europe and Central Asia (including Russia) and large emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Industrialised countries such as USA and Japan were targeted for collaboration in a number of topics.

How did FP7 Transport provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

Transport Research in FP7 was geared towards contributing to key policy areas. In this sense, the Transport Research and Innovation Achievements Report
[164](#footnote164)
 identifies three high level objectives on which FP7 funded transport projects focused on:

- Resource efficient transport that respects the environment. Important intended effects of projects in this area were: (a) reducing or eliminating impacts on climate and health, (b) reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and (c) reducing weight and lowering resistance of the aircraft/vehicle/vessel.;

- Better mobility, less congestion, more safety and security. In FP7 projects, focus was put on the idea of co-modality and enhanced intermodality, on safety of aircraft/vehicles/vessels, on avoidance of deliberate attacks and illegal acts to improve security to improve security are taken into account. Some research and innovation in this field was done on a system level and in a generic way, whereas the practical implementation took place in the remit of the modes.

- Global leadership for the European transport industry, implemented by projects in a number of focus areas: entirely new transport concepts, next generation of transport means (including on board smart control systems) and advanced production processes.

Within the TRI-VALUE evaluation, project coordinators were asked to state whether policy recommendations were produced as an output of the projects. a substantial majority (>60%) of FP7 Transport policy oriented projects and a large share (>40%) of technology oriented projects reported producing policy recommendations. With more than a quarter of policy related projects and close to one fifth of the technology related projects producing outputs to be used by the European Institutions, with the indication that 60% of all projects delivered policy recommendations and with project coordinators estimating that 15 to 30% of projects already produced outputs that were “used to date” by the EU Institutions, the TRI-VALUE evaluation concluded that FP7 activities have a substantial contribution to the European transport policy making process.

Hence, the TRI-VALUE evaluation concluded that there is good alignment between the work conducted under FP7 and the transport policy objectives. In particular, GHG reduction and safety were key areas of focus for transport research, followed by pollutants reduction and energy efficiency. Across all modes there is a large number of projects contributing directly or indirectly to those objectives. The use by EU institutions of policy projects is mostly noticed for rail and water projects, namely its use in policy papers and implementation (i.e. via a Directive or Regulation). For technology projects, the use of results is noticed mostly as “reference in documents”, namely for rail and urban projects.

However, probably associated with the long timeframe of the decision-making processes, a relatively small share of projects (<20%) referred to Norms and Standards as an actual project output.

European, national and local authorities are users of results from policy projects. Public authorities can take a role as participants in projects (i.e. local authorities in CIVITAS). The use in policies and strategies is also noticeable in aviation, road and waterborne projects. As to rail projects, the use of results by public authorities, was only reported for a few projects, mainly of technology nature.

How did FP7 Transport increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

A meaningful example of how FP7 Transport favoured coordination and access to technological infrastructure is wind tunnel testing.

Wind tunnel testing has evolved a great deal since the 1950s. Today wind tunnels are highly sophisticated machines used for high-productivity testing of compressibility effects, flow physics and noise emissions in aviation/aeronautics.

For European research infrastructures the issue is if each wind tunnel should be able to offer the full spectrum of expertise and capacities or if the better option is to develop smart specialisation. Such specialisation has been spurred on by increasingly strict aerodynamic requirements and larger and larger scale models as well as the fact that physical constraints of simulation parameters are limiting. To boost European research in wind tunnels, it is imperative that the main facilities work together, combining their respective specialisations: the ONERA-S1MA transonic wind tunnel in France, the DNW-LLF subsonic wind tunnel in the Netherlands and the pressurised cryogenic facility ETW in Germany. This development was supported by a workshop and two European projects:

- A workshop organised in Brussels in February 2013, on Aviation Research Infrastructures in Europe brought together all the relevant aviation stakeholders, such as national and European authorities, agencies, industry, research institutions and academics.

- The 'European strategic wind tunnels improved research potential' (ESWIRP) project reinforced wind tunnel research through the development of generic and specific mathematical models for improving flow quality in the three partner wind tunnels.

- Under the OPENAIR project, new measurement techniques and testing facilities were used e.g. for an integrated approach to lowering aircraft external noise by noise reduction technologies (total of 15) for both engine- and airframe related noise sources validated to TRL 4/5 through large scale testing on fan rigs, jet noise facilities and wind tunnels.

How much did FP Transport contribute to job creation?

As for economic aspects, the project impacts on key economic priorities (i.e. job creation, stabilizing consumer prices, stabilising public authorities’ budget and general macroeconomic increasing) were not easily detectable in many transport projects. Around 30% of the project coordinators interviewed reported to have contributed to job creation. There seemed to be, however, difficulties associated with the ex-post assessment of some key impacts. That suggests that there might be a need to improve the measurement and quantification of project benefits and impacts and a new mechanism for following the impacts of projects after the official completion date.

Various projects focussed on the uptake of skilled labour in the transport market and the raising awareness of potential job opportunities in (surface) transport in general (TECH-CLINIC SST - 2009) and mode-specific in aviation/aeronautics (FLY HIGHER - 2014, EDUCAIR - 2013, RESTARTS - 2012), road (-), rail (FUTURAIL - 2010) and waterborne (PROMARC - 2010).

To what extent do the results of FP7 Transport contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

FP7 Transport contributed to achieving several Commission's priorities:

To boost jobs, growth and investment. Uptake of research results in the transport market focussed on analysis of pathways and best conditions for innovation (TIPS - 2014, T-TRANS - 2014 and AIMS - 2010) and the role of actors and regions (MARKET-UP - 2012). Participation by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in transport research and innovation was stimulated and supported in general (INTRASME - 2014, STAR-NET TRANSPORT - 2011), through regional clusters (B2B LOCO - 2011, SMART - 2011), mode-specific/aviation (SME-AERO-POWER - 2013, MONITOR - 2011 and AEROPORTAL - 2010) and surface transport modes (STAR-NET TRANSPORT - 2011). In the European green Cars initiative (PPP), the Commission works closely with industry to design work programmes which are fully in line with industry’s priorities. There is a long-term commitment on both sides which is vital in pursuing industrial technologies in a strategic way, being more effective in the translation of the research into the marketplace. In addition, the significant innovation-linked activities (pilots, demonstrators, prototypes) and strong industrial drive help bridge the so-called valley of death between technology development and applications.

To implement a resilient Energy Union with a forward looking climate change policy. The achievements of the FP7 funded projects largely covered the FP7 policy objectives and contribute to its goals by revealing innovative CO2 reduction solutions and policy strategies, by reducing the vulnerability of the transport systems facing extreme weather events, and by promoting means to enhance energy efficiency.

The economic recovery package, presented by the Commission in 2008, was already referred to here before. The European Green Cars Initiative (EGCI) was a public private partnership, focussing on electrification of cars and vans, increasing energy efficiency In particular, in passenger road transport energy efficiency of vehicles is expected to improve by 21% in 2020 and 35% in 2030 relative to 2005, leading to a decline in energy demand in passenger road transport by 2030. Beyond 2030, energy demand of passenger road transport is expected to stabilize . Research and innovation to enable these improvements not only took place in EGCI, but was also echoed in the regular Work Programmes and together had an impact that was traceable towards the end of FP7.

The Clean Sky (CS) Joint Technology Initiative ( JTI), was also a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the European Commission and the aeronautical industry, set up to bring significant step changes regarding the environmental impact of aviation, by speeding up technological breakthrough developments, shortening the time to market for new and cleaner solutions tested on full scale demonstrators including test flights and contributing significantly to reducing the environmental footprint of aviation (i.e. emissions and noise reduction but also green life cycle) for future generations and to ensure the highest level of European competitiveness in this area.

To achieve A Connected Digital Single MarketResearch and Innovation in FP7 transport contributed to enhancing the use of digital technologies and online services.

Examples of activities on smart equipment include an open platform to support the transport operations, planning and a wide range of traveller information services, cross-modal journey planning, dynamic route guidance, effective payment access and improved personal mobility (VIAJEO – 2012), specifications and standardisation for a new generation of interlocking systems for train signalling system (INESS - 2012), a reduction of maintenance costs (up to 25%) for commercial vehicles due to an optimised maintenance strategy (MODE - 2012) and preparatory work for the use of European satellite navigation programmes (EGNOS, Galileo) for different transport modes.

To make Europe a stronger global actor. Transport research and innovation in FP7 concentrated on the next generation of transport means, on board, smart control systems, advanced production processes and the exploration of entirely new transport concepts. European leadership in enabling and industrial technologies (LEITs, e.g. ICT and micro-electronics, nanotechnologies, new materials, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, space) boosted the application in transport and spurred innovation for next generation issues in all transport means. On the next generation of transport means (the way to secure market share in the future) cross-cutting R&I efforts focussed on breakthrough solutions from multi-disciplinary collaborations, sometimes on a more general level for competitive product development (EXCITING - 2012, MID-MOD - 2011, COMPAIR - 2011), encouraging radical technology changes (YEAR in 2008 and 2010). The main achievements from completed FP7 projects in relation to on board smart control systems are to be found at programme level the “i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative" to remove bottlenecks in rolling out intelligent systems and to speed the development of smarter, safer and cleaner transport for Europe and the on board systems to enable drivers, pilots and others that are responsible for the speed and direction of a vehicle to link with traffic management systems.. In 2008, the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for Factories of the Future (FoF) was launched under the European Economic Recovery Plan. PPP activities comprised in total 150 high level projects involving top industrial companies and research institutions in Europe, including the transport modes. The exploration of entirely new transport concepts was nearly exclusively the domain in the aviation sector.

To what extent was FP7 Transport coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

Firstly, coherence was ensured overtime by FP7 transport adapting to developments in the overall community policies. In 2011, as the new Barroso II Commission took over and the economic crisis moved jobs and growth to the top of the political agenda, the focus of FP7 shifted from “Research and Development” to innovation, i.e. to a deeper attention to the market orientation of activities. This had an impact on transport policy, for instance in the main transport policy background provided by the White Paper on Transport: while the first calls were marked by the objectives of the 2001 White Paper and its midterm review of 2006, the final calls took as reference the 2011 Transport White Paper. Consequently, the scope of the different topics has been aligned and influenced by the main policy papers issued along the period.

Coherence was also sought in relation to exploring synergies between FP7 and other EU funding sources. Cohesion Policy funds’ investments in transport and research infrastructure led to increased national and regional capacities, paving the way to excellence by supporting actors’ participation (in particular SMEs but not only) to the EU research programme, or by enabling market deployment of EU funded research results. In parallel, research results provided solid scientific basis for the Cohesion Policy to invest where added value for its objectives could be achieved by deploying innovative solutions into the market.

The FP7 Transport Programme Committee reflected on the synergies that existed between the framework programme for research and innovation and the structural funds and on how they could be enhanced within the next framework programme H2020. The TPC expert group produced a guide aiming, on one hand, at raising awareness of the transport sector main actors managing both policies over the possibilities of synergies, supporting their thesis with concrete FP7 examples, and on the other hand, at identifying the transport areas where synergies could be best exploited

  

Which was the added value of FP7 Transport when compared with national transport research and innovation programmes?

According to the Tri-Value programme assessment study, one half of projects of FP7 Transport would not have been launched if it was not under FP7 Transport programme, or it would have been launched in a more reduced scale and scope. This is reported to be particularly true for aviation and shipping, which are by nature trans-national, and which would be disadvantaged if they had to rely exclusively on national funding for R&D activities.

The FP7 Transport programme has brought together the complementary competencies of the best European R&D actors in the field (and occasionally further afar) and assembled consortia with partners from a range of countries so as to provide a truly pan-European view or foundation, e.g. for regulatory purposes. It has also provided the necessary scale and scope to address key transport challenges. This is especially required for costly applied research.

High EU added value stems from activities within FP7 transport according to the coordinators interviewed, who attribute this value to aspects such as the “network effect” access to complementary expertise, or to overcoming barriers for uptake of results. In general, results are consistent across modes.

In the aviation sector, access to trans-national complementary expertise and overcoming lack of funding at the national level were important in 80% of the projects surveyed. This shows the critical importance of EU funding in aeronautics and air transport research and technology development.

In intermodal, rail, road and urban projects the elements mentioned in the assessment of added value included

- Access to complementary expertise

- Understanding the needs of a wider market

- Capitalising on previous EU experience

Overcoming the lack of national funding.It can be concluded that European funding is playing a critical role in providing funding for issues of importance at EU level, as most projects would find it impossible to gather funding for research in the covered topics elsewhere, regardless of the fact most coordinators do work simultaneously in EU and National research programmes.

In conclusion, evidence reviewed in TRI-VALUE demonstrates considerable added value from European research, as it contributes to promoting excellent science in transport at the European level. Firstly, it shows that the trans-national consortium work enables researchers to verify and think in conceptually broadened terms.

Whilst added value comes from the collaboration across borders and experiences and skills which contribute to a more comprehensive piece of research, national research funding rules often do not permit funding of international projects.

  

Transport in H2020: continuity or evolution?

The transport component of FP7 was already strongly geared towards applications and innovation. The further boosting of these dimensions can be considered as the main novelty in H2020 compared to FP7, together with the increasing importance of policy objectives.

The main element of continuity between transport in FP7 and H2020, on the other hand, are the competitiveness and the sustainability components, which are at the heart of both programmes.

In detail, during FP7 EU research activities have undergone significant changes and have witnessed a shift from mere project funding to research policy making, with an increased emphasis on the innovation potential of research and its impact on society in general and the economy in particular. This evolution calls for greater attention to be paid to the output and impact of EU funded R&I, for strengthening the feedback loop from R&I activities into policy making at EU level and beyond, and for increased efforts to assess the cumulative achievements of the research programmes. Therefore, the transport research and innovation achievements report looks into the continuity at the level of the major policy objectives as overarching two or more programming periods (both FP7 and H2020). This 'achievements report' should in fact be seen as a component of a dissemination and exploitation strategy aimed at reinforcing the relevance, the usefulness and the effectiveness of EU Transport R&I. In parallel to the reinforcement of the feedback loop into policy there is the development of tracking project participants for their innovation potential and tracing of project results for how to speed up their way to market uptake. So, there is continuity and evolution at the same time.
  
10.8. Socioeconomic Sciences and Humanities (SSH)

How did FP7 SSH contribute to the competitiveness of European industry? 

The specific case of SSH research should be acknowledged in the analysis of the different types of exploitation of the results. Patents, prototypes, demonstrators, and other commercial exploitation uses of the knowledge are not usual among SSH
[165](#footnote165)
. However, five projects (INFOCON, IKNOW, MEDPRO, SUSTAINCITY, and SELUSI) have self-reported to have created spin offs companies.

The IKNOW project aimed at identifying events and developments potentially shaking or shaping (Wild Cards and Weak Signals) the future of science, technology and innovation (STI) in the European Research Area (ERA). One main result has been the creation of Futures Diamonds, a spin-off company. Future Diamonds designs and develops systems and technological solutions supporting innovation processes for government, business, research and education actors at local, national and international levels, and offers job to a whole team of programmers, web-coders and designers. The company provides its services and solutions to 2.100 users worldwide (members) from 112 countries of the 5 continents. One of the solutions and services offered and created is the Horizon Scanning Platform, a horizon scanning system on key issues affecting the future of the health and social care workforce in the United Kingdom. This platform is managed by the Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) that is an independent agency working on specific projects for the Department of Health (UK).
[166](#footnote166)

How did FP7 SSH contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

Most of projects (237, that is, 95,3% regarding the total number of FP7 SSH projects) are coordinated by EU member states; 3,8% of projects are coordinated by associated countries (8 Switzerland and 5 Norway) and 0,9% by candidate countries (1 Turkey and 1 Iceland). Coordination is concentrated in the group of EU-15 states led by the UK (50), Germany (30), Italy (24), and the Netherlands (23). The same patterns are observed in the FP5 and FP6 data. Among the recently integrated Member States, only 3 countries (Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania) have coordinated SSH projects in FP7. 

It is also important to remark the link between the amount of projects coordination and the participation as partner: those countries with higher amount of coordinated projects are also those with a highest participation as partners. However, it is important to point that all countries took part in the FP7. The overall EC average contribution per project is around 2.280.000€ and the average of project participants is around 11, meaning a high rate of cross-country links per project.

Based on the IMPACT-EV questionnaire, FP7 researchers reported to have collaborated with other European projects and research organisations in relation to their research. Actually, 46% of the projects that reported achieving impact on ERA have collaborated with other FP projects, with an average of 2.9 projects (collaborations) per project. The range of values goes from collaboration with 1 project to a maximum of 6 projects (i.e. INSPIRES project).

Furthermore, 20.8% of the projects collaborated with non-FP projects, with an average of 2.5 projects (collaborations) per project. Again, the range of values goes from collaboration with 1 project to a maximum of 6 projects (i.e. FINESS project). Regarding the collaboration with research organisations, 12.5% of these projects mentioned this type of collaboration. Some examples highlight, for instance, the HI-POD project which collaborated with a relevant research infrastructure: Dariah-EU (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities).

In general, collaborations among research projects and organisations include a number of different initiatives: joint conferences, being part of the advisory board, co-writing a policy brief, cross-invitation at project seminars, workshops and conferences, joint meetings, presentations, dissemination of findings among networks, interviews with researchers, exchange and comparison of results.

How did FP7 SSH contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

The analysis of FP7 projects’ Final Reports reveals that 95% of the projects have engaged with citizens or civil society organisations and 92% have done so with governments or public bodies or policy makers in their efforts to enhance their potential for social and political impact. Among them, the 33% involved specific actors whose role was mainly to organise the dialogue with citizens and civil society organisations (e.g. professional mediators, communication, companies, and science museums). In the majority of the cases this engagement involved forms of communication and dissemination of the project results, and in some of them it also involved collaboration in implementing the research results or in framing the research agenda.

FARHORIZON project (Use of foresight to align research with longer term policy needs in Europe)

The main objective of the project was to explore the long term challenges which face different sectors (or which cut across sectors) and to build a shared vision that could guide the development of the relevant European research agenda. For this purpose, the methodology included the use of "Success Scenario Workshop". The participants to these workshops included representatives from national governments (up to vice-minister level), European Commission (up to Director and Cabinet level), industry (up to Vice-President of an MNE and Chairman of an ETP) and scientific experts of high standing. One of the project’s ending remarks was the fact that the themes analysed in the project coincided with main elements of the Europe 2020 and Innovation Union agendas, which were published later.

Beyond the collaborative research projects, the Coordination and Support Actions implemented in FP7 have promoted the alliance between different stakeholders, policy makers and civil society. The Support Action FLASH-IT has provided a forum for debate and it has developed new mechanisms to engage researchers, policy-makers, industry and CSO in order to transfer and enhance the existing knowledge of a wide range of topics. Furthermore, the four Social Platforms funded by the European Union’s research (between 2007 and 2013) are also a good example of the establishment of synergies among different stakeholders. In the report “EU Social Platforms: A review on an experiment in collaborative research design ” in which the effectiveness of these platforms is evaluated (SOCIAL POLIS, FAMILYPLATFORM, SPREAD and INNOSERV), highlighted the creation, in all these platforms, of a space for constructive dialogue between academics and civil society. Moreover, the four platforms had or are having an active interaction with policy makers, at local, national and European level.

How did FP7 SSH strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

The reviewed FP7 SSH projects have relative significant scientific impact, not only producing a considerable number of publications (mainly article, and books) but also through their citations, conference presentations and leading to subsequent research opportunities.

Almost 80% of the FP7 SSH projects
[167](#footnote167)
 (78%) have published articles in peer reviewed journals, leading to an average of 16 articles per project. Nearly two thirds of the articles (72%) are published by one third of the projects, which indicates the existence of a group of highly productive research teams.

According to the data collected in the IMPACT-EV questionnaire, scientific publications tend to be the most common procedure to disseminate new knowledge within the scientific community. By analysing the researchers’ responses to the question about their 10 most representative publications, most of the publications are in peer reviewed journal articles (68%), followed by book chapters (11,4%) and books (9,8%). Publicly available Full reports (3,3%) are also present in various projects while non-peer-reviewed journal articles (2,4%), journal editorials (2,5%) newsletters (0,8%) are less common. Different to other scientific areas, the specific importance for SSH research of books is important to be highlighted here, as if it is ignored, it does not fully reflect the disciplinary tradition.

In terms of citation patterns, data from the IMPACT-EV questionnaire indicates that when the Journal Citation Report (JCR) quartile is reported, articles tend to be published in the first quartile. Thus, drawing from other impact factor sources, the number of citations in Scopus and Google Scholar reveals that the 39% of the projects have been cited at least once.

Furthermore, FP7 SSH Cooperation projects have involved research consortiums of excellent researchers. Scientific productivity among these scholars is a clear indicator of this excellence. An analysis of the consortium’s productivity -of a sample of 134 FP7 collaborative projects (including a total amount of 3.540 researchers)- reveals that in 98 of those (73%) at least one of the researchers has more than 10 JCR publications. The analysis also shows an average of 98 JCR publications per consortium. This indicates how FP7 was able to attract and promote excellent research teams across Europe. This data is highly relevant considering that in the field of SSH the average of JCR publications is lower than in other fields of research.

The average of JCR publications per researcher is 3,71 taking into account that this figure includes a significant amount of young researchers with no publications. Excluding those with 1 or 0 publications, the average goes up to 8,5 per researcher. It is a proof of the high level of scientific publication of the researchers and the importance of the training of early career researchers.

Another proof of the excellence criteria is the presence of many top researchers in the projects awarded with different prizes and distinctions. At the international level, we find highly recognised researchers, such as the Nobel Prize in economy Jean Tirole, who has been involved in three projects. Other international awards are the annual distinction of the International Social Science Council (ISSC), the Schumpeter Prize Competition, or the recognition of being among the top 5% economists in the RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) worldwide ranking. At the European level, we find awards such as the one from the European Science Foundation on pioneering demographic research, and an Yrjo Jahnsson medal awarded by the European Economic Association. Finally, national prizes include for instance a National Natural Science Prize, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a Certificate of Merit for Pre-Eminent Contribution to Creative Legal Scholarship by American Society of International Law, or a Fellow of the British Academy.

  

FP7 SSH projects: scientific impact

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Publications (weight 5)1 | | | | | | Scientific dissemination (weight 3) | | | | | | | | Subsequent research (weight 5) | | | | | | | | Scientific Impact Value | Scientific Impact Score7 |
|  | Peer-reviewed journal article (weight 20) | | Books/chapters  (weight 10) | | Others (weight 5) | | Conferences Invited (weight 20) | | Conferences Submitted & Accepted (weight 15) | | Seminars Organization (weight 10) | | Seminars Attendance (weight 5) | | International (weight 20) | | European (weight 15) | | National (weight 10) | | Local  (weight 5) | |  |  |
| ACRONYM | N | Score2 | N | Score3 | N | Score3 | N | Score4 | N | Score4 | N | Score4 | N | Score4 | N | Score5 | N | Score5 | N | Score5 | N | Score5 |  |  |
| ASPA  (FP7 CP-FP) | 47 | 21 | 5 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 29 | 3 | -- | -- | 12 | 3 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 23806 | 10 |
| ASPRO CEE 2007  (FP7 CP-FP) | 41 | 17 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 19 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1880 | 10 |
| CHANGING BEHAVIOUR  (FP7 ENERGY) | 8 | 9 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | 1150 | 8 |
| GINI  (FP7 CP-FP) | 36 | 16 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 2 | 11 | 3 | 19 | 3 | -- | -- | 24 | 3 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 2285 | 10 |
| GUSTO  (FP7 CP-FP) | 24 | 11 | 8 | 4 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 6 | 2 | -- | -- | 6 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1420 | 9 |
| INCLUD-ED  (FP6 IP) | 73 | 20 | 4 | 2 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 18 | 3 | -- | -- | 8 | 2 | -- | -- |  | -- | 3 | 1 | -- | -- | 2375 | 10 |
| MERCURY  (FP7 CP-FP) | 11 | 5 | 13 | 5 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | 58 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 51 | 3 | -- | -- | 3 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1090 | 8 |

1 Each type of scientific impact has a different weight assigned.

2 A score is assigned according to: a) the number of articles published: for 1-5 articles=1; 6-10=2; 11-15=3; 16-20=4; 21-25=5; 26-30=6; 31-35=7; 36-40=8; 41-45=9; >45=10; b) the sum of all the individual impacts: each article has an individual score depending on the journal quartile of JCR (Q1=1; Q2=0,75; Q3=0,5; Q4=0,25, no JCR quartile =0) plus the cites achieved (for cites in WOS and Scopus, 1 to 5 cites= 0,25; 6 to 10= 0,5; 11 to 20 = 0,75; more than 20 = 1. For cites in Google scholar, 1 to 25 cites = 0,25; 26 to 50 = 0,5; 51 to 100 = 0,75; more than 100 = 1). Final score for Project articles is the sum of a) and b).

3 A score is assigned according to: a) the number of books or chapters published: for 1-5 books/chapters=1; 6-10=2; 11-15=3;16-20=4; 21-25=5;26-30=6; 31-35=7; 36-40=8; 41-45=9; >45=10; b) the sum of all the individual impacts: each book/chapter has an individual score depending on the publisher prestige based on whether they are indexed in the Book Citation Index – Web of Science (
<http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex>
): 1 if it is included, 0 if it is not.

4 Score is assigned according to the number of conferences (invited / submitted & accepted) / seminars (organized / attended): 1 to 5 = 1; 6 to 10 = 2; more than 10 = 3.

5 Score is assigned according to the number of subsequent projects developed: 1 to 3 = 1; 4 to 5 = 2; more than 5 = 3.

6 5x20x21 + 5x10x2 + 3x15x3 + 3x5x3 = 2380

7 10 (>1500), 9 (1251-1500), 8 (1001-1250), 7 (801-1000), 6 (601-800), 5 (401-600), 4 (301-400), 3 (201-300), 2 (101-200), 1 (0-100)

How did FP7 SSH promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

FP7 SSH supported training through activities such as summer schools, study visits, teacher training programmes or PhD students’ meetings engaged in the projects’ development. Beyond that, projects have had a relevant commitment with science education. According to the available final reports (a sample of 119 projects), 45% have generated science education materials like kits, websites, explanatory booklets, DVDs, among others. Moreover, 31% of these projects (37 projects) have reported working with students and/or school pupils in activities such as: open days, participation in science festivals and events, prizes/competitions or joint projects.

FP7 SSH also contributes to mobility of researchers: 33% of the FP7 SSH projects that reported impacts on ERA specified they promoted mobility opportunities for the researchers in their teams. The answer varies significantly across projects, from 5% of the researchers having mobility opportunities to 100%. Besides, 37.5% of the projects reported that the participation in the project has led to career advancement for staff of their team.

FP7 SSH projects: impacts on collaborations, employment and career advancement

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Collaborations (weight 3)1 | | | | | | | | | | Employment (weight 3) | | | | Career Advancement (weight 3) | | | | ERA Impact Value | ERA Impact Score7 |
|  | FP projects  (weight 20) | | Other Projects  (weight 15) | | Eu/Int Org  (weight 15) | | Nat Org  (weight 10) | | Eu Infr  (weight 5) | | Researchers employed  (weight 10) | | Junior researchers (weight 5) | | % Mobility  (Weight 5) | | % Position promotion (weight 10) 4 | |  |  |
| ACRONYM | Num | Score2 | Num | Score | Num | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score3 | N | Score | % | Score5 | % | Score |  |  |
| EUMARGINS (FP7 CP-FP) | 5 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 5 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 58 | 3 | 2406 | 9 |
| FINESS  (FP7 CP-FP) | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 15 | 2 | 13 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 195 | 8 |
| HOLY AND LAY  (ERC) | -- | -- | 4 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | 100 | 3 | 25 | 1 | 195 | 8 |
| INSPIRES (FP7 CP-FP) | 7 | 2 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 10 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 195 | 8 |
| LOCALISE (FP7 CP-FP) | 5 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 46 | 2 | -- | -- | 7 | 1 | -- | -- | 195 | 8 |
| POLHIA  (FP7 CP-FP) | 5 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 14 | 2 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | 1,29 | 1 | 225 | 9 |
| SAWS  (FP7 HERA) | -- | -- | 16 | 3 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 17 | 2 | -- | -- | 60 | 3 | 14,26 | 1 | 285 | 9 |
| TAP  (FP7 HERA) | -- | -- | 4 | 2 | 9 | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 11 | 2 | 3 | 1 | -- | .. | 75 | 3 | 345 | 10 |

1 Each type of impact has a different weigh assigned.

2 This score is assigned according to intervals of the number of collaborations: 1 to 3 =1; 4 to 10= 2; more than 10 = 3.

3 This score is assigned according to intervals of the number of senior or junior researchers employed: 1 to 10 =1; 11 to 50 = 2; more than 50 =3.

4 Percentage of researchers promoted in relation to the size of the consortium.

5 This score is assigned according to intervals of the percentage of mobility among researchers and the percentage of position promotion: 1 to 25% = 1; 26 to 50% = 2; more than 50% = 3.

6 Example: 3x20x2+3x10x1+3x10x3= 240

7 This score is assigned according to intervals of the ERA Impact Value: 10 (>300), 9 (201-300), 8 (101-200), 7 (81-100), 6 (61-80) , 5 (41-60), 4 (31-40), 3 (21-30), 2 (11-20), 1 (0-10)

How did FP7 SSH provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

Several projects’ results have been used for policy development at the local, regional, national, European and/or International level. On the other hand, evidence is found in the development of strategic plans and/or programmes by organisations using the results of these projects. Many local, regional, national or European and/or International organisations and Institutions have elaborated their plans and/or programmes tacking into account the projects’ results.

Examples of political impact achieved by FP7 SSH projects

- The results of CAP-IRE project have been used as the basis to develop the post 2013 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP),
[168](#footnote168)
 clearly influencing on the development of this policy framework;
[169](#footnote169)

- The data and methods of the COINVEST project have been integrated in the Innovation Strategy “Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow” of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD);
[170](#footnote170)
 Besides, the COINVEST policy recommendations to UK Government about investment in intangible have influenced in the UK knowledge investment growing
[171](#footnote171)
.

- The results of FINNOV project have been taken into account to elaborate the UK Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth;
[172](#footnote172)

- Some of the project recommendations of PRIV-WAR have been included in the European Resolution about the development of the common security and defence policy after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty;
[173](#footnote173)

- The results of EURO-JUSTIS project have been included by the UK Ministry of Justice and the National Audit Office (NAO) in their Briefing for the House of Commons Justice Committee.
[174](#footnote174)
 The project results of EURO-JUSTIS have contributed also to the elaboration of a module (set of questions) to the fifth European Social Survey (ESS) which has been replicated by an EU/UNDP project;
[175](#footnote175)
 

- The SELUSI Project has advised the Flemish Government on its strategy to stimulate social entrepreneurship and co-authored a guidebook on how EU’s regions can stimulate social innovation at the request of DG Region; 
[176](#footnote176)

- MONFISPOL project developed DYNARE that is a software platform for handling a wide class of economic models, in particular dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) and overlapping generations (OLG) models. Various public bodies (central banks, ministries of economy and finance, international organisations) and some private financial institutions use DYNARE for performing policy analysis exercises and as a support tool for forecasting exercises. It has strong political impact in banks.
[177](#footnote177)

Other evidence of the political impact achieved by FP7 SSH projects is the presentation of projects’ results in political forums at international, European and national/local levels
[178](#footnote178)
. There is an intensive work from FP7 SSH projects in order to disseminate the projects’ results among policy-makers, stakeholders and/or among other professionals related with politic issues.

FP7 SSH DOMAC project: an example of productive interaction
[179](#footnote179)

The interaction during the negotiation process of the Kampala Declaration between some project team members and stake-holders and policy makers from World Health Organisation (WHO), direct and coordinate authority for health within the United Nations (UN), have been crucial to achieve the outputs of the project, and also to influence the final declaration document.
[180](#footnote180)

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  | Policies (weight 5) 2,3 | | | | | | | | Programmes (weight 3)4 | | | | | | | | Forums (weight 1)5 | | | | | | | | Political Impact Value | Political Impact Score10 |
|  |  | Int / European (weight 20)6,7 | | National (weight 15) | | Regional (weight 10) | | Local  (weight 5) | | Int / European (weight 20) | | National (weight 15) | | Regional (weight 10) | | Local  (weight 5) | | Int / European (weight 20) | | National (weight 15) | | Regional (weight 10) | | Local  (weight 5) | |  |  |
| ACRONYM | Pillar1 | N | Score8 | N | Score | N | S | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score | N | Score |  |  |
| CAP-IRE  (FP7) | Growth | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1209 | 9 |
| COINVEST (FP7) | Growth | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 210 | 10 |
| DOMAC  (FP7) | Fairness | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 100 | 8 |
| ENACT  (FP7) | Democratic Change | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 3 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 80 | 7 |
| EURO-JUSTIS (FP7) | Fairness | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 85 | 8 |
| FINNOV  (FP7) | Growth | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 95 | 8 |
| INCLUD-ED (FP6) | Jobs | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 365 | 10 |
| MONFISPOL (FP7) | Growth | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 105 | 9 |
| PRIV-WAR (FP7) | Fairness | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 135 | 9 |

FP7 SSH: policy impacts

1 Based on Jean Claude Juncker agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic change

2 Each type of impact has a different weigh assigned.

3 Policies adopted by governments and supranational institutions. Political impact is considered if there are evidences of the relationship between the research project and the policy.

4 Programmes implemented by civil society organisations (NGOs, companies, unions, trusts, professional bodies and other stakeholders) that have used the findings of the research. Political impact is considered if there are evidences of the relationship between the research project and the policy.

5 Political forums (with policy makers) in which the findings of the research have been presented.

6 Policies at the European level include Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations, Resolutions, Opinions, Conclusions and Recommendations adopted by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union or the European Commission. Also are included in this category resolutions, declarations, treaties, protocols, global plans of actions, conventions, agreements, conferences and summits, consultative opinions, etc. adopted or promoted by the United Nations, as well as agreements, guidelines, recommendations and declarations adopted by OECD.

7 For each type of impact, the weight varies according to the scope of the impact.

8 Score is assigned according to intervals of the number of policies / programmes / forums: 1 to 3 = 1; 4 to 5 = 2; more than 5 = 3

9 5x20x1+1x20x1= 120

10 10 (>200), 9 (101-200), 8 (81-100), 7 (61-80), 6 (51-60) , 5 (41-50), 4 (31-40), 3 (21-30), 2 (11-20), 1 (0-10)

How did FP7 SSH increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

Most of the projects publish significant part of their scientific production in Open Access: 43% of the articles from FP7 SSH projects are open access articles and 22% are published in Open Access journals. Publications in open repositories range from the 11% of articles in the case of CSA-CA to the 47% of CP-SICA projects.

Furthermore, 42,5% out of the 162 projects (SESAM) have uploaded publications in the OpenAIRE
[181](#footnote181)
 repository, and the average of publications per project (out of those who published in OpenAIRE) is of 6,62. The range oscillates between 1 article to 120 (ACCEPT PLURALISM). Both finished and not finished projects are included in this count.

The development of databases, indicators and tools, is a key part of the outcomes produced under FP7 SSH programme. This allows the creation of new organized knowledge as well as the measurement of different issues in the fields such as welfare, migration, demography and/or labour markets.

For instance, in the field of Knowledge-based economy and social innovation, as a result of COINVEST Project (in collaboration with INNODRIVE Project), a harmonised database of macro-economic investment in intangibles (education, research, copyrights, etc.) has been created and made accessible on-line to the general public by the European Commission.

Another example is found through the SAMPLE project has developed database software with new indicators, statistical models and procedures that aim at providing a deeper understanding of inequality and poverty. In the same field, the VICO project has created a database sponsored by the European Union on venture capitals in Europe with more than 8,300 companies from seven European countries. Another example can be the project ASSPRO CEE 2007 which has generated 2 databases on standards in the assessment of patient payment policies around the world.

How much did FP SSH contribute to job creation?

According to the workforce statistics gathered in the reports of a sample of 119 FP7 SSH projects, 927 out of 6023 researchers were PhD students. That is to say those, around 15% of the total researchers in FP7 SSH Cooperation projects were junior researchers. Projecting to the total FP7 SSH projects (n=252), it would be an estimation of 1963 PhD students hired throughout the FP7.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14023.jpg)

Junior researchers involved in FP7 SSH Projects (%)

Source: DG RTD, data from E-CORDA

The IMPACT EV project shows that most part of the junior researchers hired were aged between 25 and 35 years and are mostly PhD students (other levels are represented as well, up to undergraduate students). Second, many researchers recognised that these junior researchers were hired after the project completion and in around a half of them were promoted to better academic positions. Some of these jobs were related to new projects resulting from the previous ones.

To what extent the results of FP7 SSH contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

The FP7 SSH projects fostered the production of new knowledge on socio-economic challenges that our societies are facing, and which address the new Commission priorities. In the “Social innovation research in the European Union: Approaches, findings and future directions ” report an overview of results from 17 comparative European projects in the field of social innovation, which produced new knowledge for the use of policy makers, other stakeholders and the broader public is presented.

For instance, the CITISPYCE and CSEYHP projects have generated new theoretical knowledge regarding to combating inequalities and social exclusion among young populations. The INNOSERV and SERVPPIN projects have contributed to generate new knowledge outputs related to innovative social services.

new knowledge in the field of education has been also complied in the Policy Review “Adult and continuing education in Europe: Using public policy to secure a growth in skills ” which compiled the findings of research projects on adult and continuing education that have been funded under FP6 and FP7, such as NEUJOBS, WALQING and YOUNEX. In turn, research has also resulted in evidence-based recommendations for new policies and actions. The report “Scientific evidence for policy-making: Research insights from Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities” gathers a big amount of scientific evidence for policy making.

According to the Stock-tacking report
[182](#footnote182)
, the projects have developed outputs across different 9 thematic major clusters: 1) Knowledge-based economy and social innovation; 2) Macroeconomic policies and growth; 3) Employment and labor market; 4) Social inequalities, education and social inclusion; 5) Demographic change; 6) Sustainable socio-economic development; 7) Europe as a Global Actor; 8) Democracy, participation & citizenship; and 9) Diversities and commonalities in Europe.

Moreover, FP7 SSH projects have succeeded in achieving social impact and show how SSH research funded under EC contribution can make real improvements in different contexts and levels.

Examples of FP7 SSH projects with societal impacts, grouped by the EU targets (EU 2020 Strategy and Juncker’s Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change)

Regarding to employment, the IMPACT-EV team has found that several projects have contributed to create jobs or to improve of people at risk. For instance, the project MIGROM generated employment opportunities for the Romanian Roma in collaboration with the Manchester City Council, and the project MYPLACE has improved the employability of young unemployed in England through training programmes . There are also other projects which findings can potentially lead to social impact. This is the case of LOCALISE, which identified examples of best practices that might contribute to the employment target , and ASPA, which results may have changed employers´ behaviours towards the older people.

Regarding to the R&D and innovation dimension, an example is MEDPRO, which has launched the Euro-Mediterranean Economists’ Association (EMEA) with the aim of monitoring and contributing to the reform processes in the political, economic and social agendas. MEDPRO can have social impact. This is especially important as the social impact in this area might require longer perspectives, and therefore more difficulties to identify it in recently finished projects.

Some of the projects were identified as contributing to the climate change and energy sustainability dimension. For instance, POINT focused on indicators designed to measure sustainable development and the integration of environmental concerns into other sectors of policy-making. Based on the project results, the Sustainable Development indicator definition in Finland has increasingly included potential users and actors from various sectors and levels of the society, leading to the development of Sustainable Development Commitments, which give part of the responsibility of indicators production to the participating actors. The project SUSTAINCITY shows how projects can create useful outcomes and/or tools with high potential of having social impact in the near future, since as a result of the project a spin-off company and a Town Planning Software were created.

Regarding to the reduction of poverty and social exclusion, DESAFIO contributed to empower marginalized local communities and helped them to gain access to water in Latin-American countries. CSEYHP worked with young homeless as co-researchers in the fieldwork carried out in four countries, and it influenced positively in empowering these co-researchers. Furthermore, as stated in the Methodology Annex deliverable of CSEYHP project, one young woman who was co-researcher received a student’s grant from the project. It allowed her improve her living conditions, as paying her rent arrears and prevented her becoming evicted and homeless again, and also allowed her to remain in college. The other young co-researchers were rewarded with computers and payments for internet access that would help their educational goals.

TENLAW results show that the implementation of a Social Rental Agency system may have a positive impact on the management problems associated with low income households, and SAMPLE which contributed to the activation of an important local network of associations, public administrations, parishes, counselling centres that are involved in local actions against poverty.

Contribution of FP7 SSH to EU 2020 targets and Commission agenda

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ACRONYM | Pillar1 | Social Impact2 | Responds to at least one EU2020 target or Lisbon strategy objective | % of improvement achieved3 | Evidences of transferability4 | Sources of evidences5 | Sustainability 6 | Score – impact7 | Social Impact Score8 |
| ALAC’s  (FP7 BSC-CSO) | Democratic change | 1 | Other target . EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Agenda 2020 | not available | Yes | Other sources | Yes | 3 | 7 |
|  |  | 2 | Yes. Employment | not available | Yes | Other sources | Yes | 7 |  |
| CSEYHP  (FP7 CP-FP) | Fairness | 1 | Yes. Poverty | not available | Yes | Other sources | No | 5 | 5 |
| DESAFIO  (FP7 CP-FP-SICA) | Fairness | 1 | Yes. Poverty | not available | Yes | Other sources | No | 5 | 5 |
| INCLUDED  (FP6 IP) | Jobs | 1 | Yes. Education | 98% | Yes | Scientific journals | Yes | 10 | 10 |
|  |  | 2 | Yes. Employment | 39% | Yes | Scientific journals | Yes | 10 |  |
| POINT  (FP7 CP-FP) | Growth | 1 | Yes. Climate change | not available | Yes | Scientific journals | No | 6 | 6 |
| RESPECT  (FP7 CP-FP) | Democratic change | 1 | Other target. Increased cultural tolerance | not available | No | Other sources | No | 1 | 1 |
| TAP  (FP7 HERA I) | Jobs | 1 | Yes. Employment | not available | Yes | Scientific journals | Not available | 6 | 6 |

1 Based on Jean Claude Juncker agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic change

2 Each social impact corresponds to a specific societal improvement.

3 Percentage of improvement achieved in relation to the starting situation. For instance, in the case of employment targets, it is the percentage of people who has showed certain improvement as the result of the actions developed based on the project’s findings.

4 At least implemented in 2 different contexts (Yes/No).

5 Publication on scientific journals (with a recognised impact), other sources (from governmental or non-governmental official bodies).

6 Evidences of the impact after the end of the project life span (Yes/No).

7 The Score of each impact is assigned according to the criteria that it fulfils:

10: The impact meets all the criteria, and has more than 30% of improvement

9: The impact meets all the criteria, and has more than 20% of improvement

8: The impact meets all the criteria, and has more than 10% of improvement

7: The impact meets all the criteria, and has some % of improvement (not available the specific %)

6: The impact responds to EU2020/Lisbon strategy objectives, has achieved some % of improvement and meets at least 2 of the other criteria

5: The impact responds to EU2020/Lisbon strategy objectives, has achieved some % of improvement and meets at least 1 of the other criteria

4: The impact responds to EU2020/Lisbon strategy objectives and has achieved some % of improvement

3: The impact responds to other societal objectives, has achieved some % of improvement and meets at least 2 of the other criteria

2: The impact responds to other societal objectives, has achieved some % of improvement and meets at least 1 of the other criteria

1: The impact responds to other societal objectives and has achieved some % of improvement

8 The final Social Impact Score of a given project will be the highest score obtained.

Examples of FP7 SSH projects with societal impacts beyond the EU 2020 targets

DIASPEACE worked with organisations mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia for mediation in conflicts and peace building. Beyond facilitating mediation dialogues, the projects contributions can be related to the Millennium Development Goals of Combating HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. DISPEACE has worked closely with a programme supported by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in partnership with Somali healthcare institutions. This work allowed Somali Health Professionals based in Finland to make short stages in Somalia in order to improve the skills and practice of health professionals in the African country.

EURESCL has contributed to promote research institutes in Senegal and Haiti on Slavery issue and have developed educational materials and initiatives (in cooperation with UNESCO) to raise awareness of slavery. The EURESCL’s work also has aimed to disseminate and promote the study of trafficking and slavery in the scientific community, both in Europe and in the countries where the investigation took place, by setting up research networks, workshops, festivals, expositions, among other activities.

Among the projects that have contributed to strengthen intercultural dialogue, we can highlight the RESPECT project, which was aimed at testing the hypothesis that grounding tolerance on equal respect for persons may contribute to the development of spatial policies capable of resolving the tensions between tolerance and social cohesion in culturally diverse societies. Based on the project results, a dialogue was established between the Milano municipal administration and the representatives of the three main Muslim communities about the construction of a mosque in the city. Though this topic had been debated for years in the city, a proper dialogue was only established when a public meeting was organized in the framework of the RESPECT project, in which a representative of the City Council, representatives of the Muslim communities, and some researchers participated. In the municipality of Heidelberg, in Germany, different initiatives have been implemented with the aim to promote integration of migrants and cultural and religious minorities, based on the concept of respect used in the research project.

The ALAC’s project aimed to improve citizen participation in the fight against corruption, transferring one of the challenging issues included in EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Agenda 2020. Being a BSO-CSO project with the collaboration of other organisations, this project was closely developed in collaboration with Transparency International (TI), an international NGO dedicated to combat corruption. Under the project, it was possible to develop a standardized system of collecting information about potential corruption cases in all the offices. Additionally, throughout the project, several new ALACs offices were created, in cases, these were the only places where citizens could go to report corruption cases

FP7 SSH impacts also relate to broader or global issues, such as the Millennium Goals of the UN, and others make reference to relevant European policies and priorities such as cultural tolerance, respect and sensitivity with regard to minority groups, corruption, among many others.

Gender issues have been specifically identified in around the 25% of the topics in different activities and areas. The descriptions of the topics point out to specific questions related to gender that need to be addressed such as informal family related policies, gender dynamics of mobilization in the Arab world, women and youth as political actors, or the situation of Roma women. Importantly, in the calls of 2010 and beyond, the Work Programs have stated that all projects are encouraged to raise awareness on combating gender prejudices and stereotypes (Work Programme 2010, 2012, 2013); furthermore, they point out that gender issues will be addressed as an integral part of the research to ensure the highest level of scientific quality.

According to the analysis of the available periodical reports (119), 49% of FP7 SSH projects have a gender dimension associated with the research content and 31% carried out one or more specific gender equality actions. The more frequent action was to set targets to achieve a gender balance in the workforce, followed by the design and implementation of an equal opportunity policy and actions to improve work-life balance.

Regarding the way in which the gender dimension has been integrated in the projects, we found that it aims to produce scientific knowledge in order to promote a more equal and cohesive European society. For instance the project NEUJOBS has identified the difficulties related to women’s employment decisions and the possibilities to overcome them. Those orientations are collected in the policy brief “Women on the European Labour Market.” More projects that addressed gender issues are listed in the report “Gender research in the 6th Framework Programme and the first period of the 7th Framework Programme Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities Programme ”.

Which was the added value of FP7 SSH when compared with national SSH research and innovation programmes?

The EU added value of the FP7 SSH programme relates to five dimensions:

First, SSH projects allow tackling social problems that go beyond the member state level. The SSH Programme has allowed to map data and social innovations, to compare perspectives, to identify gaps in knowledge, to define road maps in the field of energy, to improve social cohesion, to understand modern societal trends and their impact on socio-economic development in Europe, to reinforce relations at European and international level, or to generate cross-thematic approaches in crucial themes for the EU such as the fight against trafficking of human beings. These achievements would have been more hardly achieved from national based research initiatives.

Second, FP7 SSH programme has contributed to shape National research plans, research agencies and research political priorities. For instance, the National Research Plan in Spain has shifted totally in SSH and since 2013 is coordinated with Horizon 2020 research priorities, particularly focusing on the H2020 Societal Challenges
[183](#footnote183)
. The cooperation of experts -from different European regions, disciplines and analytical frameworks- in a common research agenda contributes to a greater extent to both European and Member States targets.

Third, FP7 SSH programme also enabled to reach a relevant EU scale dissemination of the results. The analysis of project reports reveals that in most of the cases dissemination is done both in each of the participant countries and in a European scale through conferences, workshops, web tools among others. The Coordination and Support Actions have played a complementary role for disseminating internationally the outcomes of several projects.

Fourth, international collaboration has been essential not only for the goals and nature of the projects but also for achieving critical mass of a vibrant research community. According to the survey-based report “SSH Experiences with FP7 - a Commentary”
[184](#footnote184)
 the main incentive of the researchers for participating under the FP7 Cooperation Programme was to undertake international cooperation and the awareness that collaborating with international partners might increase the quality of research results. In addition, finding new partners and extending scientific networks was also valued as one of the results of the process of proposal preparation even in the case of not being successful in the application.

Connected to the critical mass, a fifth strategy is identified that is how international collaboration among different, cross-disciplinary teams provides special opportunities for researchers’ mobility and junior researchers’ integration and improvement of capacities. Respondents of the IMPACT-EV survey have highlighted networking within and outside the EU as a relevant European added value of their project resulting from their participation in the Cooperation Programme.

  

10.9. Space

Objectives

The objective of the FP7 space was to support a European Space Policy focusing on applications such as GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, later renamed Copernicus), with benefits for citizens, but also other space foundation areas for the competitiveness of the European space industry. This contributed to address the overall objectives of the European Space Policy, complementing efforts of Member States and of other key players, including the European Space Agency.

Two main classes of activities were undertaken:

- Space-based applications at the service of the European Society, with GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) being central to this activity;

- Providing R&D support to the foundations of Space science, exploration, space transportation and space technology through synergies with initiatives of ESA or other European, national or regional entities.

The support for the first activity, the development of GMES, were articulates in four main action areas:

- Support to the (pre-)operational validation of GMES services and products

- Integration of satellite communication and satellite navigation solutions with space-based observing systems,

- Support to the coordinated provision of observation data, both from space-based infrastructure and from in-situ observing systems.

- Development of Earth observation satellites, which relate to the management of the environment and security, and which complement in-situ systems.

For the second activity, the strengthening of foundations of Space science and technology, the support were articulated in three more action areas:

- Support to research activities related to space science and exploration,

- New concepts in space transportation, and space technologies including critical components,

- Research into reducing the vulnerability of space based systems and services.

Space systems and space-based technologies and applications are of general strategic importance to the EU. Investment in space is not only relevant for the development of specific services, such as Copernicus and Galileo, but also to positively impact EU citizens and their businesses. The development of space systems and technologies is expected to contribute to the implementation of a wide range of evolving policy objectives, including:

Europe 2020, through better opportunities for space-related – but also “space enabled” – industries;

Sustainable Development, (e.g. through information gathering in support of the Kyoto Protocol monitoring and the actions resulting from the Johannesburg Summit on sustainable development, taking into account also the “Lisbon Declaration on GMES and Africa”;

European non-dependency – allowing the EU to develop critical infrastructure (e.g. Copernicus satellite technology) and industry (e.g. PRS receivers for Galileo) know-how to ensure European non-dependency on other Space actors (USA, Russia, etc.);

Common Foreign and Security Policy (e.g. in support of borders control, conflict prevention and crisis management, continuity of public services, etc.).

Evolution of objectives to respond to the crisis

The economic crisis did not alter the objectives. The primary objective and 80-85% of the budget was devoted to the development of GMES/Copernicus, both services and space and ground infrastructure (satellites and ground stations). This helped to pave the way for the successful launch of the operational Copernicus programme now under way as well as to prepare the European space industry and Earth observation community to reap the benefits of this programme. The other main objective supported the competitiveness of the European space sector by targeting complementary activities.

How did FP7 Space contribute to the competitiveness of European Space industry? 

FP7 Space Research has provided substantial funding to EU space companies (circa €300 million) for the development of new technologies and services, and in so doing is helping to underpin the innovation capacity and international competitiveness of Europe’s space businesses, which continue to perform strongly in competition against their international counterparts in commercial and institutional markets both in Europe and the rest of the world
[185](#footnote185)
. In addition, about €700 million was devoted to building GMES/Copernicus satellites, thus benefitting the European satellite manufacturing sector.

The publicly available statistics for the space economy do not present data – supply or demand – that align with the space-enabled applications and downstream services covered by the FP7 Space Research Actions, and as such provide no basis for testing the extent to which the EU is making or holding ground internationally in the areas being supported.

In order to judge the programme’s contribution to industrial competitiveness, we have carried out a beneficiary survey, where around 25% of our industrial respondents stated that the programme has had a medium to high impact on their international competitiveness. On balance, we judge this to be a good result.

[Figure](#_Ref272073573)
[1](#_Ref272073573)
 presents feedback from our industrial respondents, and shows the programme is judged to be delivering meaningful benefits to participants across a wide range of technical and commercial areas. In the survey, impacts are judged most positively on relationships and networks, internal knowledge and capabilities as well as reputation and image.

Figure 2 presents the same analysis, but just for participating SMEs (around 85% of the total number of business responses received). It shows a broadly similar distribution as regards the ranking of benefits derived, but a higher overall degree of satisfaction.

Figure 1 Impact of FP7 Space Research programme on companies (all sizes)

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14024.jpg)

Source: Beneficiary survey (2014). Based on up to 157 responses.

  

Figure 2: Impact of FP7 Space research programme (only SMEs)

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14025.jpg)

Source: Beneficiary survey (2014). Based on up to 157 responses.

This is possibly a reflection of size differences, wherein a €0.5m grant is likely to make a bigger difference to a small company with a €2om turnover than it is to a large prime with a €2 billion turnover. There is also possibly a feature relating to the sector’s deep supply chains and the dominance of large primes within those commercial relationships, where a programme like FP7, with its large transnational projects can do a great deal for the visibility of smaller firms and their resulting inclusion within subsequent commercial contracts. The net impact on industrial competitiveness is not clear cut, however, as there is likely to be an element of displacement here, where new relationships forged between primes and their latest suppliers are likely to be at the expense of other lower-tier contractors, possibly also located within the EU.

Turning to stakeholder interviews and considering the provision of improved services to citizens through space-enabled applications and the commercial exploitation of the opportunities presented by space exploration and science, as mentioned above, GMES has already proven its significant impact in helping EU and non EU citizens in dealing with emergency situations. As a case in point, the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), part of the GMES Emergency Management Service (now Copernicus), has been delivering early warnings of possible major flooding events to member states’ national hydrological and meteorological services since 2012. Those alerts have helped anticipate and prepare for floods in several member states, from Scotland to Hungary and Romania.

Moreover, GMES has introduced many new opportunities for market players as several applications were developed through FP7 in different areas. As an example, it was suggested that the ASIMUTH project showed how Earth Observation data could be used by salmon farmers, since satellite maps can be used to help salmon farmers deal with algae blooms by creating an alert system that will help detect the problem and deal with it.

How did FP7 Space contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The programme has engaged with participants in 53 countries, including all EU28 member states and a good cross-section of ‘Third countries with S&T Agreements’ and ‘Candidate & Associated’ countries
[186](#footnote186)
.

shows the distribution of FP7 Space funding by geography, for the top 10 countries, according to the total EU contribution granted to each of them, in order to show which are the main participants countries.

The data are based on the addresses of all participating organisations and not just lead partners. The table shows that the top 10 countries accounted for 81% of the total EU Contributions, and these include most of Europe’s larger ‘space nations’, missing only Sweden. The top 10 countries also represent 71% of the total participations (1,827 out of 2,534). Furthermore, those top 10 countries (by budget) have also acted as project coordinators for 89% of the projects (228 out of 257 projects).

  

Geographical distribution of FP7 space project portfolio (Top 10)

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Countries | Total project cost (in '000 EUR) | EC Total Contribution (in '000 EUR) | Number of participations | Percentage of participations country of project coordinator |
| France (FR) | 164,528 | 111,059 | 316 | 13% |
| Germany (DE) | 130,382 | 93,206 | 319 | 11% |
| United Kingdom (UK) | 139,460 | 93,125 | 291 | 12% |
| Italy (IT) | 90,888 | 63,008 | 274 | 11% |
| Spain (ES) | 67,826 | 47,435 | 183 | 15% |
| Netherlands (NL) | 45,530 | 33,425 | 126 | 11% |
| Belgium (BE) | 43,583 | 32,587 | 119 | 14% |
| Norway (NO) | 30,830 | 21,381 | 59 | 12% |
| Finland (FI) | 25,186 | 18,789 | 72 | 13% |
| Austria (AT) | 21,625 | 16,639 | 68 | 15% |
| Sub-total (Top 10) | 759,838 | 530,654 | 1,827 | 89% |
| Others | 165,505 | 119,386 | 737 | 11% |
| Total | 925,343 | 650,040 | 2,564 | 100% |

Source: Based on CORDA data, February 2014

The FP7 Space projects have a good international coverage in terms of the location of their participants. The great majority of participants have addresses in the EU; however, participation is spread across the globe with participants from countries such as Russia, China, the USA, Canada, and Brazil, which suggests the ‘FP7 Space Research’ programme is supporting the formation and strengthening of international networks. International participation (extra-EU) is slightly lower in Space in comparison with FP7 overall. Only 43.6% of space projects included at least one partner from outside the EU, compared to 68.1% of other priority areas (excluding Space Research).

The figures below show the geographical distribution of participants across FP7 Space projects and other priority areas. In both maps, the distribution takes into account the size of the population in each country. The grids in the maps (shown in different colours) are calculated based on 5 percentile groupings, with the dark red indicating a higher number of participants (per 1 million inhabitants). When accounting for population size, the countries with the highest participation are Portugal, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Austria and Belgium.

  

Location of participants (Space): Total number of participants per 1 million inhabitants

|  |
| --- |
|  |

Source: Based on CORDA data, February 2014. Data on population has been obtained from the World Development Indicators (2012).

Location of participants (FP7 Space projects): Total number of participants per 1 million inhabitants

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14027.jpg)

Source: Based on CORDA data, February 2014. Data on population has been obtained from the World Development Indicators (2012).

Considering the support to the EU influence in international space policy and related geopolitics, all interviewed stakeholders highlighted the strong positive impact of GMES. For example, the contribution of GMES to support relief operations in several other emergencies including, for example, earthquakes around the world and the Icelandic volcanic cloud.

GMES is becoming the European contribution to GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems), an international public infrastructure using land, sea, air and space-based Earth observation systems to provide comprehensive environmental data, information and analyses.

This allowed GMES and its services to become an international reference point. As an example, during the nuclear power plant emergency in Fukushima, support was provided by MYOCEAN to help understand the dynamic of sea currents to assess where the radiation would have impacted. As an additional example, the United Nations actually recognised the ability of SAFER project to rapidly provide support to assistance in the event of earthquake in Haiti, as emerged from both high-level interview and the dedicated case study.

The seeds of EU participation in international space policy and geopolitics have been planted through more than 20 projects funded on topics for international cooperation with Russia, Africa, Ukraine, China, etc. on topics such as GMES services, re-entry, space debris, lightweight materials, etc. These projects are judged to be important by interviewed stakeholders (in particular EU officials) because they showed actual commitments from the EU side in terms of budget allocation, thus creating the necessary preconditions for cooperation on further space activities.

FP7 Space has also supported various science projects exploiting the data from various international space missions, operated by ESA and in several cases by ESA and other major space agencies like NASA (e.g. STORM and work on solar wind, using data from NASA / ESA Ulysses spacecraft).

How did FP7 Space contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

Space systems and space–based technologies are increasingly important for the European businesses and citizens. R&D support is not only crucial for the development of specific services, such as GMES, but also for strategic reasons. The continuous development of the space technologies is expected to contribute to reaching a wide range of policy objectives including:

- European non-dependence – allowing the EU to develop critical infrastructure and know-how to ensure European non-dependency on other Space actors (e.g. USA, Russia );

- Sustainable Development – e.g. information-gathering in support of the Kyoto Protocol monitoring and actions resulting from the Johannesburg Summit on sustainable development;

- Common Foreign and Security Policy – e.g. supporting border control, conflict prevention and crisis management;

- Lisbon Strategy – e.g. through better opportunities for space-related industries and the development of the space component of geo-information services, improved access to space based data for services.

The White Paper on Space
[187](#footnote187)
 defined an action plan for a European Space Policy to address several EU needs in the areas of, for example, transport, environment, agriculture, and telecommunications. This publication was followed by years of consultation with key stakeholders, which resulted in the adoption of the European Space Policy, which was published by the Commission in April 2007
[188](#footnote188)
. The strategic mission of European Space Policy was formulated on the peaceful exploitation of Outer Space by all states and aimed to:

- Develop and exploit space applications serving Europe's public policy objectives and the needs of European enterprises and citizens, including in the field of environment, development and global climate change;

- Meet Europe's security and defence needs as regards space;

- Ensure a strong and competitive space industry which fosters innovation, growth and the development and delivery of sustainable, high quality, cost-effective services;

- Contribute to the knowledge-based society by investing strongly in space-based science, and playing a significant role in the international exploration endeavour;

- Secure unrestricted access to new and critical technologies, systems and capabilities in order to ensure independent European space applications.

The Communication also provided for the establishment of appropriate funding arrangements for the operational phase of GMES.

GMES is Europe's flagship space programme for continuous and expandable Earth observation services. It was determined that FP7 would build on the experiences gained during FP6 to ensure that GMES is successful, in particular building on the foundation of GMES Fast Track Services. The development of core GMES services in areas such as land, ocean, and atmosphere monitoring was meant to lead to improvements in Europe’s capabilities to monitor climate change, pollution, land and wide maritime areas (CSES, 2011).

How did FP7 Space strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe? 

The participant survey revealed a strongly positive view of the programme’s contributions to EU science and technology, with circa 90% of 545 respondents stating that FP7 space had had a medium to high impact on the EU’s technological capabilities and international scientific standing.

Impact of the FP7 Space Research programme on Community objectives

|  |
| --- |
|  |

Source: Beneficiary survey (2014). Based on 545 responses.

Interviews with space researchers were somewhat more equivocal on this point. The in-depth conversations revealed a concern that FP7 Space Research Actions had done rather less than might have been expected with a €700m budget to advance the international standing of space science in Europe, which is largely a function of the balance of funding and the fact that space exploration and RTD foundations secured only around 20% of the total available EC contribution. Indeed, there was a degree of frustration that the admittedly important GMES project should have been funded to the extent it was through FP7, arguably crowding out more conventional research. It was acknowledged, however, that there had been meaningful progress in several areas, such as space weather, which was the object of several calls mainly targeting the scientific community. As a last remark, academic stakeholders were pleased that Horizon 2020 has a separate budget line for GMES, leaving a larger share available for space research / space science activities.

With the exception of research performed under GMES-related topics, stakeholders suggested that the amount of money was perhaps too limited for achieving this objective of enhancing EU scientific and technological capacity and leadership.

There have been individual success stories, however, where initially low budget projects and activities have generated a snowball effect on EU scientific and technological research leadership. As an example, debris removal was first addressed by the European Commission through FP7 Space. Results obtained have led ESA to launch additional studies and Member States to invest in the topic, providing a financial leverage.

How did FP7 Space promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

Although not primarily devoted to science, FP7 Space promoted the exploitation of European space data, an area where European funding is scarce. This allowed European teams the utilize and add value to Space science data already present in ESA archives and national project repositories.

How did FP7 Space provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

The EU Earth observation capacity "Copernicus", developed and piloted under FP7 space (under the name GMES - Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), is now operational. It already today has 2 operational Earth observing satellites in orbit with associated ground infrastructure and in-situ sensors that provide a vast and growing knowledge-base in support of EU policies in key areas, such as environment, security, maritime monitoring, land use, atmosphere monitoring, climate change, migration and emergency response.

How did FP7 Space increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

As described under point 6, the Copernicus programme constitutes a major European scientific and technological infrastructure. Access to Copernicus data is provided "Full, Free and Open".

In addition, FP7 Space supported scientific data exploitation in relation to European space missions (national or ESA-led), where previously under-utilized data was made available to a wider scientific audience.

How much did FP Space contribute to job creation?

Overall the contribution to EU Space industry competitiveness was significant (cf. Question 1). Industry competitiveness is a prerequisite for retaining jobs and creating new ones.

To what extent the results of FP7 Space contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

As already noted under Question 6, Copernicus is contributing greatly to many key Community policies. In addition, resources were devoted to addressing critical technologies for EU non-dependence in line with EU policies in security and EU competitiveness.

To what extent was FP7 Space coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The evolving political context was that the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force on 1 December 2009, attributing to the EU a stronger role in space matters. The Treaty introduced for the first time a specific space competence for the European Union, indicating space policy as an EU policy in its own right.

In April 2011, the European Commission issued the Communication “Towards a space strategy for the European Union that benefits its citizens”
[189](#footnote189)
. The Communication clearly positions space within Europe 2020, stating that “the space sector directly contributes to achieving the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, namely smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Space policy thus forms an integral part of the "Industrial Policy" flagship initiative.” The Communication set out the key priorities for the EU space policy, including ensuring the success of the EU's two flagship space programmes, Galileo and Copernicus. The fifth Space Council meeting identified further priorities, as climate change, security, competitiveness and space exploration have been reaffirmed as priority areas. Moreover, the Communication called for the development of an industrial space policy in close cooperation with EU Member States and the European Space Agency.

On 28 February 2013, the Commission issued a Communication on the "EU Space Industrial Policy: Releasing the Potential for Growth in the Space Sector"
[190](#footnote190)
. The Communication proposed actions to increase industry's skills levels, support R&D, to ensure the EU's independence in space, to make finance and investment more readily available, and to improve the EU's legislative framework. The Communication also set the objectives for Horizon 2020.

FP7 space was in full coherence with the EU space policy and in particular with the EU action on GMES. In the case of Galileo, the main FP7 support came from the cooperation theme "Transport".

What was the added value of FP7 Space when compared with national Space research and innovation programmes? 
  
  
The Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Innovation – including the Space area – represented a key tool to respond to Europe's needs in terms of jobs and competitiveness, and to maintain leadership in the global knowledge economy.

Overall, the ex-post evaluation has confirmed strong EU added value – not only at project, but also at programme level – for the vast majority of stakeholders who participated in the evaluation. Among project beneficiaries, out of 538 survey responses, 58.2% suggested that the projects they were involved in could not be supported by a national scheme or ESA rather than by FP funding, whereas 34.8% reported that only some of the projects could be supported. Only 7.1% of the respondents thought that all of the projects they were involved in could have been funded by alternative sources.

The outcomes of case studies carried out are in line with those of the beneficiary survey. Interviewees involved in SAFER or GEOLAND2 suggested that because of the European dimension of core services and the need for consistent and comparable data, it would have been unrealistic to set up pre-operational service at national level. In the case of AGAPAC and AEROFAST, the projects would not have been supported either at national level or by ESA due to no funding available for the specific activities of the projects. In the case of FRESHMON and μFCU the funding provided by FP7 proved vital to co-finance projects too large for national budgets. Finally, interviewees from all projects praised the opportunity offered by FP7 to bridge top scientists and experts from different EU Member States.

The remainder of this section outlines evidence for each of the components of EU added value identified:

Scale and complexity: the wide majority of interviewed high-level stakeholders consulted over the course of the study suggested that the nature of space research, its complexity, scale and required economic and human resources are one of the key drivers of European Added Value for FP 7 action in this field. These stakeholders confirmed that space research challenges are often so complex that they can only be addressed at European level. In addition, they suggested that national budgets or the scope of national activities are often too limited to support research activities funded by FP7 space.

Coordination of EU and MS potential is another key driver of European added value for this type of research action. It was remarked by different categories of high-level stakeholders that before FP7 Space came into force, the space research community was fragmented and there were few opportunities for the community to work together outside national budgets. Among those project beneficiaries who indicated in the survey that their project would not have received funded without FP7, 78% claimed that national sources in particular would not have supported vital international partners for their project. Thus, bringing together the right actors irrespective of where they are based across the EU is one of the key added values of FP7. FP7 is widely recognised by interviewed stakeholders to have brought the scientific community together, enabling researchers from different organisations to collaborate on the same project.

Moreover, it was suggested by most interviewed stakeholders that FP7 Space outperforms ESA funding schemes, since FP7 enables participation from all MS, whereas with ESA participants are dependent on national contribution provided to ESA programmes. This was particularly relevant for partners from EU Member states that are not part of ESA, as well as for those that joined relatively recently (such as Poland and Romania).

Quality of the knowledge base: the requirement to cooperate, foreseen under FP7 activities, was reported by several stakeholders as having a tremendous impact on the quality of research and knowledge in Europe which could not have been achieved otherwise. In particular the benefit of bringing together academia and industry were highlighted.

Economic efficiency: all 6 case studies on FP7 projects reveal that in the absence of EC FP7 funding, the project partners would at best have gone ahead with the project, but most with a reduced scope, a smaller number of partners, as well as without vital international partners.

Societal / grand challenges and values: More than three quarters (77%) of project beneficiaries who claimed that funding for their project could not have been obtained from other sources, thought so because the issues addressed in their project were specifically European. Similarly, two thirds (66%) of respondents indicated that their project could only have been funded by FP7 because there is no national funding for this type of activity or in the same research area.

This suggests that there is strong European value added not just in terms of resources, coordination and process but also in terms of the actual topics in which research is conducted. While this does not indicate the magnitude of project impacts, it does suggest that any impacts from FP7 funded space research will occur in areas and at a scale that would otherwise have remained under-researched.

Based mainly on performed high-level interviews and the results of the beneficiary survey, the evaluation has found that FP7 space research performs very well across the different dimensions of EU added value, both at the level of programmes (e.g. focus on pan-European, under-researched topics, coordination between Member States) and on the level of projects (economic efficiency, scale and resources availability, quality of research, etc.). Even compared with other programmes available for some European Member States, such as those run by ESA, FP7 Space research funding has brought significant added value.

Space in H2020: continuity or evolution?

Space research in H2020, is evolving towards a more balanced programme than was the case in FP7. As noted, FP7 Space was devoted largely to pre-operational R&D preparing the Copernicus operational programme devoting some 80-85% of its budget in this area. Only 15-20% of the programme was devoted to "Strengthening Space Foundations" addressing technology development and space science.

H2020 Space research supports EU flagship programmes Galileo and Copernicus with research and developments efforts in two areas: development of future applications and services and development of new technologies for the next generation of the systems. Space Surveillance and Tracking – SST is a new priority for Europe with R&D support from H2020. H2020 Space also devotes significant resources to space technology development with the aim of strengthening the EU Space sector both in commercial space applications and systems (such as Satellite communication, space propulsion and cost effective launch opportunities for in-orbit demonstration and validation) and to space science and space exploration.

10.10. Security

FP7 was the first Framework Programme with a fully-fledged Security Research Theme.

FP7 Security Research goes back to a number of European strategy and policy initiatives that were launched during the early 2000s, in response also to the events of 9/11.

These include the first European Security Strategy of 2003
[191](#footnote191)
, the Group of Personalities (GoP) that helped identifying principles and guidelines of a forthcoming European Security Research Programme
[192](#footnote192)
, and a Preparatory Action in the field of Security Research (PASR) that was launched by the Commission in 2003 and prepared the foundations for a fully-fledged security research programme under FP7. The European Security Research Advisory Board (ESRAB), established in 2005, then defined the strategic lines for European security research and advised on the principles and mechanism for its implementation
[193](#footnote193)
.

Already into FP7, the European Security Research and Innovation Forum (ESRIF) further elaborated the basis for security research with a long-term perspective. ESRIF also proposed to enhance the role and ability of the European security industry to invest in essential research and development activities
[194](#footnote194)
. 

FP7 Security Research was mission-driven, structured along four main security missions plus three cross-cutting missions (see below) and focused on filling capability gaps.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14029.jpg)

By its nature, the FP7 Security Research Programme contributed to the implementation of EU external policies, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (e.g. in support of borders control, conflict prevention and crisis management), to the creation of an EU-wide area of justice, freedom and security , and to policy areas such as transport, health, civil protection, energy, development, and environment.

Objectives

Original objectives

The overall objective of the FP7 Security Research Theme was “To develop the technologies and knowledge for building capabilities needed to ensure the security of citizens from threats such as terrorism, natural disasters and crime, while respecting fundamental human rights including privacy; to ensure optimal and concerted use of available and evolving technologies to the benefit of civil European security, to stimulate the cooperation of providers and users for civil security solutions, improving the competitiveness of the European security industry and delivering mission-oriented research results to reduce security gaps”
[195](#footnote195)
.

The FP7 Security Research Work Programmes provided detailed activity/topic level objectives along the structure of the main and the cross-cutting mission areas, including also ‘International Cooperation’ and responding to emerging needs and unforeseen policy needs.

Evolution of objectives to respond to the crisis

The FP7 Security Research objectives evolved over time. The 2011 Work Programme
[196](#footnote196)
 made reference to the Europe 2020 strategy and the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative and the contribution of the Security Theme, to “promoting growth and employment in general, stimulating innovation (including in SMEs), enhancing the competitiveness of European industry”. The contribution to the innovation objective was then further elaborated in the 2012
[197](#footnote197)
 and 2013
[198](#footnote198)
 Work Programmes.

In parallel, a dedicated initiative to support the competitiveness of the European security industry was launched in 2012. The “Action Plan for an innovative and competitive Security Industry” 
[199](#footnote199)
,
[200](#footnote200)
 has the overarching aim of enhancing growth and increasing employment in the EU's security industry, and includes activities related to pre-commercial procurement and better integration of the societal dimension under FP7 and Horizon 2020.

How did FP7 Security contribute to the competitiveness of European Security industry? 

The FP7 Security Research Programme supported the competitiveness of the European Security Industry by contributing to overcoming market fragmentation, by increasing European S&T collaboration and by fostering innovations and supporting the demonstration and development of new products with market potential, last but not least also in the context of security industrial policy and the related action plan (see above).

It should be kept in mind that the situation of FP7 Security Research was a unique and very specific one, given that FP7 Security Research was the first fully-fledged security Research Theme under a Framework Programme. FP7 Security Research had to tackle a number of challenges, amongst them a highly fragmented European security market, a fragmented research community, the gap between research and the market, as well as the societal dimension of security technologies.

As a consequence, the contribution of FP7 Security Research to the competitiveness of the European Security Industry includes a strong structuring effect for European security research that cannot always be directly measured through, for instance, the number of patents or publications (see also question 4).

The study on “Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration”
[201](#footnote201)
 reflects the specific situation of FP7 Security Research and its achievements:

“The findings from the desk research, interviews and focus group workshop all underlined the fact that Europe is not one market but many and that the degree of fragmentation makes it harder to do business and undermines international competitiveness as well. The fragmentation is partly institutional (political and legal differences between Member States and security actors), but there are also substantive interoperability challenges (organisational, semantic, technical). As such, FP7 has been helpful in bringing together communities – industry and end users – in projects that are helping to develop common concepts, terminology, open interfaces, middleware, etc. that will in turn facilitate improved multilateral and cross-border cooperation.”
[202](#footnote202)

The study also analysed SESAM data of 61 completed and fully processed projects, i.e. for a partial set of about 20% of all FP7 Security Research Projects, and found a total of 19 IPR (Intellectual Property Rights), including 10 patent applications, equivalent to 1.3 IPR, including 0.6 patent applications, for every 10 million € of EC contribution
[203](#footnote203)
. These figures are rather low, compared with other parts of the Cooperation Specific Programme. However, the specific nature of security research has to be taken into account (see also above), including the fragmented market and the perceived difficulties as regards commercialisation. Project results, knowledge or concepts are sometimes feeding into another FP7 project. In addition, about one third of all FP7 Security Research projects are involving classified information, and hence are subject to security rules for protecting EU classified information.

The strong link to the security industry sector is reflected by the fact that Private for Profit Organisations (excluding education, PRC) represent the largest group of actors in FP7 Security Research with 43% of participations. SMEs as part of this group, account for 21% of all participations.

A participant survey carried out in the context of the evaluation study provides more details: Survey participants were asked to assess various aspects of the impact of FP7 Security Research on European security industrial policy including the security industry market. As illustrated by the following figure, a majority of more than 70% of the participants judge that FP7 Security Research had a high or medium impact on improving the global competitiveness of the EU’s security industry and on supporting the expansion of the EUs security industry.

|  |
| --- |
|  |

Source: Technopolis participant survey, November 2014

(Source: Technopolis, 2015)
[204](#footnote204)

The evaluation study confirms the challenging situation of the security industry market and the persisting areas of concern, for instance related to the lack of commercialisation, a low take-up of results, complex IPR rules, and different national standards, but also states “However, it is worth noting that knowledge, cooperation and networking benefits are widespread, and are seen as equally important assets for competitiveness – though their impact may only materialise in the longer term”.
[205](#footnote205)

How did FP7 Security contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The situation of FP7 Security Research was again unique, given that the European security research programme had been launched by the EU in light of not only a fragmented market, but also a highly fragmented research community.

In total, participants from 48 countries were in involved in FP7 Security Research Projects. The following table shows the EC contribution, number of projects, and number of participations by country:

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Country | Code | EC contribution | Participations (and rank\*) | Projects |
| Germany | DE | €159,862,017 | 380 (3) | 199 |
| United Kingdom | UK | €152,305,365 | 430 (1) | 210 |
| France | FR | €151,541,607 | 379 (4) | 172 |
| Italy | IT | €121,772,196 | 385 (2) | 173 |
| Spain | ES | €110,920,970 | 319 (5) | 157 |
| Netherlands | NL | €79,123,262 | 240 (6) | 131 |
| Sweden | SE | €62,294,867 | 144 (9) | 103 |
| Belgium | BE | €52,099,167 | 168 (7) | 112 |
| Austria | AT | €44,060,629 | 123 (10) | 78 |
| Greece | EL | €43,776,916 | 150 (8) | 76 |
| Poland | PL | €33,178,421 | 102 (11) | 75 |
| Finland | FI | €31,869,588 | 97 (12) | 66 |
| Norway | NO | €31,615,361 | 84 (14) | 65 |
| Israel | IL | €31,523,521 | 85 (13) | 56 |
| Switzerland | CH | €28,543,070 | 80 (16) | 59 |
| Ireland | IE | €26,075,799 | 79 (17) | 58 |
| Portugal | PT | €21,651,038 | 84 (14) | 55 |
| Denmark | DK | €14,257,242 | 41 (18) | 33 |
| Slovakia | SK | €7,125,091 | 25 (24) | 19 |
| EU (JRC) | EU | €6,759,664 | 26 (23) | 26 |
| Czech Republic | CZ | €5,789,696 | 34 (20) | 32 |
| Turkey | TR | €5,209,062 | 28 (21) | 25 |
| Luxembourg | LU | €5,033,438 | 19 (28) | 15 |
| Slovenia | SI | €4,457,149 | 25 (24) | 23 |
| Romania | RO | €4,351,272 | 38 (19) | 35 |
| Cyprus | CY | €4,162,720 | 15 (29) | 14 |
| Estonia | EE | €3,686,642 | 21 (26) | 17 |
| United States | US | €3,587,938 | 11 (33) | 8 |
| Hungary | HU | €3,536,682 | 27 (22) | 24 |
| Croatia | HR | €3,497,820 | 13 (31) | 8 |
| Bulgaria | BG | €2,321,091 | 21 (26) | 21 |
| Latvia | LV | €1,542,817 | 14 (30) | 12 |
| Lithuania | LT | €1,204,977 | 12 (32) | 11 |
| Malta | MT | €1,114,228 | 9 (34) | 9 |
| Serbia | RS | €1,039,840 | 5 (35) | 5 |
| Japan | JP | €646,242 | 4 (36) | 4 |
| Iceland | IS | €553,035 | 3 (38) | 2 |
| Australia | AU | €375,996 | 2 (39) | 2 |
| Ukraine | UA | €263,280 | 2 (39) | 1 |
| Russia | RU | €175,950 | 1 (45) | 1 |
| Bosnia-Herzegovina | BA | €153,548 | 1 (45) | 1 |
| FYROM | MK | €118,125 | 2 (39) | 2 |
| India | IN | €115,490 | 2 (39) | 2 |
| Egypt | EG | €56,800 | 1 (45) | 1 |
| South Africa | ZA | €54,947 | 2 (39) | 2 |
| Canada | CA | €35,614 | 4 (36) | 4 |
| Palestine | PS | €25,231 | 1 (45) | 1 |
| Montenegro | ME | €22,622 | 1 (45) | 1 |
| Taiwan | TW | € - | 2 (39) | 1 |
| All |  | €1,263,488,044 | 3,741 | 307 |

Source: Technopolis analysis of CORDA data

\* The number in brackets indicates the rank of the country if the data is sorted according to the number of participations.

(Source: Technopolis, 2015)
[206](#footnote206)

According to the participant survey, strengthened international partnerships, improved abilities and capacity to conduct R&D, improved academic links, and improved international visibility/reputation are leading the list of achieved objectives at project level, as seen by all participants
[207](#footnote207)
.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14031.jpg)

Source: Technopolis survey of FP7 Security Research participants, November 2014

(Source: Technopolis, 2015)
[208](#footnote208)

When asked about the impact of the FP7 Security Research Programme, 88% of the respondents judged the impact of the programme on research cooperation as substantial (i.e. being of high or medium impact)
[209](#footnote209)
.

The involvement of end users represents another important feature of FP7 Security Research and contributes to aspects of networking for R&D risks and costs.

The evaluation study explored the involvement of end-users and the end-user landscape in the EU and concluded that "one of the major benefits of the FP7 Security Research Actions has been the impact that the programme has already had on the end-user scene. Not only have large numbers of end-users become involved as project participants, coordinators or advisors, but within certain sectors, they have also started to organise themselves into coherent and active communities"
[210](#footnote210)
.

One example is the Community of Users on Disaster Risk and Crisis Management, which was launched by the Commission in late 2014. Effective communication and interactions among policy-makers, research, industry (including SMEs) and operational actors (e.g. first responders) are essential for policy development and implementation. This includes a proper exchange of information and communication about policy updates and project results. Such exchanges and transfer of knowledge are also crucial to identify and address users’ needs and to better design funding programmes. To address related challenges, e.g. the policy complexity and the gap between research and the market, the Commission is funding large-scale demonstration projects. FP7 projects EDEN
[211](#footnote211)
 and DRIVER
[212](#footnote212)
, in the field of Disaster Risk and Crisis Management (including CBRN-E, natural and man-made disasters), are examples for projects with the potential to support building a critical mass by federating efforts at EU level: EDEN and DRIVER, along with other projects which have an "interfacing" component. The need to build a Community of Users emerged in this context. The Community of Users on Disaster Risk and Crisis Management provides a platform aiming at bringing together key scientific, policy and industry actors, including end-users, and other stakeholders.

As regards end-user involvement, the evaluation study concludes: "The programme has learned how to engage end-users more effectively through a broad range of promotional and project-related activities, as well as through the enabling infrastructure and networks, to facilitate dialogue and articulation of research needs. The Commission should continue to support these fledgling networks in order to support the development of communities of practice and strengthen interaction with end-users."
[213](#footnote213)

In the context of International Cooperation, an Implementing Arrangement between the European Commission and the Government of the United States of America was signed in 2010 for cooperative activities in the field of homeland/civil security research
[214](#footnote214)
.

How did FP7 Security contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

Here again, the unique situation of FP7 Security Research needs to be taken into account: The coordination of European policies in security research would not exist without FP7 Security Research.

Funding for Security Research has been included for the first time under FP7, going back to quite recent events and policy initiatives, including 9/11. Prior to the launch of FP7 Security Research, coordination of European and national security research policies was almost non-existent. FP7 Security Research responded to increasing and rapidly changing security needs in Europe and contributed to coordinating European and national research policies.

As is confirmed by the evaluation study:

“FP7 Security Research has helped to expand capacity and shape the research landscape, with several pan-EU networks as well as national groups having been established.

The programme has also had a positive impact on Member State investment in security research, with several new national programmes having been created or expanded (e.g. Tekes Safety and Security programme, in Finland) and evolved (e.g. the collaboration and mutual opening up of the French and German national civil security research programmes).”
[215](#footnote215)

The evaluation study explored the influence of FP7 Security Research on national research programmes, in particular the national security research programmes of Austria, France, and Germany, and indicates a clear European Added Value. The study concludes that these national security research programmes are:

“… well aligned with the FP7 Security Research Actions. In particular:

The programmes focus on the national needs of security research, formulated in line with their national priorities in the security area. While they have addressed a variety of security threats through the support of end-users, they also address the competitiveness of the security industry and, in two cases, the creation of new jobs. This orientation echoes important aspects of the FP7 SRA(
[216](#footnote216)
) objectives.

Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that national programmes have in some cases addressed short-term needs, compared to the longer-term perspective of the FP7 Security Research Actions. In other words the programmes at national level have complemented the actions at EU level.

Similarly, there is anecdotal evidence that the experience, competence and results from projects funded by national programmes have been built upon in projects funded by the FP7 Security research programme. The latter providing also the opportunity to access larger markets.

More generally the analysis suggests that the national security research programmes have contributed to the strengthening of networking and cooperation in the Member States and in the European Union.”
[217](#footnote217)

How did FP7 Security strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe? 

FP7 Security Research was largely focused on reducing the capability gap between research and the market, and hence on applied research. As is stated in the Cooperation Specific Programme, “This capability gap driven approach will be complemented by a "bottom-up" approach which scopes and examines technologies in order to assess how they could be utilised to enhance European security. An important aspect is to draw on the excellence of the supply side (e.g. industry, universities, research centres) to bring forward innovative security solutions. Research will be multidisciplinary and mission-oriented, it will range from technology and methodology development, to technology and systems integration, demonstration and validation. A multi-purpose nature of technologies is encouraged to maximise the scope for their application, and to foster cross-fertilisation and take-up of available and evolving technologies for the civil security sector.”
[218](#footnote218)

The evaluation study analysed SESAM data of 61 completed and fully processed projects, i.e. for a partial set of about 20% of all FP7 Security Research Projects and found a total of 214 reported publications, equivalent to 15 publications, including 2.3 publications in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, for every 10 million € of EC contribution
[219](#footnote219)
. As for patents (please, see above), these figures are rather low, again reflecting the specific nature of security research, where the share of participants from universities (HES) and research organisation (REC) academia is lower than in other areas and hence, most likely, the inclination towards publication. Project results, knowledge or concepts are sometimes feeding into another FP7 project. In addition, about one third of all FP7 Security Research projects are involving classified information, and hence are subject to security rules for protecting EU classified information.

A high level of additionality for FP7 Security Research is suggested by the participant survey: When asked what would have happened without FP7 support, more than 80% indicate that the project would not have been carried out
[220](#footnote220)
. The following figure presents the reasons provided by those participants indicating that the project could not have been supported by another funding scheme. This underlines the absolute need for a European Security Research Programme.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.14032.jpg)

Source: Technopolis participant survey, November 2014, (Source: Technopolis, 2015)
[221](#footnote221)

How did FP7 Security promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

Training activities are recognised as a tool for promoting the development of research careers. FP7 Security Research included a number of projects specifically dealing with training; examples are projects CAST
[222](#footnote222)
, CRISIS
[223](#footnote223)
, and PANDORA
[224](#footnote224)
. Many other FP7 Security Research projects included training components in their work programme.

As regards the attractiveness of Europe to the best researchers, the evaluation study concludes that “The programme has successfully attracted many of Europe’s leading national research laboratories and major security and defence companies.”
[225](#footnote225)

The analysis of FP7 Security Research Participant data shows that Europe’s leading security research organisations are participating in FP7 Security Research projects. The top three organisations (as per total EC funding) are Fraunhofer, FOI (Swedish Defence Research Agency), and TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), directly followed by THALES, a major multinational company
[226](#footnote226)
.

How did FP7 Security provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

In April 2015, the Commission adopted a "European Agenda on Security"
[227](#footnote227)
 for the period 2015-2020, to support Member States' cooperation in tackling security threats and step up common efforts in the fight against terrorism, organised crime and cybercrime. The Agenda sets out the concrete tools and measures which will be used in this joint work to ensure security and tackle these three most pressing threats more effectively.

The Agenda acknowledges the importance of research and innovation to keep up-to-date with evolving security needs, to identify new security threats and their impacts on society, and to find innovative solutions to mitigate security risks. The Agenda highlights the central role of Horizon 2020 in ensuring that the EU's research effort is well targeted and meeting the needs of law enforcement by involving end-users at all stages of the process, from conception to market. The Agenda underlines the role of a competitive European security industry towards contributing to meeting security needs.

The following success stories represent examples of knowledge created under FP7 in support of key European policies and/or security threats.

BONAS/EMPHASIS (BOmb factory detection by Networks of Advanced Sensors/Explosive Material Production (Hidden) Agile Search and Intelligence System)

Two projects combining results to produce a new approach that automatically detects the presence of homemade bomb materials and alerts authorities (
<http://www.bonas-fp7.eu>
, 
[www.emphasis-fp7.eu](http://www.emphasis-fp7.eu)
):

<http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29354579>

MIRACLE (Mobile Laboratory Capacity for the Rapid Assessment of CBRN Threats Located within and outside the EU)

<http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/111244_en.html>

<http://www.cbrnlab.eu/miracle/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=102>

The objective of MIRACLE is to harmonize the definition of a mobile CBRN laboratory, to define its needs, and subsequently to provide solutions for deployment of this device in- and outside the EU.

MIRACLE has developed a “Biological scenario” which closely mimics the current Ebola crisis situation and its rapid spread in West Africa, and how it can be addressed. This scenario is currently being implemented in real life operational conditions: An in-field laboratory in the immediate vicinity of an Ebola treatment centre located in the outskirt of Nzere Kore, Guinea, close to the borders of Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. In addition to helping identify Ebola patients quickly, this laboratory will also support new clinical research into one of the most promising drugs for the treatment of Ebola patients. Lessons learned from this deployment will also help refine the analysis of gaps, technological or logistical improvements and missing technologies for mobile laboratories.

SGL for USAR (Second Generation Locator for Urban Search and Rescue Operations)

<http://www.sgl-eu.org/>

SGL for USaR is mission oriented towards solving critical problems following large scale structural collapses in urban locations. This project combined chemical and physical sensors integration with the development of an open ICT platform for addressing mobility and time-critical requirements of USaR Operations. The project developed two tangible product prototypes, FIRST, a standalone back-pack device carried out by the rescuers enabling chemical, audio and video capabilities, and REDS, a Remote Early Detection System that continuously monitors the large-scale situation at disaster scenes.

FASTID (FAST and efficient international disaster victim Identification)

<http://www.interpol.int/fr/INTERPOL-expertise/Databases/FASTID/FAST-and-efficient-international-disaster-victim-IDentification>

FASTID developed an international database for missing persons and unidentified bodies. It set out to streamline efforts to identify victims during such events, as well as helping with other day-to-day policy tasks. The team created a standardised system to identify disaster victims. This involves an information management and decision support system that uses rich Internet application software to automatically match missing persons and those discovered injured or dead at disaster sites. A key part of FASTID was to promote greater cooperation between different national authorities. It involved experts from around the world to develop the system, accounting for different national and cultural considerations in its specifications. Another important element was developing training to use the system.

ASSERT (Assessing Security Research: Tools and Methodologies to measure societal impact): 
<http://assert-project.eu/>

ASSERT has addressed the problem that in traditional thinking, societal impacts are reduced to side effects of instrumental (technological and legal) security measures. The project set out to demonstrate that societal dimensions of security research taken into account from the very beginning of the “design process” can increase the variety pool of feasible solutions.

Starting from a synthesis of state of the art discussions on societal security, ASSERT has identified best practice cases exploring and assessing societal impacts of science and technology in the security domain and beyond. This was done in a multidisciplinary fashion from different perspectives, including end-users, stakeholders, researchers, policy-makers and NGOs. Bringing together these different perspectives in a series of workshops created the basis for the development of a tool and a strategy for the sustainable implementation of societal impacts in future EU research activities in the field of security.

PERSEUS (Protection of European seas and borders through the intelligent use of surveillance): 
<http://www.perseus-fp7.eu/>

PERSEUS represents the first demonstration project implemented by the FP7 Security Research Theme. PERSEUS contributes to Europe’s efforts to monitor illegal migration and combat related crime and goods smuggling by proposing a large scale demonstration of a EU Maritime surveillance System of Systems, on the basis of existing national systems and platforms, enhancing them with innovative capabilities and moving beyond EUROSUR’s 2013 expectations. It is an example of how EU Research and Development activities are set into the present political context.

PERSEUS has assembled major users and providers, ensuring privileged access to existing surveillance systems and assets for an optimised coverage of the area of interest. These users will define, assess and validate the alignment of PERSEUS’s recommendations to their needs. PERSEUS also includes an evolution mechanism to enlarge the user base and integrate emerging technologies during its lifetime.

The PERSEUS scope was three-fold; (1) Design of a system of systems architecture that integrated existing and upcoming surveillance systems as well as innovations created within PERSEUS and those originating from other projects. The goal of the system of systems was to address the complex security missions, focusing on irregular migration and trafficking; (2) Validation and demonstration of the system of systems through six exercises representing specific surveillance missions, instantiated in the Western and Eastern regions of the Mediterranean sea; (3) Strong involvement of end users to warrant a realistic step by step approach to reach an efficient operational cooperation among the Member States while preserving the national prerogatives.

PERSEUS delivered a comprehensive set of validated and demonstrated recommendations and proposes standards.

  

How much did FP Security contribute to job creation?

According to the workforce statistics provided in the final reports of the 61 competed and fully processed projects
[228](#footnote228)
, the total workforce for these 61 projects amounts to 3506 people, working in different roles in the projects. 253 additional researchers have been recruited specifically for these projects. For both, the total workforce as well as the newly created jobs, the gender distribution is 69% male/31% female.

The 61 completed and fully processed projects represent a partial set of about 20% of all FP7 Security Research Projects. Extrapolating from this partial set to all FP7 Security Research projects, results in about 1270 new jobs for researchers that should have been created directly by and within FP7 Security Research projects.

The workforce statistics for the 61 completed projects include 259 PhD students, out of which 62% are male, 38% female. Extrapolating to all FP7 Security Research projects, one could expect about 1300 PhD students working in FP7 Security Research projects.

To what extent the results of FP7 Security contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

As indicated above, FP7 Security Research contributed to increasing European S&T collaboration and networking, to fostering innovations and supporting the demonstration and development of new products with market potential. In line with the “Action Plan for an innovative and competitive Security Industry”
[229](#footnote229)
, the FP7 Security Research Programme supported the competitiveness of the European Security Industry and contributed to security industrial policy via a strong structuring effect of the European security research community that is a prerequisite for overcoming market fragmentation.

FP7 Security Research contributed to a broad range of key EU policies, for instance the CBRN Action Plan
[230](#footnote230)
 (DG HOME) and the EU Action Plan on Enhancing the Security of Explosives
[231](#footnote231)
. Further policies include border security (EUROSUR, DG HOME), customs (DG TAXUD), integrated maritime surveillance (DG MARE).

The EU has encouraged the development of innovative security solutions, for example through standards. FP7 Security Research contributed to the following standardisation activities:

- Development of standards mandate M/487
[232](#footnote232)
, covering the development of a work programme for the definition of European standards in the area of security;

- Development of standards mandate M/530
[233](#footnote233)
: The Commission recently mandated European standardisation organisations to produce a European standard to allow manufacturers and service providers to develop, implement and execute a 'privacy by design' approach in their processes. Compliance with such a standard will ensure that EU security products and services respect individuals' rights and thereby enhance consumer confidence.

To what extent was FP7 Security coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The coherence of FP7 Security Research with the security industrial policy action plan and a range of Commission policies have been outlined above.

The coordination of research activities between the European Commission and the European Defence Agency (EDA) under the European Framework Cooperation (EFC) represents another example for the coherence of FP7 Security Research with other EU policies. The European Framework Cooperation was established in 2011, when the European Commission and the EDA agreed to harmonise their research activities. CBRNE was identified as a pilot area, to explore synergies between the FP7 Security Research programme and the EDA Joint Investment Programme for CBRNE (JIP CBRNE).

Which was the added value of FP7 Security when compared with national Security research and innovation programmes?

There is considerable added value given that the budget for the FP7 Security Research Theme exceeded the level of civil security research funding in any single Member State.

The Commission contribution made available through FP7 Security Research represents more than 50% of the EU wide public financing for security research.

This specific situation explains the degree of structuring and the impacts of the FP7 Security Research Action.

For more details, please, see under Question 3.

This positive view is confirmed by the evaluation study that concludes:

"There is a universally strong and positive view about the programme’s EAV. This question produced very substantial amounts of feedback from the stakeholders, with a high degree of consistency across the many interlocutors and even among different types of actors. The views of the interviewees broadly reflected the opinions of participants, with the availability of research funds and the transnational nature of project teams being the most widely cited sources of EAV."
[234](#footnote234)

Security in H2020: continuity or evolution?

Both:

One the one hand, Horizon 2020 builds on the achievements of FP7 Security Research. The "building block" structure of the FP7 Security Theme, leading from study-like CSA to large scale demonstration projects, is maintained. Many of the FP7 projects have set the ground for follow-up projects aimed at the development of prototypes, the establishment of EU wide standards.

On the other hand, the H2020 Secure Societies Challenge has a wider mandate than the FP7 Security Theme. The external dimension and cyber-crime/security are new areas of competence in H2020 which were not part of FP7. H2020 Secure Societies also aims at bringing research even closer to market. A focus in this context is the Pre-Commercial-Procurement Scheme PCP
[235](#footnote235)
, which has been integrated extensively under H2020 Security Societies. PCP differs from and complements the other building blocks, by involving directly, and supporting financially, end-user entities (typically national or European agencies or authorities).

:   [(1)](#footnoteref1)
     DGs presented in the ISG: RTD, AGRI, CNECT, EAC, ENER, GROW, JRC, MOVE, SG, HOME, REGIO, TRADE, SJ, EMPL and SANTE.
:   [(2)](#footnoteref2)
     The Treaty on the European Union and the treaty on the functioning of the European Union
:   [(3)](#footnoteref3)
     Article 7(3), see OJ L 412 of 30 December 2006, p1.
:   [(4)](#footnoteref4)
     European University Association, Science Europe, Science Europe Scientific Committees of Social Sciences and Humanities, Association of European Research Establishments in Aeronautics, UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Research Councils UK, UK Higher Education International Unit and Universities UK, Swiss National Science Foundation, FR Chambre de Métiers et de l’Artisanat and the National Environmental Agency of Georgia.
:   [(5)](#footnoteref5)
     The question: "For each of the 6 areas (impact on scientific excellence, impact on technological or social innovations, economic impact, societal impact, environmental impact and regional impact) per specific programme please select the 3 areas which in your view generated most impact and rank them accordingly (3 generating most impact)." In questions 3.1 (Impact of simplification measures), 4.1 (Impacts of Specific Programmes), 4.5 (Contribution to ERA) and 5.1 (European added value) respondents were requested to select among the answers a limited number of the most important issues, ranking them according to their importance. In all cases, only the 3 highest ranked answers were retained for the analysis. According to the ranks provided by the respondents, the answers were weighted as follows: rank "1" was fully weighted, rank "2" was weighted by 0.9, and rank "3" was weighted by 0.8. In this way, the relative importance of each answer could be established.
:   [(6)](#footnoteref6)
     Certification of costs, Participants Guarantee Fund, Unique Registration Facility, Certification of methodology, Web-based electronic system for negotiations, Project reporting (streamlined guidelines and structure of reports), Grant amendments (streamlined rules and procedures), Research participant portal, Simplification of recovery process (flat rate corrections), Wider acceptance of average personnel costs and Flat rate system for SME owners and natural persons without salary
:   [(7)](#footnoteref7)
     The question: "Out of the 11 FP7 simplification measures listed, please select the 5 which in your view generated most impact and ranks them accordingly (5 generating the most impact)." In questions 3.1 (Impact of simplification measures), 4.1 (Impacts of Specific Programmes), 4.5 (Contribution to ERA) and 5.1 (European added value) respondents were requested to select among the answers a limited number of the most important issues, ranking them according to their importance. In all cases, only the 3 highest ranked answers were retained for the analysis. According to the ranks provided by the respondents, the answers were weighted as follows: rank "1" was fully weighted, rank "2" was weighted by 0.9, and rank "3" was weighted by 0.8. In this way, the relative importance of each answer could be established.
:   [(8)](#footnoteref8)
     More information on ERA: http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/index\_en.htm
:   [(9)](#footnoteref9)
     The question: "To which of the following ERA areas did FP7 activities contribute most? Please rank the areas on a scale from 1-5 (5 being the area to which FP7 activities contributed the most." In questions 3.1 (Impact of simplification measures), 4.1 (Impacts of Specific Programmes), 4.5 (Contribution to ERA) and 5.1 (European added value) respondents were requested to select among the answers a limited number of the most important issues, ranking them according to their importance. In all cases, only the 3 highest ranked answers were retained for the analysis. According to the ranks provided by the respondents, the answers were weighted as follows: rank "1" was fully weighted, rank "2" was weighted by 0.9, and rank "3" was weighted by 0.8. In this way, the relative importance of each answer could be established.
:   [(10)](#footnoteref10)
     The areas of EU added value: Tackling pan-European challenges, Coordination of national research policies, EU scale of dissemination of research results, Pooling of resources (achieving critical mass; economies of scale and scope), Reduction of research/commercial risk, Increase competition in research, Leverage on private/public investment, Improving S&T capabilities and Enhance researchers’ mobility
:   [(11)](#footnoteref11)
     The question: "In which of the following dimensions of EU added-value has FP7 been most successful? Out of the 9 areas please select the 3 which in your view have been most successful and rank them accordingly (3 being the dimension most successful)". In questions 3.1 (Impact of simplification measures), 4.1 (Impacts of Specific Programmes), 4.5 (Contribution to ERA) and 5.1 (European added value) respondents were requested to select among the answers a limited number of the most important issues, ranking them according to their importance. In all cases, only the 3 highest ranked answers were retained for the analysis. According to the ranks provided by the respondents, the answers were weighted as follows: rank "1" was fully weighted, rank "2" was weighted by 0.9, and rank "3" was weighted by 0.8. In this way, the relative importance of each answer could be established..
:   [(12)](#footnoteref12)
     Article 7(3), see OJ L 412 of 30 December 2006, p1.
:   [(13)](#footnoteref13)
     JRC direct actions are subject to separate evaluation process.
:   [(14)](#footnoteref14)
      EC Seventh Framework Programme Decision article 7(3) stipulates "Two years following the completion of this Framework Programme, the Commission shall carry out an external evaluation by independent experts of its rationale, implementation and achievements."
:   [(15)](#footnoteref15)
     Questions 1- 5 were included in stakeholder consultation launched for the IA for the FP7 proposal and question 6 was included in the stakeholder consultation for the FP7 interim evaluation. Additional standard questions on the information of the respondents of the EU Survey Tool will be added.
:   [(16)](#footnoteref16)
     Questions 2.1 and 2.2 were included in the stakeholder consultation for the FP7 interim evaluation. The additional question on non-participation was added in line with the draft outline of the report of the HLEG on the ex-post evaluation of FP7. The short introduction is based on NCP Survey 2013.
:   [(17)](#footnoteref17)
     Based on question 4 and 4a) of the stakeholder consultation for the FP7 interim evaluation asking stakeholder whether they were aware of the simplification measures and whether they were successful.
:   [(18)](#footnoteref18)
     Based on the National contact Point Survey for 2012 FP7 Monitoring Report
:   [(19)](#footnoteref19)
     Questions 4.3 and 4.4 are based on questions 2 and 2a) of the stakeholder consultation for the FP7 interim evaluation.
:   [(20)](#footnoteref20)
     http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/index\_en.htm
:   [(21)](#footnoteref21)
     These questions were also included in the stakeholder consultation for the FP7 interim evaluation.
:   [(22)](#footnoteref22)
     The European RTD Evaluation Network is composed of members from EU Member States, EU Candidate Countries and countries that are associated with the EU RTD Framework Programmes. It provides a forum for discussion and analysis of best practice in RTD evaluation methodology, use of RTD indicators and measurement of impact of innovation initiatives and research results.
:   [(23)](#footnoteref23)
     A Processed Final Report is one that i) has been submitted via SESAM, ii) the corresponding assessment is signed and registered by the PO in SESAM and iii) final payment is available or the FO has finalized the calculation of the final payment (PCM status: FROZEN).
:   [(24)](#footnoteref24)
     For information, as of August 2015, SESAM RESPIR covers 51% of the closed FP7 projects.
:   [(25)](#footnoteref25)
     The first evaluation studies feeding into the exercise were launched in 2010 and the last study results will become available in 2016.
:   [(26)](#footnoteref26)
     The FP7 Annual Monitoring Reports were produced by the services on the basis of the latest information available from the CORDA database to provide information on the implementation of the programme.
:   [(27)](#footnoteref27)
     Three DG RTD Annual Reports on Programme Evaluation Activities were produced in 2012, 2013 and 2014, to report on the implementation and outcomes of the evaluation studies released by DG RTD in the year before.
:   [(28)](#footnoteref28)
     Recital 4 of Decision 1982/2006/EC, O.J. 412/1 of 30.12.2006.
:   [(29)](#footnoteref29)
     Recital 4 of Decision 1982/2006/EC, O.J. 412/1 of 30.12.2006.
:   [(30)](#footnoteref30)
     Recital 3 of Decision 1982/2006/EC, O.J. 412/1 of 30.12.2006.
:   [(31)](#footnoteref31)

     
       Communication from the Commission, Science and technology, the key to Europe's future - Guidelines for future European Union policy to support research, COM(2004) 353 final, 16.6.2004.
:   [(32)](#footnoteref32)

     
       Source: Table 3, Commission Staff Working Paper Annex to the Proposal for the Council and European Parliament decisions on the 7th Framework Programme (EC and Euratom), Impact Assessment and ex ante evaluation, SEC(2005) 430, 6.4.2005, p. 15-16.
:   [(33)](#footnoteref33)
     Green Paper; The European Research Area: New Perspectives, COM(2007)161, adopted on 4.4. 2007.
:   [(34)](#footnoteref34)
     C(2008)1329, adopted on 10.4.2008.
:   [(35)](#footnoteref35)
     Council Resolution on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and on a Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations, 30.05.2008.
:   [(36)](#footnoteref36)
     COM(2008)317 adopted on 23.5.2008.
:   [(37)](#footnoteref37)
     Council Conclusions on better careers and more mobility: a European partnership for researchers, 26.09.2008.
:   [(38)](#footnoteref38)
     COM(2008)468 adopted on 15.7.2008.
:   [(39)](#footnoteref39)
     Conclusions concerning joint programming of research in Europe in response to the major societal challenges, 2.12.2008.
:   [(40)](#footnoteref40)
     COM(2008)467 adopted on 25.7.2008.
:   [(41)](#footnoteref41)
     Council Regulation No 723//2009 on the Community legal framework for a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).
:   [(42)](#footnoteref42)
     COM(2008)588, adopted on 24.9.2008.
:   [(43)](#footnoteref43)
     Conclusions concerning a European partnership for international scientific and technological cooperation, 2.12.2008.
:   [(44)](#footnoteref44)
     COM(2012)392.
:   [(45)](#footnoteref45)
     Conclusions on 'A reinforced European research area partnership for excellence and growth', 12.12.2012.
:   [(46)](#footnoteref46)
     COM(2013)639 adopted on 20.9.2013.
:   [(47)](#footnoteref47)
     Communication from the Commission, A European Economic Recovery Plan, COM(2008) 800 final, 26.11.2008.
:   [(48)](#footnoteref48)
     Communication from the Commission EUROPE 2020 A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, COM(2010) 2020 final, 3.3.2010.
:   [(49)](#footnoteref49)
     Communication from the Commission Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union, COM(2010) 546 final, 6.10.2010; Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union, SEC(2010) 1161, Brussels 06/10/2010.
:   [(50)](#footnoteref50)

     
       Communication from the Commission Simplifying The Implementation of the Research Framework Programmes, COM(2010) 187, 29.04.2010.
:   [(51)](#footnoteref51)
     Those are not included in the scope of this evaluation.
:   [(52)](#footnoteref52)
     Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) are public-private partnerships at European level in the field of industrial research. The five JTIs introduced in FP7 were Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) in pharmaceutical development, Clean Sky in the aeronautics industry, ARTEMIS in embedded systems, ENIAC in Nanoelectronics, and the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Initiative (FCH). Around 10% of the specific programme Cooperation budget hasbeen allocated to JTIs.
:   [(53)](#footnoteref53)
     FP6 initiated ERA-NETs as an instrument to stimulate better coordination among funding institutions within a number of thematic fields, by linking national research programmes. The scheme continued in FP7, and the number of ERA-NETs under FP7 approached 120, with a total public funding commitment of about €2 billion.
:   [(54)](#footnoteref54)
     ERANET Plus facilitates joint calls through topping up the joint national funding with FP7 funds (33% of the joint call). Hence the ERA-NET Plus represents a significant incentive to develop trans-national funding initiatives that attract additional FP funds available for this purpose. Nine ERA-NET Plus proposals have been approved, involving 140 funding partners, with a total trans-national budget of €232 million and a FP contribution of €67.5 million
:   [(55)](#footnoteref55)
     Article 185 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU), provides a legal basis for the Union to participate in research and development programmes of the Member States, to help the coordination of R&D in Europe and support a more coherent use of resources. Four have been adopted during FP7:· Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) to enhance the quality of life of elderly and strengthen the industrial base for related industries through the use of ICT· European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP)· BONUS Baltic Sea, supporting the European Strategy for Marine and Maritime Research· Eurostars, for development projects in any field, with specific attention to research intensiveSMEs.
:   [(56)](#footnoteref56)

     
       European Commission, DG RTD, Research and Innovation performance in EU Member States and Associated countries Innovation Union progress at country level 2013, p. 8.
:   [(57)](#footnoteref57)
     The monitoring system comprises information on about 3,234 topics (from the ‘Cooperation’ Work Programmes 2007 to 2013) and 6,967 projects (from the years 2007 to 2013) with more than 79,000 project participations and a total EC contribution of € 25.7 billion. See 
    [www.fp7-4-sd.eu](http://www.fp7-4-sd.eu)
:   [(58)](#footnoteref58)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 80
:   [(59)](#footnoteref59)
     SEURAT-1, Safety Evaluation Ultimately Replacing Animal Testing.
:   [(60)](#footnoteref60)
     Respir [as of 15.09.2014]. Target was 90% for projects' objectives, 18% for industry participation, 15% for SMEs, 20% projects generating patents. The overall figure for FP7 Health is 25% since projects in public health-related areas and coordination/support action do not generate IPR.
:   [(61)](#footnoteref61)
     Corda database and FP7 Health Survey October 2014, based on the project coordinators' replies. Since at least one third of all respondents are involved in an on-going project that may not have reached yet its full potential in terms of knowledge generation, patents, publications, jobs or new products development, these figures are expected to increase significantly after all project are completed.
:   [(62)](#footnoteref62)
     Respir. [as of 15.09.2014]
:   [(63)](#footnoteref63)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014. Since two thirds of all respondents are involved in an on-going project that may not have reached yet its full potential in terms of knowledge generation, patents, publications, jobs or new products development, significantly increased figures can be expected once all project are completed. Comparison of data regarding the FP7 Health survey of October 2014 and the RESPIR database (the latter concerning only completed projects) hint at an increase of 70% of the figures regarding the number of filed patents.
:   [(64)](#footnoteref64)

     
       
       FP7 Health Survey October 2014
:   [(65)](#footnoteref65)
     Respir. [as of 01.01.2015]
:   [(66)](#footnoteref66)

     
       A. Mialhe, Questionnaire: SMEs in Health SBIR-like topic 2013, DG RTD, November 2012.
:   [(67)](#footnoteref67)
     CORDA, Directorate E SME survey (2012)
:   [(68)](#footnoteref68)
     Health Competence
:   [(69)](#footnoteref69)
     "The assessment of key FP7 Health (2007-2013) network structural characteristics and indicators revealed a very close interconnectedness between the participant organisations. […] 12% of all the cooperation ties developed between 2007 and 2013 were the ties between the organisations that together cooperated in more than one project" PPMI, op. cit., p. 84
:   [(70)](#footnoteref70)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014
:   [(71)](#footnoteref71)
     EVIMalaR It has significantly increased the coordination of new collaborative projects between institutional laboratories within Europe and with African partners. The number of publications released by the consortium's members is around 400 and includes a large number of high profile ones (Nature, Cell, Science etc.).
:   [(72)](#footnoteref72)
     PPMI, op. cit., p. 82
:   [(73)](#footnoteref73)
     US teams represented 0.3% of participations in FP6 and this figure reached 1.1% in FP7.
:   [(74)](#footnoteref74)
     Other examples include EUROGENTEST2, that provides for genetic testing in Europe, harmonising, validating and standardising their development, or CARDIOSCAPE (http://www.cardioscape.eu/) that has performed a survey of the European cardiovascular research landscape and recommendations for future research strategy, or TISS.EU, that has produced a repository of central normative documents, as well as soft law regulating human tissue research in the European countries..
:   [(75)](#footnoteref75)

     
       Two examples of ERA-net projects: TRANSCAN, (http://www.transcanfp7.eu) aimed at coordinating regional and national programmes on translational cancer research. With 25 partners from 19 MS and associated countries, it has been instrumental in facilitating the establishment of a common research agenda in MS, who have already mobilised, € 50 million to support calls. Similarly, the objectives and topics related to brain research have been identified as priorities and taken up at national level, as can be illustrated by the transnational calls for proposals issued under the umbrella of the Neuron ERA-Net (http://www.neuron-eranet.eu/). Neurodegeneration, mental disorders and cerebrovascular diseases were identified as requiring multinational, multidisciplinary approaches.
:   [(76)](#footnoteref76)
     
    <http://www.permed2020.eu/>
:   [(77)](#footnoteref77)
     
    <http://www.whyweage.eu/>
:   [(78)](#footnoteref78)
     
    <http://futurage.group.shef.ac.uk/>
:   [(79)](#footnoteref79)
     
    <http://www.rug.nl/news/2013/11/1105-umcg-officiele-opening-eriba?lang=en>
    .
:   [(80)](#footnoteref80)
     
    <http://www.eurogentest.org/index.php?id=160>
:   [(81)](#footnoteref81)

     
       Top FP7 Health coordinators: 1) INSERM; 2) Karolinska Institutet; 3) University College London; 4) Erasmus Univ. Medisch Centrum, Rotterdam; 5) Stichting Katholeke Univ.; 6) King's College, London; 7) Univ. Medisch Centrum bij de Acad. Zekenhuis Leiden; 8) Acad. Medisch Centrum bij de Univ. van Amsterdam; 9) University of Oxford; 10) Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Katholieke Univ. Leuven and Stichting VU-VUMC.
:   [(82)](#footnoteref82)
     European drug initiative on channels and transporters: http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/53645\_en.html
:   [(83)](#footnoteref83)

     
       Hartmut Michel was 1988 Nobel Laureate for the determination of the 3D structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre. John Walker was the 1997 laureate for the elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate.
:   [(84)](#footnoteref84)
     PPMI, op.cit., p. 81. In this evaluation journal impact factor was defined as average citations per document in a 2-year period,
:   [(85)](#footnoteref85)
     Respir [as of 15.09.2014]. High impact journals are here defined to be the top 10% (in terms of SJR index) of all journals within their scientific category.
:   [(86)](#footnoteref86)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014.
:   [(87)](#footnoteref87)
     Again, the time lag in this output needs to be kept in mind when estimating impact of research as according to respondents - 42% of scientific publications arose after the end of the project
:   [(88)](#footnoteref88)
     PPMI, op.cit., p. 82
:   [(89)](#footnoteref89)

     
       Examples include three projects on rare diseases (RD connect (
    <http://rd-connect.eu/>
    ), NEUromics (
    <http://rd-neuromics.eu/>
    ), EURenomics (
    <http://eurenomics.eu/>
    ) where relevant -omics platforms are applied to groups of rare diseases and the information gathered is linked with clinical data. Another example is ALPHA-MAN (
    <http://www.alpha-man.eu/>
    ) where an enzyme replacement therapy is developed for the rare disease alpha-mannosidosis.
:   [(90)](#footnoteref90)
     ESN; 
    <http://www.europeanstrokenetwork.eu/>
     ), a combination of the projects EU-STROKE and ARISE
:   [(91)](#footnoteref91)
     
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/health/medical-research/brain-research/projects/plasticise_en.html>
:   [(92)](#footnoteref92)

     
       FP7 Health Survey October 2014, based on the project coordinators' replies. Data extrapolated from completed projects' reports indicate that some 9500 PhD students will have been involved on these FP7 Health projects (source: Respir).
:   [(93)](#footnoteref93)

     
       FP7 Health Survey October 2014, based on the project coordinators' replies.
:   [(94)](#footnoteref94)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 100
:   [(95)](#footnoteref95)

     
       The Commission Communication 
    [Towards a job rich recovery](http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/docs/towards_job_rich_recovery_en.pdf)
     of April 2012 sets out a range of measures to encourage employment and strengthen economic growth in Europe. It also identifies healthcare as one of three key sectors with a high employment potential and includes an 
    [Action Plan for the EU health workforce](http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/docs/swd_ap_eu_healthcare_workforce_en.pdf)
    . (see 
    [IP /2012/380](http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/380&format=HTML&aged=0&language=en&guiLanguage=fr)
    ). This action plan refers to projects RN4Cast, MOHPROF and Health Prometheus. The 2014 Commission Communication on a EU Strategic Framework on Health and Safety at Work 2014-2020 is based on an overall view of research in the field on OHS. The Evaluation of the EU Strategy 2007-2012 on health and safety at work, published 2013 refers to the Healthatwork FP7 project (
    <http://www.abdn.ac.uk/haw/>
    ).
:   [(96)](#footnoteref96)
     "Further analysis revealed that active engagement with policy makers was strongly associated with impact on EU policy. About a third of projects that applied some kind of engagement with policy makers had an impact on EU policy" PPMI, op cit, p. 85
:   [(97)](#footnoteref97)
     Closer collaboration and sharing of data and information were the priority objectives set out at the G8 Dementia Summit of December 2013 were. Research collaborations fostered by FP7 Health and the data such collaborations have generated are crucial to contribute to these developments.
:   [(98)](#footnoteref98)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014.
:   [(99)](#footnoteref99)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014. Since two thirds of all respondents are involved in an on-going project that may not have reached yet its full potential in terms of knowledge generation, patents, publications, jobs or new products development, significantly increased figures can be expected once all project are completed.
:   [(100)](#footnoteref100)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014
:   [(101)](#footnoteref101)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 91
:   [(102)](#footnoteref102)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 88
:   [(103)](#footnoteref103)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 85
:   [(104)](#footnoteref104)
     International consortia IRDiRC, GACD and InTBIR have already been presented in section 3.8.
:   [(105)](#footnoteref105)
     BBMRI aims make European bio-banks more efficient and available for research, to promote the use of research results in a clinical setting and to establish the foundation for personalised medicine
:   [(106)](#footnoteref106)
     In the FP7 Health Survey conducted in October 2014, almost half of the participants ranked "New resources, including infrastructures" among the most important outputs of the project.
:   [(107)](#footnoteref107)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 80
:   [(108)](#footnoteref108)
     Commission Communication COM(2009) 380/4 to the EP and Council on a European initiative on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias (
    <http://ec.europa.eu/health/archive/ph_information/dissemination/documents/com2009_380_en.pdf>
    )
:   [(109)](#footnoteref109)

     
       Established in 2009 as the pilot of the Member State-led JPIs to enable the participating EU MS to better streamline their research efforts, JPND aims at aligning national priorities in the field of age-related neurodegenerative diseases. The support provided under FP7 took the form of a 3-year coordination action, which allowed supporting the development of its Strategic Research Agenda, the establishment of the common priorities to be jointly implemented by MS and the analysis of the state of art of national research activities.
:   [(110)](#footnoteref110)
    FP7 Health Survey October 2014.
:   [(111)](#footnoteref111)
     SJR - Journal Rank Indicator, it is a measure of journal's impact, influence or prestige. It expresses the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the journal in the three previous years (2011)
:   [(112)](#footnoteref112)
     De Prato, G., Nepelski, D. and Piroli, G. (2015). Innovation Radar: Identifying Innovations and Innovators with High Potential in ICT FP7, CIP & H2020 Projects. JRC Scientific and Policy Reports – EUR 27314 EN. Seville: JRC-IPTS, available at https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/innovation-radar-identifying-innovations-and-innovators-high-potential-ict-fp7-cip-h2020
:   [(113)](#footnoteref113)
     Breschi et al., 2012; Pwc and OpenEvidence, forthcoming
:   [(114)](#footnoteref114)
     62% of the organisations participated to one project only, and 15% to two projects only, whereas a much more limited number of organisations participated to many projects (≥6), suggesting a scale-free participation pattern (many with one project and only a few with hundreds).
:   [(115)](#footnoteref115)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming
:   [(116)](#footnoteref116)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming
:   [(117)](#footnoteref117)
     Bravo et al., 2010; Technopolis, 2010
:   [(118)](#footnoteref118)
     In the study Jacob et al., (forthcoming), the patents resulted from ICT FP7 projects were compared to two randomly selected control samples—one representing the ICT industry in general, and the other the Europe-based ICT industry
:   [(119)](#footnoteref119)
     Outside of EU in the general industry sample and within EU in the EU-based sample.
:   [(120)](#footnoteref120)
     Jacob et al., forthcoming
:   [(121)](#footnoteref121)
     The source of the figures on patents and publications is Jacob et al., (forthcoming). In total, 1,761 projects replied to the survey.According to the data reported in the OpenAIRE website (https://www.openaire.eu/stats-fp7/statistics/fp7-stats#projects-with-publications-by-programme) the ICT FP7 produced 30,678 publications, of which 8,593 in open access (13 August 2015).
:   [(122)](#footnoteref122)
     Although 59.6% of the projects produce between 1 and 10 publications, a respectable amount of projects produces between 11 and 50 publications, and only a small percentage (5.1%) produces more than 50 publications (one project produced 1036 publications).
:   [(123)](#footnoteref123)
     Source: KITeS-CESPRI – Bocconi University (2010).
:   [(124)](#footnoteref124)
     Aggregation of the Academic, Government/NGO, and Hospital generated output
:   [(125)](#footnoteref125)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming
:   [(126)](#footnoteref126)
     Source: Mahieu, B., et al. (2014); EPIRIA
:   [(127)](#footnoteref127)
     Extraction was possible only for 821 projects final reports, out of the 1,159 available
:   [(128)](#footnoteref128)
     Taking also into account that the data include an extra year of reporting, compared to the data in DG RTD Annual Monitoring Report 2013.
:   [(129)](#footnoteref129)
     Vickery et al. , 2011
:   [(130)](#footnoteref130)
     Technopolis-Empirica, 2014
:   [(131)](#footnoteref131)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming
:   [(132)](#footnoteref132)
     Source: Ex-post NMP study
:   [(133)](#footnoteref133)
     Source : case studies
:   [(134)](#footnoteref134)
     Source: online survey
:   [(135)](#footnoteref135)
     Ex post NMP study.
:   [(136)](#footnoteref136)

     
       Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014.
:   [(137)](#footnoteref137)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(138)](#footnoteref138)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(139)](#footnoteref139)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(140)](#footnoteref140)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(141)](#footnoteref141)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(142)](#footnoteref142)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(143)](#footnoteref143)
     Research on climate change funded by the Seventh Framework Programme, 2014.
:   [(144)](#footnoteref144)

     
       Communication from the Commission (2010) Europe 2020: A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, COM (2010) 2020 final; p. 11: “Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels or by 30%, if the conditions are right; increase the share of renewable energy sources in our final energy consumption to 20%; and a 20% increase in energy efficiency”.
:   [(145)](#footnoteref145)
:   [(146)](#footnoteref146)
     Definition of the two samples
:   [(147)](#footnoteref147)
:   [(148)](#footnoteref148)
     Non-commercial (i.e. open domain) innovations are not taken into account here.
:   [(149)](#footnoteref149)
     These estimates are just orders of magnitude based on the (few) data collected through the survey.
:   [(150)](#footnoteref150)
     Towards an Integrated Marine and Maritime Science Community
:   [(151)](#footnoteref151)
     This combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is the commonest trend to assess research. See: Thwaites, T. (2014) “Calling science into account”, in Nature, Vol. 511, July, pp. S57-S60.
:   [(152)](#footnoteref152)
     High impact journals are defined to be the top 10% (in terms of SJR index) of all journals within a given scientific category. For a complete list of scientific categories please visit: 
    <http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php>
     The SJR - Journal Rank Indicator, it is a measure of journal's impact, influence or prestige. It expresses the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the journal in the three previous years.
:   [(153)](#footnoteref153)
     The impacts on scientific excellence at the level of individual participants and at the level the scientific community within a certain scientific field were analysed.
:   [(154)](#footnoteref154)
:   [(155)](#footnoteref155)
     The workforce reports do not include any data on senior researchers.
:   [(156)](#footnoteref156)

    Council Decision of 19 November 2006 concerning the Specific Programme "Cooperation" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013). No. 2006/971/EC.
:   [(157)](#footnoteref157)
:   [(158)](#footnoteref158)
:   [(159)](#footnoteref159)
     Addressed in separate report
:   [(160)](#footnoteref160)
     The review shows that some projects see open access and (commercial) innovation as contradictory concepts. Indeed sometimes open access is considered as a major objective of the project, and (commercial) exploitation is not even seen as an option.
:   [(161)](#footnoteref161)
     Scorings made by expert based on projects’ review reports.
:   [(162)](#footnoteref162)

     
       Connolly, N. et all. (2014) Assessment of the Achievements of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO): A European Union Perspective. Report requested by the European Commission.
:   [(163)](#footnoteref163)
     It should be noted that these figures only refer to publications produced during the lifetime of the project as reported by the project beneficiaries.
:   [(164)](#footnoteref164)
     Transport Research and Innovation Achievements Report (first edition, March 2015), covering the achievements from projects that were completed up to December 2014 (excluding Clean Sky).
:   [(165)](#footnoteref165)
     Report on Societal implications
:   [(166)](#footnoteref166)
     HORIZON SCANNING PLATFORM Website, 
    <http://www.horizonscanning.org.uk/>
:   [(167)](#footnoteref167)
     Reports on societal implications
:   [(168)](#footnoteref168)
     CAP-IRE Final Report
:   [(169)](#footnoteref169)

    1. European Commission, The Common Agricultural Policy after 2013 (Brussels: EC, 2013),
:   [(170)](#footnoteref170)

    2. OECD, The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow (Washington: OECD, 2013)
:   [(171)](#footnoteref171)
     UK Government, UK knowledge investment continues to grow (London: GOV.UK, 2013),
:   [(172)](#footnoteref172)
     Department of Business Innovation and Skills of UK, Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth (London: GOV.UK, 2011)
:   [(173)](#footnoteref173)
     European Parliament, REPORT on the development of the common security and defence policy following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (2010/2299(INI)) (Brussels: European Parliament, 2011)
:   [(174)](#footnoteref174)
     UK Ministry of Justice, Comparing International Criminal Justice Systems (London: National Audit Office, 2012)
:   [(175)](#footnoteref175)
     Research Excellence Framework, Impact Case Study (REF 3b) (London: REF, 2013)
:   [(176)](#footnoteref176)
     SELUSI Project Summary
:   [(177)](#footnoteref177)

     
       The DSG-NET (international research network for modelling, monetary and fiscal policy) used DYNARE software. Members of the DSG-NET: Bank of Finland; European Central Bank, Bank of France, Worgel Bank, Swiss National Bank; Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Bank of Sweden and The capital Group Companies.
:   [(178)](#footnoteref178)

     
       Among these political forums, the main ones being: meetings with representatives from the European institutions (for instance, the PRIV-WAR, FIDUCIA and COUNTER projects); meetings with National Delegations, Agencies or Ministries (for instance, the PRIV-WAR and FINNOV projects); European or/and International Workshops and Seminars organised in collaboration with political representatives (for instance, the FLOWS or COPE projects); and European /International Conferences also organised in collaboration with political representatives and mainly addressed to stakeholders, policy makers and/or other professionals related with politic issues (for instance, the COINVEST, POINT, WWWforEUROPE, CAP-IRE and MERCURY projects).
:   [(179)](#footnoteref179)
     Productive interactions are defined as exchanges between researchers and stake holders in which knowledge is produced and valued that is both scientifically robust and socially relevant. Spaapen, Jack, and Leonie van Drooge. "Introducing ‘productive interactions’ in social impact assessment." Research Evaluation, 20.3.2011, pp. 211-218.
:   [(180)](#footnoteref180)
     World Health Organisation. WHO, The Kampala declaration and agenda for global action (Geneva: WHO Press, 2008); DOMAC Final Report, 
    <http://www.domac.is/media/domac-skjol/DOMAC-18-Uganda.pdf>
    ; Coalition for the International Criminal Court (ICC), Report on the first REVIEW CONFERENCE ON THE ROME STATUTE 31 May-11 June 2010 Kampala, Uganda (New York, ICC, 2010)
:   [(181)](#footnoteref181)
     The FP7 project OpenAIRE aimed to support the EC and ERC Open Access policies’ implementation.
:   [(182)](#footnoteref182)
     Ref?
:   [(183)](#footnoteref183)
     See the blog Horizonte 2020 (H2020): el programa de investigación e innovación europeo a partir de 2014
:   [(184)](#footnoteref184)
     NET4SOCIETY, SSH Experiences with FP7 – a Commentary.
:   [(185)](#footnoteref185)
     Aerospace and Defence Industries of Europe - Key Facts and Figures for 2012
:   [(186)](#footnoteref186)

     
       The figures by country include international organisations based in these countries (e.g. UK figures include the participation of ECMWF and Spanish figures those of the EUSC).
:   [(187)](#footnoteref187)
     EC (2003): Space: a new European frontier for an expanding Union; An action plan for implementing the European Space, COM (2003) 673 final available at: 
    <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2003/com2003_0673en01.pdf>
:   [(188)](#footnoteref188)
     EC (2007): European Space Policy, COM (2007) 212 final available at: 
    http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2007:0212:FIN:EN:PDF
:   [(189)](#footnoteref189)
     Brussels, 4.4.2011, COM(2011)152 final
:   [(190)](#footnoteref190)
     Brussels, 28.2.2013 COM(2013) 108 final
:   [(191)](#footnoteref191)
     
    <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsupload/78367.pdf>
:   [(192)](#footnoteref192)
     
    <http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/security/pdf/gop_en.pdf>
:   [(193)](#footnoteref193)
     
    <http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/security/pdf/esrab_report_en.pdf>
:   [(194)](#footnoteref194)
    <http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/security/pdf/esrif_final_report_en.pdf>
:   [(195)](#footnoteref195)
     FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme Council Decision 2006/971/EC
:   [(196)](#footnoteref196)
     
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/fp7/89287/k-wp-201101_en.pdf>
:   [(197)](#footnoteref197)
     
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/fp7/89497/k-wp-201201_en.pdf>
:   [(198)](#footnoteref198)
     
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/fp7/192060/k-wp-201302_en.pdf>
:   [(199)](#footnoteref199)
     
    <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012DC0417&from=EN>
:   [(200)](#footnoteref200)
     
    http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SWD:2012:0233:FIN:EN:PDF
:   [(201)](#footnoteref201)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(202)](#footnoteref202)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(203)](#footnoteref203)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(204)](#footnoteref204)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(205)](#footnoteref205)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(206)](#footnoteref206)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(207)](#footnoteref207)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015
:   [(208)](#footnoteref208)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(209)](#footnoteref209)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(210)](#footnoteref210)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(211)](#footnoteref211)
     
    <https://www.eden-security-fp7.eu/>
:   [(212)](#footnoteref212)
     
    <http://driver-project.eu/>
:   [(213)](#footnoteref213)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(214)](#footnoteref214)
     Commission Decision 2010/293/EU, 
    <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:3719a009-7381-4015-a27c-757f7de07f81.0006.01/DOC_1&format=PDF>
:   [(215)](#footnoteref215)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(216)](#footnoteref216)
     SRA – Security Research Actions
:   [(217)](#footnoteref217)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(218)](#footnoteref218)
     FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme Council Decision 2006/971/EC
:   [(219)](#footnoteref219)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(220)](#footnoteref220)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(221)](#footnoteref221)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(222)](#footnoteref222)
     Comparative Assessment of Security-Centered Training Curricula for First Responders on Disaster Management in EU (
    <http://cast.sbg.ac.at/>
    )
:   [(223)](#footnoteref223)
     CRitical Incident management training System using an Interactive Simulation environment (
    <http://idc.mdx.ac.uk/projects/crisis/>
    )
:   [(224)](#footnoteref224)
     Advanced training environment for crisis scenarios (
    <http://pandoraproject.eu/>
    )
:   [(225)](#footnoteref225)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(226)](#footnoteref226)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015
:   [(227)](#footnoteref227)
    <http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/basic-documents/docs/eu_agenda_on_security_en.pdf>
:   [(228)](#footnoteref228)
     Extraction date 02/09/2014
:   [(229)](#footnoteref229)
     
    <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012DC0417&from=EN>
:   [(230)](#footnoteref230)
     COM(2009) 273 final and COM(2014) 247 final
:   [(231)](#footnoteref231)
     Doc. 8109/08 and Regulation 98/2013
:   [(232)](#footnoteref232)
     
    <ftp://ftp.cen.eu/CEN/Sectors/List/SecurityandDefence/SecurityoftheCitizen/M_487.pdf>
:   [(233)](#footnoteref233)
     
    <ftp://ftp.cencenelec.eu/CENELEC/EuropeanMandates/M530_EN.pdf>
:   [(234)](#footnoteref234)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(235)](#footnoteref235)
     Where "'pre-commercial procurement' means the procurement of research and development services involving risk-benefit sharing under market conditions, and competitive development in phases, where there is a clear separation of the research and development services procured from the deployment of commercial volumes of end-products", Horizon 2020 Participation Rules, REGULATION (EU) No 1290/2013.

[Top](#document1)

![european flag](./../../../images/eclogo.jpg)EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 19.1.2016

SWD(2016) 2 final

Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

Annexes

Accompanying the document

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

On the Response to the Report of the High Level Expert Group on the Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

{COM(2016) 5 final}  
{SWD(2016) 1 final}

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

Annexes

Accompanying the document

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

On the Response to the Report of the High Level Expert Group on the Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

 

 

 

Table of Contents

11.Ideas Specific Programme

12.People Specific Programme

13.Capacities Specific Programme

14.Evaluation of Euratom FP7 indirect actions

15.Joint Technologies Initiatives (JTIs) under FP7

16.Joint European Research Programmes under FP7

17.Emergence of contractual PPPs as a response to the economic crisis

18.Evaluation of the EURAXESS Project (2008-2012)

19.Open Access to Scientific Peer Reviewed Publications in FP7

20.The recommendations from FP7 Interim evaluation and their follow up

21.The Assessment of Impact of FP7 At National Level

22.COST (Co-operation in Science and Technology)

23.Ex-post evaluation of FP 7 using the NEMESIS model

24.FP7 publication data

25.The Community Innovation Survey and FP7 innovation performance

26.Contribution of FP7 themes and actions to overarching and specific objectives

27.FP7 Achievements according to the High Level Expert Group on the ex-post evaluation of FP7

28.List of Acronyms

   

11.Ideas Specific Programme

Objectives

Original objectives

The objective of the Ideas Programme was to support frontier research under the auspices of the European Research Council (ERC).

Its rationale was to redress Europe’s perceived loss of ground in global scientific leadership in two main ways. Firstly by providing for the best researchers the resources and autonomy required to realise ground-breaking scientific ideas, in particular for young researchers. And secondly by creating a framework that promoted scientific competition, which is essential for excellent scientific ideas to emerge.

Evolution of objectives to respond to the crisis

In response to the financial crisis European governments and the EU undertook a comprehensive series of actions from rescuing the banks to launching a Europe-wide recovery plan. As the financial crisis turned into a debt crisis the 
[EU responded with a twin track approach of immediate and long-term measures](http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/explained/the_financial_and_economic_crisis/responding_to_the_debt_crisis/index_en.htm)
. The long-term measures included ensuring sound public finances and ensuring competitiveness and promoting growth.

Early in 2010, the Commission therefore proposed the 
[Europe 2020 strategy](http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/index_en.htm)
 to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth building upon the earlier Lisbon Strategy. As part of this strategy the aim of the Innovation Union flagship initiative was to strengthen “every link in the innovation chain, from 'blue sky' research to commercialisation”. Given this and the continuities with the Lisbon Strategy it was not necessary to alter the overall objectives of the ERC. Nonetheless the Scientific Council of the ERC introduced the Proof of Concept in 2011 to explore the commercial and social innovation potential of ideas arising from the ERC grants.

How did Ideas SP contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

Following intensive study by economists over many years including Robert Solow (who won a Nobel Prize for this work), it is now accepted that technological progress is the critical factor in driving sustained growth in per capita income. This requires more than incremental improvements in current technologies and knowledge. It requires new knowledge that will create whole new sectors and industries to provide high quality jobs, and drive future productivity and growth. Allowing researchers the freedom to explore ideas at the frontiers of knowledge as the ERC does is proven to be the best way to generate radical breakthroughs.

The ERC funds frontier research. Classical distinctions between basic and applied research have lost much of their relevance at a time when many emerging areas of science and technology (e.g. biotechnology, ICT, materials and nanotechnology, and cognitive sciences) often embrace substantial elements of both, and for sure originate from fundamental scientific ideas. Frontier research therefore often generates unexpected or new opportunities for commercial or societal application from the immediate term to the very long term.

The Ideas SP also has important structuring effects on European innovation. The visibility of basic research funded at European level makes it easier for actors in the European innovation system to pick up on the knowledge resulting from that research and thus reduce information-related market failures and improve the European knowledge market. At the same time, the higher quality and increased visibility of European basic research makes Europe a more attractive place to companies to carry out research in and to individual researchers to engage in scientific careers.

Data from completed ERC projects shows that around one-fifth of ERC Principal Investigators working in the Physical Sciences and Engineering and Life Sciences domains have reported at least one patent arising from their project as below. And those projects that do patent report on average more than one patent (see Table below).

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | LS | | | PE | | |
|  | Projects completed | Projects with at least one patent | Total patents | Projects completed | Projects with at least one patent | Total patents |
| StG2007 | 68 | 12 |  | 88 | 21 |  |
| AdG2008 | 39 | 7 |  | 68 | 13 |  |
| Total | 107 | 19 | 30 | 156 | 34 | 68 |

Number of ERC projects reporting at least one patent
[1](#footnote1)

  

The ERC Scientific Council explicitly recognised the frontier nature of ERC funded research in 2011 be creating the Proof of Concept Grant (PoC). More than 170 "proof of concept" grants awarded since 2010 to explore the commercial and social innovation potential of ideas arising from ERC grants. Results from the PoC projects include verification of the innovation and market potential of the idea taken to proof of concept, raising interest from industry or other potential investors, creation of commercial ventures and the filing of international patents.

Analysis of the first 50 completed PoC projects shows that around 50% reported at least one patent application. In addition, 18% of them spun-out a new venture and 30% of them intend to use an existing or new spin-out to take forward their idea. A further 16% of them plan to license technology to an existing company and 8% to form an industrial partnership. Table below shows the status of the projects at the time of the final report. 24% required further research, 14% had initiated discussions with industry, 12% were seeking investors, 8% were already negotiating with potential investors and 6% had already raised funding.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=COMNAT:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.image2.jpg)

Status of the PoC projects at the time of the final report

The Ideas Specific Programme clearly achieved its objective of creating a pan-European competitive structure leading to higher levels of excellence in Europe's basic research. This will result in a better and enlarged knowledge base for European enterprises on which the innovation of products and process can be based. This will have direct economic, societal and environmental benefits.

How did Ideas SP contribute to increase European wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The ERC does not have the explicit aim of fostering international or intra-European collaboration, but because science at the highest levels is characterised by high levels of international collaboration the ERC has in practice supported extensive international collaboration both within and outside Europe.

As part of a study “Comparative scientometric assessment of the results of ERC funded projects
[2](#footnote2)
” the contractors examined the publications of 2,556 ERC grantees. The table below presents four types of international collaboration broken down by domain: 1) collaborations involving at least two distinct countries, regardless of where they are located, 2) intra-European collaborations involving researchers from at least two different European countries, 3) extra-European collaborations involving at least one European and one non-European country, and 4) collaborations involving at least two distinct countries, one of which is the United States.

The data shows that overall 56% of the publications of the ERC funded researchers involved international collaboration.

Table X
   International Collaboration of ERC Funded Researchers After the Grant Start Year by Domain and Type of Collaboration

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15003.jpg)

The ERC does not have the explicit aim of fostering international or intra-European mobility but one important feature of the ERC’s grants is that they allow for portability between host institutions. This allows researchers to find the best institutional environment for conducting their research and the movement of researchers also means that their knowledge and skills also circulate.

  

Table 10: ERC grantees changing host institution

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | change HI during granting | change HI after granting |
| All grantees | 6% | 5.6% |
| StG | 7.8% | 8.4% |
| CoG | 5.4% | 0%  [3](#footnote3) |
| AdG | 3.6% | 3% |

How did Ideas SP contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

The ERC has tried to record relevant changes in the national systems. Of the changes observed, few can be directly attributable to the effect of the ERC but certain trends are notable. Before the creation of the ERC, 12 of the current EU countries
[4](#footnote4)
 had national research or scientific councils involved as decision making bodies in the governance of competitive funding of basic research (including EE and HR with science foundations). In 2014 all but five EU countries had such bodies
[5](#footnote5)
. In 20 countries these councils have a decision making role at strategic level and sometimes even at operational level. In BG, PT and RO these bodies have an advisory role.

Increasing competition between European countries and institutions to host ERC grantees is leading to major reforms in the way research funding is allocated and to more attractive conditions for the best researchers. The number of EU Member States with scientific councils involved as decision making bodies in the governance of competitive funding of basic research has increased from 12 to 23
[6](#footnote6)
 during the lifetime of the ERC. Since 2007, 11 Member States have launched new funding schemes inspired by the ERC. The National Science Centre (NCN) in Poland, a government executive agency set up to fund basic research, was created in 2010 with the ERC as an explicit model.

The creation of the ERC also enhanced or consolidated the priority given to basic/frontier research in some national strategies. On 28 July 2011 the Bulgarian Parliament adopted the new National Strategy of Scientific Research to 2020. The strategy introduced for the first time officially set priorities for the development of science in Bulgaria. One of the priorities is "Development of fundamental research under programme and competitive principle to the amount of 15% of the public expenses on science". (ref: National Strategy of Scientific Research to 2020).

In Romania a full chapter of the first National RDI Strategy 2007-2013 concerned the important role of “Exploratory and frontier research”. Under the influence of the European developments taking place around the creation of ERC, Romania committed to support advanced research, directed towards world-class scientific results, to encourage the development of the research career and the establishment of poles of excellence. Taking into account the significance of fundamental research for knowledge development and the training of highly skilled human resources, the strategy emphasized excellence, inter-disciplinary research and international visibility. The second National RDI Strategy 2014-2020 (to be soon approved by the Government) maintains “Fundamental and frontier research” as a national priority. (ref: National RDI Strategies 2007-2013 and 2014-2020).

The ERC’s commitment to excellence also inspired a focus on excellence at national level. In Poland, the legislative act on Higher education, known as ‘Partnership for Knowledge Reform’ entered into force in October 2011. The reform had excellence as a focus. The five general objectives of the reform indicate a commitment to funding from the state budget “only top quality scientific research […] according to international standards” and to concentrate funds “on the units conducting the top-level R&D activity”, at the same time implementing “a system of comprehensive evaluation of the quality of R&D activity conducted by the scientific units”. (ref: Partnership for Knowledge Reform).

ERC provided legitimacy for increasing the level of competitive funding for basic/frontier research. In France, amid the animated debates caused by the proposal to establish ERC as a competitive funding structure at European level, the National Agency for Research (ANR) was created in 2005 to fund fundamental and industrial research projects on a competitive basis. ANR represented a radical shift in the French research funding system and as such was heavily contested. The support given to ERC by key players in the French research system increased the acceptance of the ANR. (ref: article Philippe Laredo, 2010).

In 2009 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (a major source of subsidy-based research funding) announced its Momentum Program, an instrument for competitive funding of basic/frontier research.

The priorities of the Italian national research system are outlined in the triennial PNR National Research Programme. PNR 2011-2013 contains 2 long-term actions both involving basic research: support to creativity and excellence in all fields of knowledge, and support for oriented basic research towards enabling technologies. The first action resembles very close the ERC approach. It provides support for critical basic research projects, free, aimed at developing new knowledge, with long term impacts, evaluated by international peer review. The Ministry of University and Research shall allocate a share of at least 25% of the funds available for projects in knowledge-driven, to scholars aged under 40 years. The action was implemented in 2014 with the Scientific Independence of Young Researchers (SIR) Programme. (ref: PNR 2011-2013).

New funding schemes inspired (or very likely to be inspired based on their terminology and processes) by the ERC schemes were launched in four of the seven EU countries with no investigator-driven funding schemes operational in 2006 (EL, IT, PL and RO)
[7](#footnote7)
 and in seven of the EU countries where such schemes did exist since before 2007. Thus ERC influence at the level of the funding instruments could be seen in eleven EU member states.

One notable change which can be directly attributed to the ERC is the creation of the National Science Centre (NCN) in Poland in 2010. NCN is a government executive agency set up to fund basic research with the ERC as an explicit model
[8](#footnote8)
. The Council of the NCN, consisting of 24 distinguished professors selected by the Nominating Committee and appointed by the Minister of Science and Higher Education, establishes the funding strategy and the instruments in line with the country’s development strategy. The NCN Council is renewed every two years. The council nominates 25 panels of experts evaluators distributed over three scientific domains which are very similar to the ERC’s panels.

How did Ideas SP strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

This is the key objective of the ERC and ERC projects are producing and disseminating a very substantial number of research findings in international, peer reviewed journals including the most prestigious ones.

As of 15 August 2014 over 29 000 publications acknowledging ERC support have appeared in the international, peer reviewed journals indexed by the Web of Science database
[9](#footnote9)
. These publications report findings from both ongoing and finalized ERC projects. Because of the profile of the ERC’s budget over FP7 the large majority of ERC projects were still ongoing as of 15 August 2014 and therefore the final number of publications from ERC projects funded under FP7 will be substantially higher than the current figure.

Table 11 below shows the number of publications acknowledging ERC funding that have appeared in two of the most prestigious scientific journals (Nature and Science). The combined number of articles in Nature and Science acknowledging ERC funding in 2008, when there were only a small number of active ERC projects, was 5. By the end of September 2014 there were over 650.

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Publications acknowledging ERC funding | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 [10](#footnote10) | Total |
| NATURE | 2 | 13 | 30 | 51 | 70 | 102 | 75 | 343 |
| SCIENCE | 3 | 11 | 26 | 46 | 69 | 90 | 62 | 307 |
| Total Nature and Science | 5 | 24 | 56 | 97 | 139 | 192 | 137 | 650 |
| ALL PUB | 51 | 592 | 1944 | 4114 | 7041 | 10504 | 6073 | 30319 |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

Number of publications acknowledging ERC funding in Nature and Science

While the vast majority of the ERC grants are still on-going, if one takes only 314 completed ERC projects from the earliest calls for proposals (187 projects from StG 2007 and 127 projects from AdG 2008), they have reported 10,796 publications
[11](#footnote11)
. This gives an overall average of 34 publications per project but with marked differences between fields and projects. Projects in Life Sciences have on average 23 publications, Physical Sciences and Engineering 48, and Social Sciences and Humanities 18.

ERC projects are not only producing and disseminating a very substantial number of research findings, but are producing a substantial number of the most significant and high impact research findings worldwide.

ERC grantees have an outstanding publication record with high scientific impact, notably in terms of the number of publications they have produced which are in the top 1% and 10% of the most highly cited publications in the world. Moreover, among the most cited publications arising from ERC funding, there are already a significant number that have been recognised as landmark contributions to science including the first paper to clearly show that there are different sources of myeloid cells in the body which will eventually result in new therapeutic approaches for multiple diseases and a “paradigm shattering” improvement in the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells, as well as work related to: resistance to chemotherapy in cancer; the discovery of the Higgs boson; the use of the new material graphene to design a functional electronic device; and the discovery of Majorana fermions in superconductors.

The ERC has carried out a number of bibliometric analyses of publications acknowledging ERC funding to try to ascertain their potential significance or impact. One analysis, using the reported publications from the 314 completed projects which could be validated in the Scopus database showed that a significant proportion of ERC publications were in the top 1% most highly cited publications worldwide
[12](#footnote12)
 – see Table below.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15004.jpg)

Citation percentiles of publications reported by completed ERC projects (Scopus)

A second analysis came to a similar conclusion. The analysis, this time using the methodology of the US National Science Foundation and based on all the publications acknowledging ERC funding and recorded in the Web of Science database, showed that overall 12% of these publications were in the top 1% most highly cited publications world wide – see Table below. On the same basis, the number of the publications in the Top 10% was 855 out of 1996 or 43%.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15005.jpg)

Citation percentiles of publications acknowledging ERC funding (Web of Science)
[13](#footnote13)

What both of these analyses show, using different methods and data bases, is that a substantial fraction of ERC funded articles are among the most highly cited publications worldwide, including in the most significant top 1% category.

There are also already many discoveries from ERC funded projects which have been hailed as "landmark" or "exceptional advances" for example, selected scientific publications acknowledging ERC-funding which have been featured by editorial boards of scientific journals or highlighted in post-peer review systems such as “Faculty of 1000”.

In only seven years a significant fraction of the leading researchers in Europe have applied to and been successful in the ERC calls.

To analyse whether leading researchers in Europe have applied for ERC funding schemes, the ERC identified over 14,000 individuals considered from 13 selected groups including highly-cited scientists (Thomson Reuters, ISI), elected European foreign associates of US National Academies, laureates of selected prestigious national research prizes and participants and chairs at Gordon Conferences, and then including only researchers affiliated with a European institution. These were then matched with a database of all ERC applicants since 2007. Bibliometric research has found over many years that a relatively small group of elite researchers publish the majority of the most highly cited scientific publications
[14](#footnote14)
.

This analysis showed that around a quarter of these "leading" researchers have applied for ERC funding schemes. Overall around 43% of the applicants from this group were funded by the ERC (some after multiple applications) meaning that 12% of the identified leading researchers have been funded by the ERC (1,647 out of 14,278). In addition, the analysis identified 1000 leading researchers from CZ, HU, PL, RO and SI (200 from each). Only 10% of the "leading" researchers identified from these less-performing Member States have applied for ERC funding schemes.

Successful applicants include up to now 11 Nobel laureates
[15](#footnote15)
, five Fields Medallists
[16](#footnote16)
 and the winners of many more internationally recognised prizes. Five of the Nobel laureates were funded by the ERC before receiving the Nobel Prize. The ERC has also received four proposals from Nobel Prize winners which it has not funded.

Over 4 300 world class starting and advanced researchers have been funded with 63 different nationalities. It should be no surprise that many of Europe’s top researchers are already at some of Europe’s top research institutions. On the other hand, the fact that 60% of the grants have gone to a further 550+ research institutions (over 200 of which host only one ERC grant) could be seen as evidence that the ERC can recognise excellence wherever it is to be found.

How did Ideas SP promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

One of the key objectives of the ERC was to offer attractive funding conditions which would help to attract and retain outstanding researchers in the ERA. The ERC funded a research project from September 2009 – September 2014 designed to evaluate the ERC’s Starting Grant programme by focusing on the effects on the individual career development of young researchers. The project also aimed to analyse any wider institutional and structural effects of ERC funding
[17](#footnote17)
. The charts below show the changes in working situation reported by successful ERC grantees in comparison to a control group of unsuccessful ERC applicants
[18](#footnote18)
. The results show that the researchers funded by the ERC reported better working conditions across the board and in particular more time for research.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=COMNAT:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.image6.jpg)

Assessment of the working situation (MERCI final results)

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=COMNAT:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.image7.jpg)

Assessment of the time-budget (MERCI final results)

Furthermore, the ERC funded a research project from February 2009 to April 2012 to explore the possible broader impacts of the ERC
[19](#footnote19)
. The project found preliminary evidence of impacts at several levels beyond the direct effects on the careers and research of the ERC grantees themselves. The study found that ERC success is unanimously seen as a new quality marker for research organisations across Europe, which in turn feeds back into actions by the research and university leaders. The impact of the ERC on universities and research institutes was most pronounced in the research organisations that are just below the top research performers since the existence of the ERC as well as attracting some grants is used to overhaul the organisation and develop and implement the practices conducive to research excellence. The ERC and its funding schemes have less direct impact on top research performers and on research organisations that are lagging far behind these.

Frontier research also plays a critical role in training new graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Whether their final professional destination is academia or industry, research-trained graduates bring with them skills needed to perform research and to develop new ideas and skills in using advanced instrumentation and techniques.

The proportion of ERC grantees with non-ERA nationality is about 7.1%. However many of these were already based in Europe at time of application. The proportion of ERC grantees that were resident outside ERA at time of application is about 2.6% (most being ERA nationals in US). Researchers tend to be very mobile early in their careers but they are less likely to move at the stage when they have received tenure from their host institution which is a stage of many researchers in the ERC target population.

For example, around 17% of the PhDs and post-docs in ERC teams (estimated at 2,700 over FP7) were from outside Europe, the largest number of whom were from China, the USA and India. This shows the potential of ERC PIs to attract talented early-stage researchers to Europe from around the world.

Table 9: ERC grantees that were resident outside ERA at time of application

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Country of residence | International grantees | ERA nationals | Total |
| Argentina | 1 |  | 1 |
| Australia | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Canada | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| India | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Japan |  | 1 | 1 |
| Korea |  | 1 | 1 |
| Lebanon |  | 1 | 1 |
| Russia | 1 |  | 1 |
| USA | 27 | 72 | 99 |
| Total | 32 | 81 | 113 |

How did Ideas SP provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

The ERC does not have the explicit aim of funding studies that will make specific policy recommendations to the Commission. However the ERC funds top quality research across all fields including in the social sciences and the humanities, and so a lot of this work is relevant to analysing and contributing to key Community policies.

One obvious example is the work of influential economists funded by the ERC such as Thomas Piketty and the Nobel Prize winners Jean Tirole and Christopher Pissarides.

The usefulness of a large bottom-up programme is that it will often fund research into areas which were not seen as priorities in top-down programmes but which become priorities because of events such as the Ebola outbreak. One example is that during the volcanic events at 
[Eyjafjallajökull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull)
 in 
[Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland)
 in 2010 which caused enormous disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe it was found that the ERC was already funding 
[a number of relevant projects](http://erc.europa.eu/project-and-results/succes-stories/special-feature-erc-funded-research-volcanoes-and-their-wider-imp)
.

  

How did Ideas SP increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

The ERC Scientific Council has encouraged and supported the provision of open access to the results of ERC funded research since the very beginning
[20](#footnote20)
. The ERC currently provides funding for the European PubMed Central (since 2013 with the latest round of up to €850k for up to 72 months from the ERC Work Programme 2015) initiative, arXiv (a nominal annual fee from the administrative budget) and the OAPEN initiative mainly covering open access books in the area of humanities and social sciences (50k for up to 24 months from the ERC Work Programme 2015).

Direct costs, including for equipment accounted for about 25% of total project funding awarded by the ERC during FP7. ERC PIs can request additional funding of up to one million euro per grant to cover the purchase of major equipment and access to large facilities. ERC PIs work at many of Europe’s top infrastructures including 11 projects at CERN.

How much did Ideas SP contribute to job creation?

The main role of the ERC in contributing to job creation is its role in creating the new knowledge that will create whole new sectors and industries to provide high quality jobs, and drive future productivity and growth.

However a large programme such as the ERC also directly supports researchers and personnel costs accounted for about 50 – 60% of total project funding awarded by the ERC during FP7.

A survey of 995 of the initial ERC grants showed that on average each ERC project employs six team members with around 63% of those having the role of PhD students or post-docs. Extrapolating these numbers to the 4 354 StG, CoG and AdG projects means that the ERC will have supported around 16 000 PhD students and post-docs from FP7.

In addition around 17% of these early-stage researchers were from outside Europe, the largest number of whom were from China, the USA and India. This shows the ERC’s potential to attract talented early-stage researchers to Europe from around the world.

To what extent was Ideas SP coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The ERC has a significant structural impact by generating a powerful stimulus for driving up the quality of the European research system, over and above the researchers and projects which the ERC funds directly. ERC-funded projects and researchers set a clear and inspirational target for frontier research in Europe, raise its profile and make it more attractive for the best researchers at global level. The prestige of hosting ERC grant- holders and the accompanying 'stamp of excellence' are intensifying competition between Europe's universities and other research organisations to offer the most attractive conditions for top researchers. And the ability of national systems and individual research institutions to attract and host ERC grant-winners sets a benchmark allowing them to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses and reform their policies and practices accordingly. ERC funding is therefore additional to the ongoing efforts at Union, national and regional level to reform, build capacity and unlock the full potential and attractiveness of the European research system.

Which was the added value of Ideas SP when compared with national research and innovation programmes?

There is strong evidence for suggesting that the ERC has high EU added value.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Dimensions of EU added value | ERC added value and its complementarity with the rest of the Framework Programme |
| Transnational dimension | Traditionally the Framework Programme has focussed on supporting transnational collaboration and mobility. The ERC provides for the first time a European-wide competitive funding structure based on the sole criterion of excellence.  In economic terms this transnational competition avoids the negative effects of cross-border externalities and limited systems competition. This has far-reaching consequences:  Resources are allocated more efficiently, the best researchers with the best ideas receive funding regardless of their nationality and the availability of national funding;  ERC peer review and funded research acts as a gold standard allowing Member States and individual research institutions to benchmark the relative strengths of their systems and policies leading to important reform of national policies and institutional practices.  In this way the ERC funds research of the very highest quality at the frontiers of knowledge thus facilitating the major breakthroughs that are necessary to address societal challenges, to promote the creation and growth of businesses in emerging sectors and to fully develop a knowledge and innovation society in Europe.  At the same time the ERC provides a powerful dynamic for driving up the quality of the overall European research system. In this way the ERC supports research excellence across the whole of the European Union and associated countries. |
| Economies of scale or scope | The ERC offers a large scope for economies of scale. By deciding centrally which proposals receive funding, the risk of duplication of research is limited; and it is less costly to employ the experts needed for high-quality assessment of project proposals. The scarcity of excellent peer reviewers in particular is a major factor for all research funding bodies. The quality of the ERC's peer review has already been widely recognised by the research community as reported by a panel of independent experts [21](#footnote21)  and in the interim assessment of FP7. |
| Critical mass requirements | Traditionally the Framework Programme has focussed on building up critical mass by supporting "virtual centres" and networks. The ERC, by providing generous funding to research teams in situ and by making this funding portable, reinforces existing centres of excellence and allows ambitious new centres to quickly scale up the research profiles in which they are particularly strong.  The reinforcement of existing centres of excellence is an integral component of the ERC's mission given that Europe lags significantly behind the US at the highest levels of scientific research. |
| Common preferences | The diversity of R&D policies, particularly in the levels of public funding for R&D is said to show the heterogeneity of policy preferences across the EU. This is often said to be an argument against centralising EU R&D policy, or at least against centralising all public funding for R&D. However it is arguable whether all of these differences, especially in the levels of public funding for R&D, reflect genuine preferences or under-spending by some MS resulting from the presence of spillovers. And in the case of the ERC it is noticeable that all EU MS have a policy of supporting research excellence to greater or lesser degrees. See also the advantages of operating a bottom-up competition below. |
| Low coordination costs | The coordination costs of agreeing priorities for, setting up and managing major, transnational public-public or public–private joint ventures, joint programmes, cooperation platforms, networks or consortia can be large (though the benefits may still outweigh the costs). However by operating a bottom-up competition (soliciting investigator-driven projects on any topic) evaluated on the sole criterion of excellence the ERC's coordination costs are very low in comparison. It is unlikely that any alternate delivery mechanism such as an intergovernmental approach or system of bilateral or multilateral agreements could achieve the same objectives with the same degree of efficiency, if in fact agreement could be reached on such an approach at all. |

Furthermore, evidence shows that ERC funding allows researchers to do better research. Further evidence comes from a study which directly asked ERC grantees whether ERC funding allowed them to carry out work which would not have been possible without ERC funding.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=COMNAT:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.image8.jpg)

Attractive features of national and ERC funding (percentage of respondents)
[22](#footnote22)

Another study, MERCI, showed that ERC grantees were able to allocate significantly more of their working time to their research. This shows that with grants which can go up to 3.5 million for up to five years, researchers can really focus on the core of their research with the aim that it leads to radical breakthroughs.

To what extent the results of Ideas SP contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

The Juncker Commission’s top priority is to get Europe growing again and to increase the number of jobs without creating new debt. The main role of the ERC in contributing to job creation is its role in creating the new knowledge that will create whole new sectors and industries to provide high quality jobs, and drive future productivity and growth.

The special role of ERC funding was acknowledged during the adoption process for the Investment Plan for Europe where ERC did not receive any cut to its funding from the levels agreed in the Horizon 2020 legislation along with the 
[Marie Sklodowska-Curie](https://www.google.be/search?hl=en&q=marie+sklodowska+curie&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0CBkQvwUoAGoVChMIhZfBra_ExwIVR1YaCh0PsQdD)
 and widening participation actions.

In addition in June 2015the Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation gave his assessment of the challenges facing Europe and his objectives and his priorities.

Open Innovation

The European Research Council funds “frontier research” in recognition that, “classical distinctions between basic and applied research have lost much of their relevance at a time when many emerging areas of science and technology (e.g. biotechnology, ICT, materials and nanotechnology, and cognitive sciences) often embrace substantial elements of both.” Frontier research often generates unexpected or new opportunities for commercial or societal application from the immediate term to the very long term. The ERC Scientific Council explicitly recognised the frontier nature of ERC funded research in 2011 by creating the Proof of Concept Grant (PoC) to explore the commercial and social potential of ideas arising from ERC grants. Around 50% of the first 50 completed PoC projects reported at least one patent application. In addition, 18% of them spun-out a new venture and 30% of them intended to use an existing or new spin-out to take forward their idea. The PoC call in ERC Work Programme 2016 has a budget of €20 million with three deadlines.

Open Science

ERC directly addresses the Commissioner’s second strategic objective by boosting excellence in cutting-edge, fundamental research.

The ERC also supports the principle of open access to the published output of research, including in particular peer-reviewed publications as a fundamental part of its mission. It also supports the basic principle of open access to research data and data related products such as computer code. Under Horizon 2020, beneficiaries of ERC grants must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to its results. The ERC recommends that all ERC funded researchers follow best practice in their research field and be prepared to share the data they have gathered and used in their project with other researchers whenever they are not bound by copyright restrictions, confidentiality requirements, or contractual clauses. Beneficiaries of ERC frontier research grants funded under ERC Work Programme 2016 may continue to opt-in, on an individual and voluntary basis, to the Horizon 2020 Pilot on Open Research Data.

In addition, the ERC currently provides funding for the European PubMed Central (since 2013 with the latest round of up to €850k for up to 72 months from the ERC Work Programme 2015) initiative, arXiv (a nominal annual fee from the administrative budget) and the OAPEN initiative mainly covering open access books in the area of humanities and social sciences (50k for up to 24 months from the ERC Work Programme 2015).

ERC also considers that it is essential to maintain and promote a culture of research integrity at all stages of the evaluation and granting process to make ERC competitions fair and efficient and to maintain the trust of both the scientific community and society as a whole. The Work Programme 2016 introduces a new restriction on applications for Principal Investigators whose proposals have been rejected on grounds of breach of research integrity.

Open World

The ERC confers status and visibility on the best research leaders working in Europe and offers attractive funding conditions which help to attract and retain outstanding researchers in the ERA. The ERC actions are open to researchers of any nationality who intend to conduct their research activity in any Member State or Associated Country. Principal Investigators may be of any age and nationality and may reside in any country in the world at the time of the application. Under Work Programme 2016 the following features are maintained: additional “start-up” funding is available for scientists moving to Europe (EUR 500 000 for Starting and EUR 1 Million for Advanced Grantees); the ERC funded Principal Investigator can keep their affiliation with their home institute outside Europe; team members can be based outside Europe; the ERC funded Principal Investigator can move within Europe with the grant (portability). 

Outside of the Work Programme the Commission has signed Implementing Arrangements with several funding agencies outside Europe to allow excellent young researchers from those countries to come to Europe and become part of ERC teams. In 2015 so far three such arrangements have been signed with the authorities in Argentina, Japan, and China in addition to existing agreements with bodies in USA and South Korea. The ERC takes part alongside the Commission in the annual meetings of the Global Research Council since its inception in 2012..

Ideas SP in H2020: continuity or evolution?

Competition for ERC grants has been intense. Success rates in ERC competitions with an average of 10.5% over FP7, are around half those of any other FP7 Specific Programme, including the Marie-Curie actions (SP “People”). ERC success rates are also well below those of other comparable funding organisations. The ERC has funded a tiny proportion of the researchers in the EU but also a relatively small proportion of the best researchers in the EU. This suggests that the ERC could absorb a significantly higher budget and still fund excellent research.

In addition to the mid-term evaluation of FP7 which looked at the ERC, there was also a specific review of the ERC’s structures and mechanisms in 2009 and a further ERC Taskforce in 2011. The conclusions of both these reviews fed into the Horizon 2020 legislation. In particular, the scientific governance of the ERC was strengthened in Horizon 2020 by merging the positions of President of ERC and Secretary General; establishing a full-time President based in Brussels; three Vice-Chairs elected from amongst the Scientific Council members. There were further modifications in the Horizon 2020 legislation including recognition of the ERC Board and more explicit references to the responsibilities of the ScC and where it is necessary to take into account its positions.

The documents and reports from these reviews can be found here: 
<http://erc.europa.eu/future-erc>
 

Finally, under Horizon 2020 the review and evaluation of the implementation and management of the activities of the ERC will continue “on an on-going basis with the full involvement of the Scientific Council to assess the achievements and adjust and improve procedures and structures on the basis of experience”.

  

12.People Specific Programme

Objectives

Original objectives

As a prerequisite for increasing Europe's capacity and performance in research and technological development and for consolidating and further developing the European Research Area, the overall strategic aim of the People Specific Programme was to make Europe more attractive to researchers.

This was implemented by pursuing a considerable structuring effect throughout Europe on the organisation, performance and quality of research training, on the active career development of researchers, on knowledge-sharing through researchers between sectors and research organisations, on increasing partnership between industry and academia, and on strong participation by women and early-stage researchers in research and development.

The goal of increasing the human R&D potential in Europe in terms of both quality and quantity included systematic investments in people in terms of their skills and competence development at all stages of their careers, from initial research training specifically intended for young people, to career development and life-long training in the public and private sector. Mobility, both trans-national and intersectoral, was considered as fundamental to achieving these goals. Increasing the mobility of researchers and strengthening the resources of those institutions which attracted researchers internationally aimed at encouraging establishment of centres of excellence across the European Union.

Evolution of objectives to respond to the crisis

Measures to ensure competitiveness and to promote growth and jobs are part of the EU answer to the financial and economic crisis. Investing in training and skills remains therefore particularly relevant, as it enhances the employability and productivity of the workforce.

The People Programme invested in the knowledge and potential of researchers, especially at the beginning of their professional careers.

Thus, there was no need to alter the overall objectives of the programme, but rather to finetune the focus on the relevance of skills and competences for the next generation of researchers.

In this respect, in 2011, the European Commission introduced the European Industrial Doctorates (EID) for PhD candidates to get a strong insight in the industrial world and contribute directly, with their doctorate research, to the innovation potential of the European economy. The EID aimed at tackling the skills mismatch between academically trained researchers and the skills and competences needs of industry and at making researchers not only aware of the requirements and expectations of the non-academic world, but also better prepared for successful transitions from the academic world to a business environment. It also allowed European companies to take full advantage of the creativity and innovation potential of young researcher to increase their own competitiveness.

Implementation

The People Programme was implemented through the Marie Curie Actions (MCAs) and the specific policy actions with a view to support the creation of a genuine European labour market for researchers by removing obstacles to mobility and enhancing the career perspectives of researchers in Europe.

The People Programme was implemented under five main activity lines:

- initial training of researchers;

- life-long training and career development;

- industry-academia partnerships and pathways;

- international dimension – world fellowships; and

- specific policy actions (Researchers’ Night and policy activities to foster the mobility of researchers, promote their career, modernise their skills and prepare future initiatives, in particular through: the EURAXESS Researchers in Motion initiative; the Retirement Savings Vehicle for European Research Institutions (RESAVER); the Human Resources Strategy for Researchers (HRS4R); the support to the implementation of the Innovative Doctoral Training Principles (IDTPs) and data collection activities).

How did FP7 contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

Enhancing cooperation between universities and industry in terms of knowledge sharing, training and broad skills development was a key element of MCA. 6.3% of the overall FP7 MCA budget was dedicated to SMEs. 9.6% of all FP7 MCA participants were from the private sector (out of over 22 000 participations).

The involvement of the private sector was much more significant in the two main activities dedicated to academia-industry interactions (Initial Training Networks (ITN): 20.8% of participants were from the private sector; Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP): 44.6% of participants were from the private sector). Together ITN and IAPP schemes constituted 50% of the People Programme's budget. Among all businesses participating in ITN and IAPP actions, more than 50% were SMEs.

Nine out of the 10 European companies investing the largest sums in R&D participated in host-driven MCA: Volkswagen, Daimler, Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens, Robert Bosch, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Eads.

The MCA has contributed to research that could lead to improved products or processes in the future (acknowledged by 61% of IAPP beneficiaries), helped to become more aware/confident of the commercial potential of their research (45%), as well as helped to gain new commercial contacts in the project network/partnership (including industry) (41%).

Nearly 17% of all Intellectual Property Rights reported in FP7 are from the projects funded by the MCA.

Abundant and highly trained researchers are a necessary condition to advance science and to underpin innovation, as well as an important factor to attract and sustain investments. In order to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers the People programme maximised, quantitatively and qualitatively, the human potential in research and development in Europe.

Mobility of researchers was an essential element in achieving these objectives and structured training of researchers was a significant element of the action. The programme emphasised and committed participating organisations to train researchers and exposed them to industry. Such exposure was essential for fostering innovation, for making research productive and for turning research into marketable outputs. It facilitated a two-way exchange of effects in the sense that the transfer of knowledge and exchange of staff worked in both directions. As a result of such interactions, the participating researchers obtained a valuable mix of soft, transferable and specialised capabilities and skills.

Opportunities provided by the MCA to individual fellows (IAPP and IRSES)

Source: Survey of MC fellows, PPMI 2013.

How did FP7 People SP contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

In FP7, MCAs have supported some 50.000 mobile researchers.

Promoting international research careers, networking and staff mobility is crucial to enhance global cooperation. MCA fellows represented over 140 different nationalities and their research projects were undertaken in more than 80 countries. This testifies the world-wide openness of the programme and its important contribution towards enhancing the knowledge transfer and the quality of research undertaken. Nearly 24% of MCA fellows were researchers from countries outside the EU Member States or Associated Countries. In addition, the International Research Staff Exchange (IRSES) has promoted reciprocal exchange of research staff from Europe to third countries, increasing the share of 3rd country nationals supported by MCA to 34%. In terms of host organisations, about 12.5% of funded Marie Curie beneficiaries are localised in third countries. About a quarter of the total number of projects funded under the Marie Curie Actions has a non-European organisation involved.

81% of the MCA beneficiaries stated that the programme provided attractive international mobility opportunities for researchers in their organisation. 76% indicated that it provided more opportunities to attract researchers to their organisation from abroad. 91% of all organisation beneficiaries considered that the MCA provided attractive opportunities to create new, or join existing international research networks.

The FP7 Marie Curie funding has supported 18 000 participations of both academic and non-academic organisations in EU MS, Associated Countries and beyond, creating opportunities for intellectually stimulating exchanges and multiplying international contacts among universities, research institutions and businesses.

Social network analysis revealed the dense nature of the MCA network: the majority of organisations participating in the host-driven MCA (ITN, IAPP and IRSES) were directly or indirectly interconnected. These connections facilitated networking and knowledge transfer inside the networks. The social network analysis also revealed that research organisations from the EU-15 (e.g. Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK), as well as large third countries, such as the United States, Japan or Turkey, acted as central “gateways” for the weakest participants (those with the lowest number of connections).

Yet, despite the solid evidence of an undisputed centrality of certain research organisations representing the EU-15 countries, it was also found that the programme did not develop a closed circle of “elite” organisations, occupying the top positions in the host-driven MCA each year. On the contrary, different organisations acted as the most important intermediaries of the MCA network in different points in time, thus proving the openness of this network to new organisations willing to undertake more responsibility.

How did FP7 People SP contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

MCAs had an evident structuring effect on the European Research Area by setting standards for research training, attractive employment conditions and open recruitment for all EU researchers. Through the co-fund mechanism, they have been effective in aligning national resources and influencing programmes at regional, national and international level.

The principles guiding the doctoral training offered under MCA ITN have been recognised as best practice in Europe: international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary environment created by consortia from different countries and offering to supported researchers a significant exposure to industry, the development of transferable skills, including on entrepreneurship, business skills and Intellectual Property Rights, as well as attractive working and employment conditions.

As a consequence, the MCA experiences and guidelines were translated into the EU Principles for Innovative Doctoral Training, adopted by the ERA Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility.

Evidence shows that in some countries there was a structuring effect of ITN at the national level. It occurs in terms of expansion of doctorate curricula, by including transferrable skills, more exchanges with industry, or more focus on employability. Additionally, by implementing the ITN projects participating organisations could test new ways of managing research careers and support policy initiatives aimed at introducing new types of employment contracts or increasing transparency in the recruitment processes.

For example, in Germany the broad focus on employability enhancement of the research fellows was assessed very positively. It was acknowledged that ITN was a good example of the efforts to increase employability and collaborate with industry.

In the UK, the ITN action was seen 
   as an innovative example of international collaboration between academia and industry. The unique added value and impact of MCA lied in its potential to attract researchers to the country and increase overall research excellence in the UK. ITN opened new avenues to exploit the potential of academia-industry interaction.

Furthermore, in Slovenia, the MCA and especially ITN were taken into account when preparing a national joint strategy for research and innovation. The aspects of human resources management were integrated in this strategy and the Slovene participation in ITN was a particularly good learning experience.

In Romania, the People Programme was an inspiration for national programmes promoting the mobility of PhD researchers within the country.

And finally, training in industry was introduced in certain national PhD programmes..

One of the novel measures under the MCA was the introduction of the co-funding mechanism for regional, national and international programmes (COFUND). COFUND objectives concerning the mobilisation and leveraging of national, regional and international resources and widening opportunities for individuals and research organisations related strongly to the European Research Area priorities on overcoming mobility barriers and addressing fragmentation in the European research landscape.

The COFUND budget during FP7 was about €530 million. With the beneficiary funding added (based on an EU contribution of 40%), the total budget of co-funded programmes eventually raised to €1.3 billion. This allowed co-financing 167 programmes and supporting over 9 700 post-doctoral researchers.

In COFUND, national, regional and international fellowship programmes were highly encouraged to apply the Charter and Code principles, in particular concerning the quality and the transparency of the recruitment process for researchers. MCA had thus a pronounced structuring impact by aligning national resources, influencing national fellowship programme design, and by setting standards of attractive employment conditions and open recruitments for all EU-researchers.

For instance, some organisations such as the Swedish Forskingsrådet För Arbetsliv Och Socialvetenskap (COFAS programme) and the Italian Provincia Autonoma di Trento (TRENTINO programme) have transformed stipends into employment contracts due to their participation in COFUND.

How did FP7 People SP strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

MCA foster the culture of excellence in Europe. In 2014 only, 3 Nobel Prize winners were involved in MCA projects. 30 young scientists supported by the FP7 MCA contributed to the discovery of the Higgs Boson at CERN.

MCA contribute actively to a knowledge-based economy through a coherent framework addressing European needs for more researchers, better career opportunities in all research sectors and development of key skills to meet future challenges.

50 000 mobile researchers (included 10 000 PhD candidates) have been supported under FP7 MCA, all of them receiving high-quality research training and excellent career opportunities in both the public and private sector.

The high quality of training and supervision under the MCA was highly rated by 78% of the MC fellows in terms of the amount of supervision and by 82% of the fellows in terms of the quality of supervision. 95% of the MC fellows were satisfied by the training opportunities offered during the fellowship.

The level of skills of MCA researchers improved, mostly in the following areas: new and/or advanced scientific methods in their respective research field (63%), interdisciplinary techniques (50%), public speaking and communication (49%), languages (46%) and use of specialised equipment (41%).

Interdisciplinary approach is a key to unlock knowledge and innovation potential in many scientific disciplines. The critical mass of knowledge in different scientific fields is often concentrated in different countries.

MCA developed research collaboration across disciplines and promoted interdisciplinarity in all projects – this was a key aspect of the most important criterion (S&T quality) for the majority of calls for proposals. According to the FP6 Marie Curie Ex-post evaluation, 77% of fellows reported “very high engagement” plus “high engagement” in inter-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary research.

MCA fostered long-lasting collaborations for the advancement of research. Bringing together top researchers form different background and cultures helped to create powerful synergies, boost creativity and often resulted in new perspectives and insights. MCA gave researchers opportunities to build new professional contacts and develop sustainable research collaborations. Under FP7, MCAs have strengthened research collaborations (90% of beneficiaries), allowed the development of new project applications and/or projects among MC partners (87%), created new collaborations with academic organisations or businesses and enterprises (86%), increased the exchange of knowledge in the organisations or benefitted research and technical staff through the exchange of knowledge (84%).

When asked about their Marie Curie project's contribution to developments in their respective organisation, beneficiaries replied as follows:

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | IAPP | IRSES | ITN | Total |
| Has enhanced/will enhance research excellence | 87.5 | 93.1 | 92.9 | 92.2 |
| Has increased/will increase the number of peer-reviewed publications (by scientists in charge, recruited/seconded fellows and other authors) | 84.8 | 90.2 | 91.4 | 90.0 |
| Has extended/will extend research dimensions through joint, multidisciplinary, intersectoral and emerging supra-disciplinary fields | 85.9 | 88.2 | 89.2 | 88.4 |
| Has contributed/will contribute to applications for patents, trademarks, registered designs, etc. | 46.0 | 42.2 | 38.3 | 40.8 |
| Has contributed/will contribute to innovation through the development of new processes and products | 73.4 | 63.2 | 58.2 | 62.2 |

Source: Survey of MC beneficiary organisations, PPMI 2013

How did FP7 People SP promote the development of European research careers and to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

The development of European research careers was the primary objective of the People Programme.

MCA were highly effective in attracting talent to Europe, strengthening research mobility and enhancing international cooperation and networking.

There was a spillover effect in organisations participating in the host-driven MCA from their MC projects to other organisational practices. The following practices of MC beneficiaries for managing the careers of other (non-MC) researchers were most affected: offering more mobility opportunities for researchers (48%), introducing new types of training for researchers (41%), better public advertising of research job vacancies (41%), advancing career development, advice and job placement services for researchers (35%), introducing new methods for the supervision of researchers (31%) and introducing new welcoming or support services for researchers (also 31%). Contracts with full social security were introduced to researchers (13%), working conditions for researchers were improved and made more flexible (19%) and salaries of researchers were made more financially attractive (21%). The spillover effect of the MCA on the beneficiary organisations was quite considerable in the latter areas, taking into account the challenges faced by research institutions.

MCAs set best practice in Europe in the field of researchers' career development. Principles set out in the European Charter and Code were in-built in all MCAs and were a fundamental element during the evaluation process.

All MCAs strongly promoted and encouraged using employment contracts for researchers with full social coverage instead of fixed-amount fellowships. In this way, MCAs were setting professional standards for researchers, which the European Commission wishes to be applied all over Europe and for researchers at all stages of career, starting with a PhD level. For instance, significant impacts relating to contract permanence, salaries and working conditions were reported by fellows in the FP6 ex-post evaluation or by organisations in the FP7 mid-term evaluation of MCAs.

Some 80% of the MC fellows estimated that their fellowship experience improved their career prospects. 95.4% of MCA fellows have been in employment positions two years after the end of their fellowship. MCA fellows are also more likely (+8%) of obtaining a permanent position after the fellowship.

The MCA programme attracted international talent, opening up the European Research Area. MCA-supported researchers represented over 140 different nationalities. The research institutes hosting Marie Curie researchers were located in more than 80 countries. Nearly 34% of MCA-supported researchers were nationals of countries outside the EU Member States or Associated Countries. 76% of the MCA beneficiaries indicated that it provided more opportunities to attract researchers to their organisation from abroad.

MCA have also contributed to retaining the best researchers in Europe. 46% of researchers coming to the EU from non-European industrialised countries stayed in Europe after the end of their Marie Curie fellowship.

MCA were a good opportunity to convince researchers to take up long-term careers within enterprises, especially SMEs. Thanks to the MCAs, businesses were encouraged to be more involved in the career development of experienced researchers, as well in doctoral training, so that skills better match industry needs. Mobility of researchers also shortened the distance between the academia and the business by filling the existing gap between the two sectors. The achievement of this intersectoral cooperation has largely been accomplished through the ITN and IAPP schemes, which constitute half of the People Programme's budget. A broad spectrum of small and large enterprises was involved in the training and career development of researchers, SMEs being largely involved (50% of all businesses participating).

MCAs actively contributed to counterbalance gender inequality in all research areas. Under FP7 out of the total number of researchers nearly 40% were women. An important fact to be noticed is that success rates of male and female candidates to Marie Curie individual fellowships were statistically very similar, i.e. there was no discrimination for women applicants. In addition, family-friendly measures were set at contractual level and adopted in all Marie Curie projects. In particular, the family situation of the researcher was taken into account for fixing the amount of mobility allowance to which all Marie Curie researchers were entitled. A dedicated panel (Career Restart Panel – CAR) was introduced under the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (IEF) in the 2010 People Work Programme with the aim to better ensure equal opportunities and encourage the return into the career after a break.

To further develop the skills and competences of the next generation of researchers to deliver on innovation and growth, a pilot on European Industrial Doctorates (EID) was launched in 2011. The EID proposed to enrol each doctoral candidate in industrial research for at least 50% of the time of their fellowship. The FP7 MCA supported 58 EID projects in which some 240 PhD candidates have been trained.

COFUND fellowships were contributing both quantitatively and qualitatively to the reinforcement of the human resource potential. The quantitative improvements were evident from the number of fellowships which have been created and filled. The qualitative improvements have been reported on by both individual fellows and their host institutions. This included the strengthening of research capacities, of research capabilities and of research networks. Establishing and managing a COFUND programme has affected the administrative and operational procedures of around a third of the organisations concerned, mostly in terms of increasing the openness of recruitment to trans-national mobility and the use of independent/peer review in selection processes. Improvements have also taken place in the transparency of procedures, in line with the European Charter and Code.

How did FP7 People SP provide support key Community policies?

The Marie Curie Actions (MCAs) contribute actively to a knowledge-based economy through a coherent framework addressing European needs for more researchers, better career opportunities in all research sectors and development of key skills to meet future challenges.

The in-built bottom-up approach of the programme helped fund research in the areas which are not necessarily seen as priorities but may become so in the future. As a consequence, unknown future challenges are also covered and Europe will be ready to face them when they occur.

To meet major societal challenges, critical mass is needed. MCA, thanks to their focus on knowledge sharing and bridging the gap between research sectors and disciplines, contribute to this objective.

How did FP7 People SP increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

To enhance dissemination and public engagement, beneficiaries of the MCAs are required to plan suitable public outreach activities. At the programme level, the Researchers' Night activities were increasing the awareness of the general public about the role of researchers and the key benefits they bring to society. Researchers’ Night was organised as a unique event taking place all over Europe on the last Friday of September. The success and impact of this annual event since 2005 both in terms of number of people reached and the benefits to the Marie Curie programme justified its annual frequency. In 2013 only, nearly 1.3 million people of all ages participated in the Researchers’ Night, included 600 000 children, who could take part in experiments and interactive science shows, as well as try out equipment in research laboratories that would normally be restricted.

How much did FP People SP contribute to job creation?

The People Programme budget was directly funding 50 000 researchers, offering them high quality fellowships with employment contracts and full social security coverage. The training provided during the MCA fellowships enhanced researchers' skills and competences and prepared them for rewarding careers in both the public and private sector. Two years after the end of their fellowship, 95% of MCA fellows have been in employment positions.

Moreover, the programme promoted a model of open, transparent and merit-based recruitment and provided a stimulus to enter and remain in the researcher profession.

To what extent the results of FP7 People SP contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

MCA are instrumental to boost skills and jobs of the next generation of more entrepreneurial European researchers.

MCA have proved highly relevant in terms of tackling the most pressing needs and challenges related to the implementation of research and innovation policy as well as to the competitiveness and socio-economic needs of Europe: Europe’s relative lack of competitiveness in attracting highly qualified researchers, insufficient funding for training and career development of researchers and a relatively small share of researchers working in the business sector.

The MCA have boosted employment of young researchers and contributed to their greater mobility and career progression. The programme promoted free movement of knowledge and opening of the ERA to the world, increasing the number of researchers in Europe and creating more attractive opportunities and preconditions to choose a research career, also in terms of promoting excellence of research training that provides adequate competences for the evolving needs of both public and private employers.

The special role of MCA funding was acknowledged during the adoption process for the Investment Plan for Europe where the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, together with ERC and widening participation actions, did not receive any cut to its funding from the levels agreed in the Horizon 2020 legislation.

To what extent was FP7 People SP coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

The People Programme objectives and activities were fully coherent with the EU actions contributing towards Europe 2020 objectives and addressing three flagship initiatives "Innovation Union", "Youth on the Move", and "Agenda for new skills and jobs".

The programme helped to create strong links between the ERA and the European Higher Education Area, aiming at far-reaching changes in research and higher education systems in Europe.

Individual mobility, focus on skills and employability, networking, intensification of exchanges and cooperation between institutions were key drivers of quality, have strengthened national systems and contributed to the modernisation agenda.

Doctoral level training supported by the People Programme acted at the crossroads between higher education and research, Joint doctorates, supported by both the People and the Erasmus Mundus programme, enhanced greater structural co-operation between universities in terms of programme design and mutual recognition of qualifications.

The People Programme created regional impacts and synergies with the Structural Funds. One of the successful MCA-funded examples could be the SoMoPro fellowship programme of the South Moravian Region (Czech Republic). SoMoPro and SoMoPro II programmes were co-funded by MCA and aimed at providing training and career development for researchers and attracting skilled researchers to come to and carry out their work in the region. The programmes helped the region in developing its smart specialisation strategy and combining funding from FP7 with Structural Funds investments in research and innovation infrastructure.

Which was the added value of FP7 People SP when compared with national programmes?

MCAs have made remarkable progress to promote mobility, both transnational and intersectoral, and to open research careers at European and international level, with excellent employment and working conditions following the principles of the European Charter and Code. There is no equivalent in Member States as far as their scale and scope, funding and international character, as well as the generation and transfer of knowledge are concerned.

The added value of the MCA was high in terms of providing beneficiary researchers with better career development and mobility opportunities, increasing the volume and scope of research, and providing the example of good practice for national authorities.

The MCAs have strengthened the resources of those institutions able to attract researchers internationally and thereby encouraged the spread of centres of excellence around the Union.

The MCAs have brought together the best European and non-European actors in research. In FP7 all the 100 best ranked European universities in the Shanghai ranking list have been actively involved in Marie Curie projects. At the same time, 65% of the outgoing European researches have carried out part of their research projects in the top-50 world universities. These results go far beyond those achieved by national programmes which do not have the same means and influence in terms of international openness.

MCAs have also demonstrated the capability of disseminating good practice by influencing the initiation of similar programmes at the national level and by spreading the best practices in terms of research training and career development. The bottom-up approach taken by MCAs has also allowed a large majority of institutions to train and upgrade the skills of a new generation of researchers able to tackle societal challenges.

Long-lasting research collaborations between participants from private and public sectors have been created in the programme. The MCAs allowed industry and academia to collaborate on innovative research projects at a European scale, which otherwise would have not been supported. Networking opportunities and collaboration with academic institutions, as well as with other non-competing companies in an excellent interdisciplinary environment, were highly appreciated by industrial partners. By funding companies at the European level, the MCAs also increased the competition between European companies (not always existing at the national level), leading to higher levels of quality and excellence.

As stated by one of the beneficiaries: "Compared to what is available nationally, you can have much more variety of research, more researchers moving, more countries, and more industry partners involved. The national scheme is rather limited as regards the choice of topic. In comparison, [MCA funding] is much more flexible towards this and this has to be appreciated."

As regards the additionality of the MCAs, the evidence shows that only 1% of projects rejected by MCAs due to budgetary reasons were subsequently implemented as originally planned. Some 17% went ahead with the projects after some changes to the original design. 82% of non-successful applicants have abandoned the projects.

Concerning the participants that went ahead with the projects as originally planned or with some changes, the majority of the projects were implemented using own funds (36%) or by obtaining funding from national/regional R&D funding schemes (35%). Only 6% of respondents received funding from other international R&D funding schemes. However, all of the projects financed under international R&D funding schemes were implemented with some changes to their design. The findings suggested thus that no directly comparable international R&D programme existed that could have financed the same projects.

The MCA activities tended to have broader and more long-term research objectives, ran on a financially larger scale, had stronger networking and collaboration capacity and involved a larger number of international, industry and academia partners. For a significant majority of MCA beneficiaries, the projects strengthened their ability to do research beyond short-term needs, contributed to establishing R&D as a regular part of their day-to-day activities, and helped to achieve efficiency gains in terms of conducting research.

People in H2020: continuity or evolution?

The People Programme and its MCA have been highly effective and efficient in meeting their set goals and objectives.

The average success rate for the whole People Programme was 19%, while its main funding scheme, MCA ITN, covering nearly 45% of the People Programme budget, recorded a success rate of 10% only. With 50% of the overall MSCA budget, the ITN success rate continues to decrease and has plummeted only after the second call published under H2020 to as low as 6,8%.

The overall administrative efficiency of the People Programme, measured in terms of time-to-grant (272 days), was one of the highest in FP7 and by far better than the FP7 average (313 days).

The only criticism faced by the MCAs under FP7 (and its predecessor programme under FP6) referred to the need for "a more coherent and straightforward approach within the programme, and streamlining procedures within existing actions". This issue has been addressed under Horizon 2020, where the MCA, re-named as Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA), are part of the Excellent Science priority.

Under Horizon 2020, an important simplification effort was made, by extending the use of simplified forms of grants (unit costs), streamlining the MSCA funding schemes (from 11 to 4) and unifying the rules for:

- Innovative Training Networks (ITN): support for innovative initial training of researchers at doctoral level;

- Individual Fellowships (IF): support for experienced researchers undertaking mobility between countries, optionally to the non-academic sector;

- Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE): support for international and intersectoral cooperation and transfer of knowledge through the exchange of research and innovation personnel;

- Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes (COFUND): support for fellowships at doctoral and post-doctoral level involving mobility to or from another country.

The programme continues its focus on offering excellent opportunities for the career development of researchers. The MSCA's overall ambition is to empower and attract talent and to create an excellent framework for researchers' training in Europe.

In addition to the industrial doctorates introduced under FP7, the MSCA in Horizon 2020 also support joint doctorates as well as the co-funding of doctoral programmes to increase the leverage effect on regional, national and international funding programmes, thus bringing structural change to the way doctoral candidates are trained in Europe.

The European Researchers' Night, a specific MSCA policy support action, continues financing outreach activities to communicate science to the general public, with a special emphasis on pupils and students.

8% of the Horizon 2020 budget has been allocated to the MSCA, worth EUR 6.162 billion (current prices) for the 7-year period. This represents a 30% increase compared to FP7 and is a clear sign of recognition from the Member States of a strong added value of the programme and its long-track success record – the final amount allocated to MSCA is comparable to the original 2011 Commission proposal, even though the overall budget for Horizon 2020 was decreased during the negotiations by 12%.

  

13.Capacities Specific Programme

Objectives

The main objectives of the Capacities Programme were to build the research capacities of research-performing organisations, and notably SMEs, facilitate more effective use of research infrastructures and promote more coherent development of research and innovation policies. The programme was designed to support regional research-driven clusters and at the same time unlock the research potential in the EU’s convergence and outermost regions. Support was provided for horizontal actions and measures underlining international cooperation. It covered the seven following areas:

- 
[Research infrastructures](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=infra)

- 
[Research for the benefit of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=sme)

- 
[Regions of knowledge](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=know)

- 
[Research potential](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=potential)

- 
[Science in society](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=society)

- 
[Support for the coherent development of research policies](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=policy)

- A
[ctivities of international co-operation](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=inco)

Efficiency

Over the course of FP7, the Capacities Specific Programme received just over 10,000 proposals, equivalent to 7.6% of all FP7 proposals. The success rate, 19%, mirrored that for FP7 as a whole, although the average number of applicants per proposal was higher under the Capacities Programme. The average EC contribution was €1.87 million, which is close to the overall FP7 average.

The overall efficiency of the Capacities Programme, measured in terms of time-to-grant (313 days), was close to the FP7 average.

With regard to the Research Infrastructures activity, the programme managed to engage leading-edge organisations in the different fields. The programme was also efficient in achieving a relatively high participation and funding rate of organisations in smaller EU15 Member States and EU13 Member States, thus providing a sound basis for enhancing European cohesion.

The Research for the Benefit of SMEs activity proved efficient in meeting its objectives. The participation share of SMEs is in excess of 60%, with two-thirds of projects coordinated by an SME.

The efficiency of the Regions of Knowledge activity was assessed positively by project coordinators and participants. Programme management and responsiveness were considered efficient. Administrative management was considered to be more challenging, due to the complexity of a "triple helix" involvement in an EU programme focusing on research. The definition and implementation of objectives was considered to have improved significantly during FP7, with the strengthening of the focus on excellence and enhancing existing research-driven clusters.

According to the evaluation of the Research Potential activity, it was efficient in financing research groups, departments and centres to increase their role in the European Research Area by attracting experienced researchers; improving research quality; facilitating cooperation with the private sector and serving as a basis for obtaining additional support from regional or national authorities.

The Science in Society orientation under FP7 of supporting larger and more strategic actions and this has been found to be efficient. The average number of partners in FP7 projects in this area was 40% greater than under FP6.

The Coherent Development of Research Policies (CDRP) activity has focussed on boosting innovation-related aspects. In the early years of FP7, it supported the increasing emphasis on close-to-market activities such as prototyping, testing, demonstration, demonstration and knowledge transfer. Jointly with the CIP, it has more recently provided co-financing for joint implementation of innovation procurement. The CDRP has proved an efficient means of adapting support over time to match the evolution of research and innovation activities, notably in relation to improving the coherence and impact of EU policies and initiatives.

The International Cooperation (INCO) activity has proved efficient in achieving a diversification of project partners. In total, INCO activities under FP7 brought together a total of 1326 partners.

Under the Risk-Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF), the capital contribution increased from €2 billion to €2.420 billion, which has allowed the EIB to cover the additional risk involved in lending to below investment-grade operations.

  

13.1. 
[Research Infrastructures](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=infra)
 (including eInfrastructures)

The enhancement of the efficiency and effectiveness of the European RI system was the primary objective of the FP7 RI programme including the optimisation of the research infrastructures landscape in Europe and the services that they offer, and the strengthening of their global relevance.

The range of research infrastructures that was supported in the FP7 RI programme is very diverse, and reflects the new opportunities that digital, and communication technologies offer in terms of designing science research. They include centralised, as well as physically distributed resources for research, covering major equipment or sets of instruments, in addition to knowledge-containing resources such as collections, archives and data banks, and ‘facilities that facilitate research facilities’, such as GRIDS and Supercomputers.

How did RI contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

The answers to the survey launched by the evaluation study of research infrastructures
[23](#footnote23)
 show that major outputs and outcomes of the FP7 RI projects were new or improved products in terms of scientific instruments, software, middleware, etc. for approximately 80% of respondents.

While the involvement of industry in the programme was limited to 10% in terms of funding and of participations, the programme improved technical development capabilities and enhanced research-industry collaborations but only in a minority of projects. Work towards norms and standards as well as consultation with industry created a basis for future industrial impacts.

There are a variety of channels and mechanisms through which academic knowledge can be transformed into productive knowledge – ranging from direct use of knowledge inputs to instruments, tools, techniques and background knowledge. As an example, in sectors like Materials sciences, research conducted through the transnational access action also benefits the industry community.

How did RI contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The programme contributed to improve structuring of the European research base. The main impacts were:

- The conduct of scientific research and its effects on the advancement of knowledge and knowledge flow, within the research as well as educational components of the European knowledge society.

- To build capacity in the use of advanced research tools and technologies and the development and implementation of new research methods. An important evolution in this context is the eScience paradigm shift.

- To foster and accelerate an improved structuring of the European research base and considerably enhanced European and international cooperation in research.

The programme reached significant effects on an improved cohesion of the European RI landscape and on the breadth and quality of the RI services. All support schemes contributed to these achievements. Moreover the impacts were reached in particular through their combined efforts and the appropriate use of the policy mix. An important factor is the growing synergy and complementary role of the research infrastructure and e-infrastructure activities.

The FP7 RI projects contributed to these impacts by a broad range of actions:

An enhanced cohesion in the European RI landscape was reached thanks to the interlinking of research facilities and data infrastructures; the harmonisation, standardisation and interoperability of methodologies and tools; the delivery of transnational access; and an increasing connectivity and ease of access.

Improvement of the RI services was attained thanks to innovation in the tools and methodologies for the collection, processing and analysis of the resources, visualisation and simulation techniques, scientific instruments etc.

A major impact of the Virtual Research Communities (VRCs) projects was in the enhancement of transnational collaboration across Europe. They have contributed to bridging the gaps amongst different sub-disciplines of a research field by providing a common, standardised, interoperable and multidisciplinary infrastructure, which is still capable to address the specific needs of the single disciplines.

In FP7 the flow of knowledge was improved through the use of research infrastructures, particularly for users located in the newer Member States. There is also evidence of closer collaborations between scientists and ICT developers, as well as enhanced research-industry collaboration.

The answers to the survey launched by the evaluation study of research infrastructures
[24](#footnote24)
 show that major outputs and outcomes of the FP7 RI projects were:

- An improved transnational access (~80% of respondents)

- New or improved simulation & visualisation facilities and techniques (~80% of respondents)

- Extension of the RI users base, from a scientific and/or research community perspective (~75% of the respondents)

- New or improved RI services in general (~75% of respondents)

Overall, the focus of the programme and the use of the different schemes in the various thematic areas (figure 7) responded to the needs in the various scientific fields that the RIs serve. This included the high focus on integrating activities in areas where research communities are still rather fragmented or where inter-disciplinary research is key (e.g. social sciences & humanities and life sciences), as well as the support for research infrastructures in areas that are facing the big data challenge or where access to global data is mandatory (e.g. energy, earth & environmental sciences).

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15009.jpg)

Figure 7: Use of support schemes in line with needs of RI user communities. Source: EPIRIA report

A first analysis of the users benefitting from transnational access in the framework of the IA projects was carried out on the basis of aggregated data as of end 2012. Figure 11, below, presents the geographical distribution of the users in terms of their total number of visits. Close to 77% of the visits were made by users based in the EU15, ~16% by users from the newer EU Member States.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15010.jpg)

Figure 11: Geographical distribution of the RI users (nr of visits) (Source: RI users database)

If we normalise the figures with the size of the countries (in terms of total number of researchers in HE and the public sector), it appears that countries that benefit most from the EC support for transnational access to RI are the smaller EU15 Member States such as Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Finland and Greece, and newer Member States such as Hungary, Latvia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

In addition to the budget spent through funding projects, the FP7 RI programme contributed with €200 million to the European Investment Bank for a Risk-Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF) for the development of RIs.

So far the EIB has signed long-term loans of over €1billion to fund research infrastructure projects such as ESO-
[E-ELT](http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/)
, the European Extremely Large Telescope for optical astronomy, a project on the ESFRI Roadmap. A loan of up to €300 million has been provided for the design, development and construction of an extreme large optical telescope. The Sincrotrone Trieste has been provided a loan of up to 20 M€ for the completion and launching of the new FERMI@Elettra light source. FERMI@Elettra is based on a newly designed free-electron laser for studying materials, which as an international laboratory will be open to the scientific community and to companies. The EIB also lent to companies supplying equipment to research facilities such as Oxford Instruments, specialised in the design, manufacture and support of hi-tech tools and systems for industry research. 

How did RI contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?
[25](#footnote25)

Apart of setting the base for an ongoing strengthening of the European RI eco-system, the different sub-systems have also had other specific values and roles. The RI Design and Preparatory projects are considered a valuable addition to the national funding landscape and help to progress concepts for new RIs from the ideas stage to a stage where national funding agencies may commit to fund them.

The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI)
[26](#footnote26)
 constitutes the most important coordination platform of the national policy making communities. ESFRI acts as a strategic instrument to develop the scientific integration of Europe and to strengthen its international outreach. One of the means ESFRI used is the ESFRI Roadmap. The ESFRI Roadmap has raised the importance of RIs in the EU as a policy issue and has had great influence on national policies for Research Infrastructures. It also helped the EU to have a voice in the international fora. To date, the EC has supported the preparatory phase of all RIs on the ESFRI roadmap and the clustering of these ESFRI projects by scientific domains in order to help them develop common solutions in issues such as access, data stewardship and management.

A similar forum was founded in 2003 in the field of e-infrastructures, the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (
[e-IRG](http://www.e-irg.eu/)
) defines and recommends best practices for the pan-European electronic infrastructure efforts. It consists of official government delegates from all the EU countries. The e-IRG produces white papers, roadmaps and recommendations, and analyses the future foundations of the European Knowledge Society. It's delegates cover widely the areas of digital research infrastructures, ranging from NRENs and connectivity as well as HPC and PRACE to grid and cloud computing and big data infrastructures.

The collaboration between ESFRI and e-IRG has constantly intensified, with data management and internal e-infrastructures playing a constantly more important role in the functioning of the research infrastructures. This collaboration is visible in the form of various common working groups and e-IRG:s active participation in the drafting of the ESFRI Roadmap, and also in the newly given responsibility to ESFRI to review the national e-infrastructures' funding models, which it aims to do in tight collaboration with e-IRG.

How did RI strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

The R&D that was conducted to support the development of the new RI also contributed to Europe’s leading-edge science and technology outputs. The RI projects have contributed to strengthening the scientific excellence in Europe because they provided support for the access to the best RI of the best researchers regardless of their origin. Moreover they helped improve the services provided by the RI to the users. By supporting the design and preparatory phases of the ESFRI projects, the RI programme helped ensure that the European researchers could use the most up-to-date and state of the art RI to carry out their research activities.

How did RI promote the development of European research careers and to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

The FP7 RI programme succeeded in involving leading organisations in the different fields and made good use of the mix of funding instruments. (EPIRIA report)

As regards the positioning of the research teams in their environment, the large majority (more than 80%) of the respondents to the survey carried out by Technopolis, considered their organisation to be a lead player or highly important in their areas of work at national level. Half of them considered a similar positioning at European level and 40% at global level.

The bibliometrics data confirmed this picture of competitive strength in the FP7 RI programme constituency from a research perspective. The analysis looked into the publication history of 200 FP7 RI participants, covering their articles and reviews for the five years preceding the FP7 project. This regarded participants in research infrastructure and e-infrastructure projects. The EPIRIA finding was that in general, programme participants have better publication histories than their peers in the respective fields. They publish more in high quality journals, have higher-than-average citation rates, and have a high share of international co-publications.

How did RI support key Community policies?

The distribution of the funding over the thematic areas indicates a strong focus on support for research in scientific fields that are key for the tackling of the Grand Challenges. Particular focus was set on RI supporting research in the field of Earth & environmental sciences and Life sciences (accounting respectively for 19% and 18% of the programme budget).

In the graph below (figure 8), the Horizontal e-infrastructure services include projects funded in the field of e-sciences. e-science projects performing activities aimed at a specific sector are included in the relevant thematic areas.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15011.jpg)

Figure 8: FP7 RI breakdown by thematic areas. Source Corda data

The relatively high level of support to RI in the physical sciences & astronomy thematic area is to be noted, in particular in the number of projects supporting the design and construction of new RI (see figure 9).

Funding was also allocated for support to research in the Social sciences, a field that provides strategic information for policy making on more general societal challenges and where significant new opportunities arise from the Big Data phenomenon. Funding for RI in the social sciences & humanities thematic area accounted for 5.5% of the budget.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15012.jpg)

Figure 9: FP7 RI funding by thematic area/funding schemes (€M). Source Corda data

The programme fostered and consolidated coherence in RI policymaking. A major task of the FP7 RI programme was to act as a driver and coordinating force for an improved coherence of RI policies in Europe. It did so by providing platforms and instruments for an improved communication among the actors involved. Below are some examples of these mechanisms and their role and value:

- New or updated roadmaps have been developed in many scientific fields and subdisciplines during the course of this programme, bringing together all relevant research communities with the aim to develop consensus around a comprehensive strategy at the European level. These roadmaps have an important impact on an improved coordination at the policy-maker and funding agency level and can be expected to guide future policy and investments.

- FP7 RI projects, and in particular the preparatory phase activities, provided the fora that would allow R&D policy makers and funders to discuss harmonisation of concepts and key legal and ethical issues. This is a crucial topic for European RIs that has to be addressed in advance as they have an important effect in the buy-in of the different countries and in defining the technical aspects and functionalities of the RI with a view to achieving sufficient critical mass.

- The ERANet projects have been beneficial and a useful vehicle for the stimulation and development of joint strategies (e.g. Astronet) and joint work on policy areas. Other projects such as Eridwatch and Meril have created opportunities for debates. These activities have a strategic value also for the Commission in that they provide background information and the possibility to play an active role for the definition of future activities. Other examples are studies developing conceptual frameworks for the assessment of RI to the benefit of the European Commission and national policy makers, as well as the RI.

How did RI increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

The Research Infrastructures activities addressed the fragmentation of the research infrastructure landscape in Europe, developing networks of research infrastructures in Europe and improving the way they operate, at national and European level, thus ensuring more coherent Research Infrastructures policies. They helped bringing down barriers to access to RI, playing therefore an important role in the education and training of researchers, young scientists and engineers through the use of cutting-edge equipment or the exploitation of data generated by or stored within them..

To what extent the results of RI contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

The potential for impacts on society at large is high in areas such as environment, where they feed into global issues such as climate change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process. Close to 20% of the funding was allocated to the environmental sciences. Support has been provided to networks of RIs and development of new distributed RIs in atmospheric research, arctic, ocean and marine research, and biodiversity. The impacts are also high in the sphere of health. The programme supported the development of the European life sciences ecosystem of facilities and resources, from biological resource centers to medical research facilities and food and agriculture facilities. The action in the field of social sciences and humanities, despite its limited extend, has also high potential for achieving effects on policy making in other areas of societal importance.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15013.jpg)
Figure 1: Expected outcomes and mid-to-long term impacts of the FP7 RI supported actions. Source: EPIRIA report

To what extent was RI coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

In the FP7 RI programme the objectives of the supported activities had a strong alignment with the programme’s higher-level policy objectives and the objectives of the ERA. In essence, this indicates a high quality in the programme design. (EPIRIA report)

RI added value

The key added value of the FP7 RI programme was to strengthen the European dimension in

RI policies, activities and services. The Programme fulfilled its primary function of supporting the development of networks of research infrastructures in Europe and improving the way research infrastructures operate, evolve and interact with similar infrastructures and with their users – at European and global levels.

The ex\_post evaluation study of research infrastructures confirm the high level of added value of the programme: 70% of the respondents to the survey stated that their project would not have been possible without EC funding; the remaining 30% considered that it would have been possible to find alternative funding, but in close to all cases that would have implied a reduced scale or speed.

The Programme increased the cohesiveness of the European RI landscape by interlinking research facilities and data infrastructures, the harmonisation, standardisation and interoperability of methodologies and tools, the delivery of transnational access, increasing connectivity and ease of access. Innovation in the tools and methods for the collection, processing and analysis of RI resources and the use of the facilities, including visualisation and simulation techniques and scientific instruments led to a considerable improvement in the delivery of RI services. The shift to a more service oriented approach in the e-infrastructure ecosystem was a particularly important contribution.

The FP7 RI Programme has been very successful in increasing the value of research infrastructure as a tool for Science. The networking and integration of the research infrastructures helped improve the structure and cohesiveness of the European research community, enhancing European and international cooperation in research.

It fostered the creation and increase of critical mass in research and generated strong spillover potential to research and education. Funding for transnational access was especially important for small and newer Member States.

The Programme also facilitated the development and use of new and improved research methods and technologies. The eScience paradigm shift is an important development, which is changing the nature of the research process in some fields. The ability of the e-Infrastructure communities to deliver user-tailored services and the development of a multilayer e-Infrastructure ecosystem have been key in helping European researchers to stay at the forefront of scientific developments.

The FP7 RI programme has made an important contribution to increasing international collaboration in Research Infrastructure and opening up of the European RIs to the world, to the mutual benefit of the European and international research communities. It reinforced cooperation with countries such as the United States, Japan, Australia and Canada, and was particularly active - and successful – in enhancing collaboration with emerging economies such as Latin America, Africa, China, India and the Middle East. These intercontinental RI partnerships provide important opportunities to broaden the European knowledge base.

The FP7 RI programme has shown that there is potential for impacts on industrial innovation by fostering capacity building and knowledge transfer but has so far had little impact on industrial innovation. There are in fact early examples of product innovation resulting from the involvement of industry in the RI projects, both as suppliers or users of the RIs and via the exploitation of research results. However, as little time has elapsed since the projects were undertaken, it was not possible to measure the longer-term impact of the RI action.

The programme addressed the fragmentation of RI policies at national and European level and was successful in improving coherence of RI policy making based on the ESFRI roadmap and projects.

13.2. 
[Research for the benefit of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=sme)

With respect to the EU added value of FP7 for SMEs three types of EAV are distinguished in the assessment of EAV: a). Technological added value, namely the added value of a European project due to technical reasons like specialised knowledge, or equipment (high or very high in 60% of the projects analysed in more detail), b). Economic added value, namely the added value of a European project due to access to international customers, or markets (high or very high in nearly 30% of projects analysed), and c). The European funding is compensating a lack of alternative funding (high or very high in more than 70% of cases).

  

13.3. 
[Regions of Knowledge](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=know)

How did RoK contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

The Regions of Knowledge activity set the fundaments for future impacts to occur in terms of an enhanced regional economic competitiveness through R&D activities.
[27](#footnote27)

A noticeable immediate result of the improved intra-regional communication as well as of the strategic focus of the RoK programme activities has been an improved articulation between on the one hand the clusters initiatives, R&D capabilities in the region and industry needs and, on the other hand, regional innovation strategies.

The RoK programme contributed to the competitiveness of European industry by offering a large space of cooperation to clusters in which the business component was always key. This very much appears in the ten selected case studies annexed to the final evaluation.

The impact of the RoK projects was strengthened from 2011 by asking to the partners involved to set up a Joint Action Plan by the middle of their project. This favoured a more concrete implementation in the second half of projects, and prepared the ground for possible synergies with European Structural and Investment Funds. This happened especially in 2014 and 2015 when this process coincided with the preparation of smart specialisation strategies in European regions. This enabled many regions to take advantage of "RoK success stories" in the choice of their priorities for the 2014-2020 period. The two RoK in which Aragon was involved over the last years: SoCool and We@EU encouraged for instance the Regional Authority to consider logistics and water management among their priorities when preparing their Smart Specialisation strategy. In the last call 2012-2013 a mandatory contribution to regional smart specialisation strategies was stipulated in the work programme. In 2007 and 2008 dedicated calls were launched at the benefit of emerging clusters that contributed of the development of approximately 15 new clusters.

Another concrete example of contribution comes from, the project CARE which has contributed to the aviation industry's ability to innovate and rapidly meet the demand for new airplanes in the EU. The team targeted economic and environmental priorities, while also clarifying relevant funding and international collaboration opportunities.

How did RoK contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The Regions of Knowledge activity has had a substantial impact on networking and collaboration.
[28](#footnote28)
 It helped establishing a critical mass between Regions of Knowledge partners for R&D projects. More specifically, RoK supported the establishment of research-driven clusters that – in balanced partnerships, termed ‘triple helix’ actors – associate universities and research centres with enterprises and regional authorities.

The ‘number of networking, collaboration and research network with other institutions’, participation in FP7 projects’ and ‘participation in EU level research activities’ is considered to have benefitted substantially from participation in the RoK programme.

Most potential network and collaboration effects are expected at the European level. Especially partnerships with EU-level public research institutes, universities and public authorities are perceived as potential collaborators, though it should be mentioned that public authorities and SMEs are also perceived to be potential partners at a regional level. The final evaluation shows that in all the addressed areas, except for a few regions, there has been an increase in the establishment of new relationships and/or R&D partnerships – especially at a European level. The relationships with public authorities, universities and public research institutes are those which have increased the most.

The Final evaluation of the RoK programme’s (2014) impact and sustainability centres on the extent to which the research results have led to wider effects and the extent to which these wider effects are likely to last after the RoK-funded activities have terminated. The questionnaire survey results indicate that the five most important RoK impacts are:

- Enhanced knowledge of R&D needs in the sector of the cluster

- Strategic inputs to regional policy-making

- Establishment of a critical mass between RoK partners for R&D projects

- Enhanced reputation and image of participation organisations within their regions

- Enhanced public awareness on the benefits of research-driven clusters in the regions

The RoK programme sometimes enhanced cooperation beyond usual expectations. The very active and powerful ERRIN – European Regional Research and Innovation Network – was set up by the partners of a RoK project which wanted to give more sustainability to their cooperation and who had understood the need for a Brussels based network helping innovative European regions to cooperate on a permanent basis.

How did RoK contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

RoK has proven to be a unique and relevant programme at both regional and European level, addressing a real and previously unmet need for awareness and funding for projects, which are aligned with Smart Specialisation strategies and which are pertinent to issues of research and innovation excellence at a national and international level. Considering that Smart Specialization strategies is a fairly novel policy tool, it is also worth noting here that the final evaluation indicates how Smart Specialization has benefitted greatly from the RoK programme, both in scale and scope.

The RoK contribution in this field anticipated the need for paying more attention in our policy support to the clustering between research, business and regional authorities ("triple helix") through regional research agendas and Joint Action Plans, due to be implemented in the second phase of the projects. Many RoK projects contributed indeed to an enhanced coordination of European, national and regional research policies. The European ALICE Platform devoted to logistics was for instance created thanks to the impulse given by a RoK project in this field, which enabled their partners to move from regional project oriented cooperation to a national and European policy perspective. RoK is among the few FP 7 programmes which paid attention to the need for more cooperation between the regional, national and European components of Research and Innovation policies, taking into account the complexity of the multi-governance frame of the Member States.

How did RoK support key Community policies?

The Regions of Knowledge activity has had a substantial impact on in the smart specialisation of regions
[29](#footnote29)
.

RoK enabled DG RTD to set up an Expert Group in order to examine the role of clusters in smart specialisation strategies in European regions. This Expert Group produced a well spread report in 2013 which identifies six leverage points for clusters and clusters policies to be used in Smart Specialisation Strategies. These relate to the need for prioritization, integrated policy mixes, smart and evidence-based policy-making, multi-level governance, cross-border cooperation and sustained stakeholders' engagement. The Expert Group findings were presented by his Chair, Mr Ketels (Harvard Business School) during the WIRE conference in Cork, Ireland, in June 2013.

RoK also had a strong political impact on the new generation of European Structural and Investment Funds as the recitals of the regulations concerning the interregional cooperation include a reference to the RoK frame which is expected to enrich the new INTERREG EUROPE programmes. An interservice cooperation was set up in order to ease concrete synergies.

The Smart Specialisation is a pillar of the EU cohesion policy for the 2014-2020 period and clusters policies plaid an important role in the setting up of the Smart Specialization Strategies which should be continued in the current implementation phase. The Guide on R&I Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS 3 Guide) includes a large section devoted to clusters and clusters policies which is very consistent with the logic of RoK.

How much did RoK contribute to job creation?

Clusters increase productivity, stimulate innovation, facilitate commercialization. The RoK programme aimed at fostering regional growth and competitiveness thanks to a more active cooperation between regional research and innovation clusters. Considering the budgetary limits of this programme, the focus of the calls chosen each year took into account the most promising fields in terms of growth and jobs such as sustainable energy and health. A strong connection with the Smart Specialization strategies also intended at choosing priorities which can be implemented by Research and Innovation stakeholders such as clusters having a sufficient critical mass.

This programme included mentoring activities which enabled excellent clusters to also boost growth and jobs in more deprived regions. This programme can be seen as a precursor as regards the need for tackling the innovative divide at a European level, with opportunities to be shared between regions and clusters with some tangible impact in terms of jobs and growth.

To what extent the results of RoK contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

The RoK programme very much anticipated the move from FP 7 to HORIZON 2020 by paying a reinforced attention to the link between research and innovation from 2011. This anticipation was encouraged by the dynamics of clusters which are by nature in a good position to concretely understand this connection and contribute to a better economic output of research in fields corresponding to societal challenges.

The choice of several RoK calls can be considered as having contributed to the achievements of the new Commission's proposals. This applies in particular to the first priority of the new Commission ("a new boost for jobs, growth and investment"), considering the participation of many SMEs in clusters involved in this programme. This also applies to the need of a connected digital single market (second priority) and of a resilient energy Union with a forward looking climate change policy (third priority) which were among the thematic priorities of RoK projects.

To what extent the results of RoK contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

The RoK programme is the only FP 7 programme which was positioned at a crossroad between the EU regional, research and innovation policies based on a strong cooperation with DG ENTR and DG REGIO. The programme was designed in coherence with the European policy in the field of clusters and the CIP. It also paid attention to the growing importance of the smart specialization process at the level of the EU cohesion policy.

What was the added value of RoK when compared with national research and innovation programmes?

While Member State and regional funding has been aimed at supporting clusters in given regions and member states, transnational cooperation of clusters as well as the integration of cluster’s actors in ERA, are activities which require European programmes and support. The cooperation among clusters not only contributes to tackling pan-European challenges but can have a critical role in deploying new technologies, services and products which respond to European societal and economic challenges. International cluster cooperation can contribute significantly to pooling of resources (achieving critical mass; economies of scale and scope), to reduction of research risk / of commercial risk and to EU scale of dissemination of research results. Finally the cluster cooperation becomes even more relevant in supporting the cluster’s actor’s participation, including SMEs to global value chains.

As Figure 4 below shows there is a substantial increase in benefits and added value for the part-taking organisations, which stems from the RoK programme, compared to other initiatives and/or programmes. Especially regarding the ‘exchange of best practices’, ‘access to complementary competences’ and ‘visibility’, the RoK programme shows a highly significant impact, scoring an average of 70% in ‘higher benefits and added value’.

Figure 4:
   The benefit and added value of the RoK project compared to other initiatives

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Statements | Scores | Shares of scores | | |
|  |  | Technopolis | Final evaluation | Total |
| Establishment of a critical mass between RoK partners for R&D projects | 0-1 | 3% | 3% | 3% |
|  | 2 | 14% | 5% | 10% |
|  | 3-4 | 79% | 37% | 58% |
|  | na | 4% | 55% | 30% |
| Strategic inputs to regional policy-making | 0-1 | 3% | 3% | 3% |
|  | 2 | 15% | 5% | 10% |
|  | 3-4 | 81% | 42% | 62% |
|  | na | 1% | 50% | 26% |
| Creation of a new research-driven cluster within your region | 0-1 | 10% | 16% | 13% |
|  | 2 | 20% | 3% | 12% |
|  | 3-4 | 63% | 16% | 40% |
|  | na | 8% | 66% | 37% |
| Enhanced knowledge of R&D needs in the sector of the cluster | 0-1 | 3% | 0% | 2% |
|  | 2 | 10% | 11% | 11% |
|  | 3-4 | 85% | 39% | 62% |
|  | na | 2% | 50% | 26% |
| Enhanced knowledge on cluster management | 0-1 | 5% | 5% | 5% |
|  | 2 | 25% | 8% | 17% |
|  | 3-4 | 68% | 39% | 54% |
|  | na | 2% | 47% | 25% |
| Enhanced R&D capabilities in your organisation | 0-1 | 16% | 16% | 16% |
|  | 2 | 24% | 11% | 18% |
|  | 3-4 | 52% | 13% | 33% |
|  | na | 7% | 61% | 34% |
| Enhanced knowledge on markets in project partners’ countries | 0-1 | 9% | 0% | 5% |
|  | 2 | 20% | 11% | 16% |
|  | 3-4 | 68% | 36% | 52% |
|  | na | 3% | 53% | 28% |
| Enhanced knowledge on markets in other countries | 0-1 | 18% | 8% | 13% |
|  | 2 | 30% | 11% | 21% |
|  | 2-4 | 48% | 29% | 39% |
|  | na | 4% | 53% | 29% |
| Enhanced public awareness on the benefits of research-driven clusters within your region | 0-1 | 8% | 8% | 8% |
|  | 2 | 16% | 18% | 17% |
|  | 3-4 | 72% | 24% | 48% |
|  | na | 3% | 50% | 27% |
| Enhanced public awareness on the benefits of research-driven clusters at national level | 0-1 | 6% | 18% | 12% |
|  | 2 | 34% | 13% | 24% |
|  | 3-4 | 55% | 18% | 37% |
|  | na | 5% | 50% | 28% |
| Enhanced reputation and image of your organisation within your region | 0-1 | 6% | 3% | 5% |
|  | 2 | 36% | 8% | 22% |
|  | 3-4 | 53% | 42% | 48% |
|  | na | 5% | 47% | 26% |
| Enhanced reputation and image of your organisation at national level | 0-1 | 3% | 16% | 10% |
|  | 2 | 37% | 11% | 24% |
|  | 3-4 | 53% | 26% | 40% |
|  | na | 7% | 47% | 27% |
| Enhanced reputation and image of your organisation at European level | 0-1 | 12% | 5% | 9% |
|  | 2 | 33% | 8% | 21% |
|  | 3-4 | 51% | 39% | 45% |
|  | na | 5% | 47% | 26% |
| Other | 0-1 | 5% | - | 5% |
|  | 2 | 29% | - | 29% |
|  | 3-4 | 57% | - | 57% |
|  | na | 9% | - | 9% |

Source: 
   COWI and Technopolis (2010).
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = not important, 1 = less important, 2 = neutral, 
  
   
   3 = important, 4 = strong importance.

   
   \*All sums which differ from 100% are due to rounding of decimals.

  

13.4. 
[Research Potential](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=potential)
 (REGPOT)

How did REGPOT contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

Research potential programme facilitated the unlocking and developing existing or emerging excellence of research entities in the EU's convergence and outermost regions. It aimed inter alia at establishing conditions for research entities to exploit their research potential and better cooperate with private sector. Results of research should be translated into knowledge based services and state of the art products. These may be achieved only thanks to a fruitful cooperation of well-functioning and equipped research entities with the private sector. REGPOT aimed at achieving these goals and consequently contributed to entrenching competitiveness of the EU market and to realise the European Research Area (ERA).
  

  
Specific projects such as MIMOMENS has climbed up the technology transfer ladder via the establishment of Intellectual Property rights, via collaborations with industry or via participation in other FP7 projects. Several projects such as LIFTGATE and TEMP have established technology transfer platforms for the production of future research results.

How did REGPOT contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The Research Potential activity strengthened and expanded the collaboration of research groups in the cohesion regions with other EU research centres and thus contributed to Europe realising the full research potential of the enlarged Union.
[30](#footnote30)
 It increased the international recognition and leadership potential of these regions, as well as the quality of their scientists. This should in turn lay the foundations for their long-term sustainable development, and increased their visibility, while facilitating their participation as equal partners in the EU and international research arenas.

REGPOT has contributed to releasing research potentials and so has led to improved research capacities/achievements
[31](#footnote31)
. The respondents for this question provided an average score of 2.37
[32](#footnote32)
 (2 = average contribution and 3 = high contribution).

Table 1:
   Impact and sustainability of REGPOT project results

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Impacts | Average scores | | |
|  | Expert Group | Final evaluation | Total |
| Number of patents | 0.87 | 1.34 | 1.11 |
| Relationship with science & technology policy-makers | 1.87 | 2.29 | 2.08 |
| Links to EU Structural Funds | na | 1.96 | 1.96 |
| Integration in the European Research Area | na | 2.64 | 2.64 |
| Contribution to regional research priorities  /strengths | na | 2.62 | 2.62 |
| Contribution to worldwide competitiveness and sustainable regional growth | 2.00 | 2.28 | 2.14 |
| Total average scores | 1.58 | 2.19 | 1.89 |

Source:
   
   Expert Group (2011) and COWI.
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = no impact/no sustainability, 1 = low, 2 = average, 
  
   
   3 = high.

Additionally,

[Table](#_Ref381615206)
[2](#_Ref381615206)
 shows that on average there is only little difference in the impact and sustainability assessments in between the different research themes. However, for patents the impact is for example somewhat lower for the ICT sector than for physics and chemistry.

Furthermore, several respondents provide information on continued collaboration between REGPOT project partners, but also with new partners from non-Convergence regions – hereunder regarding proposals for Horizon 2020 funding. Others state that the REGPOT activities have led to the establishment of formal or informal networks that via their critical mass of expertise contribute to ensuring sustainability of the research results.

Many research actors have also experienced more individual, sustainable benefits from REGPOT participation such as being recognised within the own organisations as centres of excellence.

Finally, a number of the respondents state that sustainability of the project results will be achieved through incorporation into commercial products via cooperation with local enterprises, hereunder SMEs.

Table 2:
   Impact and sustainability of REGPOT project results – by research theme

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Contribution | Average scores | | | | | | | | | |
|  | Agriculture | Biotechnology and genetics | Energy | Environment | ICT | Material, engineering etc. | Medical sciences | Physics and chemistry | Socio-economic sciences(1) | Total |
| Number of patents | 1.43 | 1.36 | 1.00 | 1.25 | 0.85 | 1.67 | 1.35 | 1.75 | 0.00 | 1.34 |
| Relationship with science & technology policy-makers | 2.29 | 2.27 | 2.00 | 2.75 | 2.23 | 2.33 | 2.35 | 2.17 | 0.00 | 2.29 |
| Links to EU Structural Funds | 1.57 | 1.82 | 2.00 | 2.75 | 1.85 | 2.17 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 1.96 |
| Integration in the European Research Area | 2.71 | 2.64 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.54 | 2.83 | 2.53 | 2.67 | 0.00 | 2.64 |
| Contribution to regional research priorities  /strengths | 2.86 | 2.73 | 3.00 | 2.75 | 2.46 | 2.50 | 2.53 | 2.58 | 0.00 | 2.62 |
| Contribution to worldwide competitiveness and sustainable regional growth | 2.43 | 2.18 | 2.67 | 2.25 | 2.08 | 2.20 | 2.29 | 2.42 | 0.00 | 2.28 |
| Total average scores | 2.22 | 2.17 | 2.22 | 2.46 | 2.00 | 2.28 | 2.18 | 2.27 | 0.00 | 2.19 |

Source:
   
   COWI.
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = no impact/no sustainability, 1 = low, 2 = average, 
  
   
   3 = high.

(1)The answers for “socio-economic sciences” are based on one response only.

How did REGPOT strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

REGPOT contributed to a coherent upgraded RTD capacity and capability in several areas:

- Growth of human potential (in terms of the number of new researchers and training of research staff).

- Improvement of scientific experiments and measurements (based on the use of new equipment to support advanced research), as well as

- The increase of the quality of research carried out by the selected research entities. This impact was easily observed in all analysed projects. The Expert Group confirmed that this was one of the main outcomes of the “Research Potential” Activity.

Moreover, REGPOT has entrenched the European basic research by enhancing capacities of research entities in many areas such as:

Agriculture

Biotechnology and genetics

Energy

Environment

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Material, engineering, space and transport

Medical sciences

Physics and chemistry

Socio-economic sciences etc

REGPOT has contributed to the development of Centres of Excellence within very specific and advance research areas in convergence regions in Europe.

How did REGPOT promote the development of European research careers and to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

The Research Potential activity contributed to enhance exchange and mobility of staff, along with support in terms of equipment helped to overcome financial barriers such as lack of national and, in particular, regional funding and resources to hire high-level staff.

The research potential activity also filled the financial gap so as to unlock and develop existing and emerging research excellence in the convergence and outermost regions
[33](#footnote33)
 and thus contributed to strengthening the EU knowledge base.
[34](#footnote34)

The findings from the Final Evaluation’s (COWI, 2014) questionnaire survey confirm the assessment that REGPOT has contributed to releasing research potentials and so has led to improved research capacities/achievements..

REGPOT has in particular contributed to the employment of highly-qualified and experienced researchers which is much in tune with the REGPOT aim of reducing brain drain in the EU’s Convergence and Outermost regions. Furthermore, REGPOT’s contribution to the development of research policies and strategies in the mid-term indicates that REGPOT has released resources which enable the research actors to see beyond the daily challenges, which is necessary in order to enter the ERA and to establish links to Smart Specialisation strategies.

 

Table 3:
   Contribution from REGPOT to research capacities/achievements

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Contributions | Average scores | | |
|  | Expert Group | Final evaluation | Total |
| Number of employed researchers (particularly highly-qualified and experienced) | na | 2.75 | 2.75 |
| Publication record (particularly in peer-reviewed journals) | 2.50 | 2.34 | 2.42 |
| Participation in conferences | na | 2.56 | 2.56 |
| Participation in other EU FP7 activities (proposals submitted, funding obtained etc.) | 2.75 | 2.34 | 2.54 |
| Participation in other national and international programmes | 2.62 | 2.38 | 2.50 |
| Participation in international research networks | na | 2.49 | 2.49 |
| Cooperation with end-users (including SMEs) and other stakeholders | 2.87 | 2.14 | 2.50 |
| Own research policy and strategy in the mid-term | 2.37 | 2.77 | 2.57 |
| Total average scores | 2.62 | 2.13 | 2.37 |

Source:
   
   Expert Group (2011) and COWI.
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = no contribution, 1 = low, 2 = average, 3 = high.

The survey shows further that that REGPOT has contributed significantly within all research themes – most for agriculture and least for ICTs. 

  

Table 4:
   Contribution from REGPOT to research capacities/achievements – by research theme

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Contribution | Average scores | | | | | | | | | |
|  | Agriculture | Biotechnology and genetics | Energy | Environment | ICT | Material, engineering etc. | Medical sciences | Physics and chemistry | Socio-economic sciences(1) | Total |
| Number of employed researchers (particularly highly-qualified and experienced) | 2.71 | 2.91 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.38 | 2.67 | 2.88 | 2.83 | 0.00 | 2.75 |
| Publication record (particularly in peer-reviewed journals) | 2.71 | 2.45 | 2.00 | 2.25 | 1.85 | 1.83 | 2.59 | 2.58 | 0.00 | 2.34 |
| Participation in conferences | 2.86 | 2.45 | 2.67 | 2.75 | 2.23 | 2.50 | 2.65 | 2.67 | 0.00 | 2.56 |
| Participation in other EU FP7 activities (proposals submitted, funding obtained etc.) | 2.57 | 2.36 | 2.67 | 2.50 | 2.31 | 2.00 | 2.53 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 2.34 |
| Participation in other national and international programmes | 2.71 | 2.55 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.31 | 2.17 | 2.41 | 2.25 | 0.00 | 2.38 |
| Participation in international research networks | 2.71 | 2.45 | 2.33 | 3.00 | 2.31 | 2.00 | 2.65 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 2.49 |
| Cooperation with end-users (including SMEs) and other stakeholders | 2.71 | 1.82 | 2.33 | 2.50 | 2.08 | 2.17 | 2.12 | 2.00 | 0.00 | 2.14 |
| Own research policy and strategy in the mid-term | 2.86 | 2.73 | 3.00 | 2.75 | 2.62 | 2.83 | 2.82 | 2.75 | 0.00 | 2.77 |
| Total average scores | 2.73 | 2.47 | 2.46 | 2.66 | 2.26 | 2.27 | 2.58 | 2.45 | 0.00 | 2.13 |

Source:
   
   COWI.
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = no contribution, 1 = low, 2 = average, 3 = high.

   
   (1)The answers for “socio-economic sciences” are based on one response only.

The case studies reported in COWI’s Final Evaluation do similarly point to the achievement of research results via REGPOT support. Most of the project coordinators such as for DELICE, BIOSUPPORT, and CURE emphasise lifts to research capacities via the employment of both younger and experienced researchers, and via the establishment of collaborations. Some project participants such as those participating in BIODESERT have improved their publication records, claiming that all BIODESERT publications have been cited by other authors in other scientific papers. Similarly, it is assessed that OPENGENE has led to a publication increase and that SOFIA significantly has contributed to a 200-300% increase in peer-reviewed proceedings and publications in journals with an impact factors from the period 2005-2009 to 2009-2012, while RECENT in a similar period has contributed to an increase of 63% for international publications and of 86% for publications in Polish journals.

How did REGPOT support key Community policies?

The research potential initiative complements EU investments in research co-financed through the Cohension Policy Programmes for 2007-2013. Such an approach facilitates better coordination of innovation policies at EU level including research and innovation as well as cohesion policies at European, national and regional level, both within and between these levels.

REGPOT projects in order to achieve better results in building capacities of their research entities on many occasions combined both REGPOT funding and Regional Policy tools.

There are many examples of synergies between these two policies. For example project Biocaps in biomedicine on one hand has used REGPOT sources among others to enhance its capacities through becoming more competitive and increasing the capability of technology transfer and developing the IPR expertise and on the other hand it has used Cohesion Policy funds to build new infrastructure (a new hospital building).

REGPOT was a pioneer in promoting coordinated usage of funding from FP and Regional policy. Such an approach facilitated better coordination of policies and better understanding of needs at many levels.

The Research Potential initiative is not limited to the EU's convergence and outermost regions. It promotes scientific and technological cooperation between ERA-based entities and counterparts from the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPC- Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Palestinian-Administered Areas and Libya) and Albania, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia and FYROM Several specific calls were organised to specifically target the above geographic areas. Thus, REGPOT prepared significantly contributed to the 
[European Neighbourhood Policy](http://eeas.europa.eu/enp/)
.

How did REGPOT increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

COWI’s Final Evaluation (2014) concludes that REGPOT has helped to overcome financial barriers such as a lack of national and in particular regional funding for specialised state-of-the-art research equipment as well as for the hiring of high-level staff, hereunder foreign experts. Furthermore, many research actors consulted during the case studies did previously experience very few funds available for conference participation and networking – hereunder for younger researcher that have benefitted from increasing their mobility within the twinning arrangements between REGPOT project partners.

Hence, on this basis this final evaluation (COWI 2014) suggests that REGPOT has been an efficient programme that has helped to fill the financial gap needed to unlock and develop existing and emergence research excellence in the EU’s Convergence and Outermost regions.

The Expert Group (2011) assessed that this was the case and REGPOT has had an important developing, bridging and integrating role between research and innovation capacities in less-developed regions and the research institutions in developed regions by supporting networking and cooperation. Furthermore, it states that the important capacity building activities have included acquisition of equipment, human resource development through recruitment of excellent researchers, and knowledge transfer to researchers on the spot through secondment activities. The Expert Group (2011) agrees with these findings and goes as already mentioned so far to give its executive summary the title “A success story towards a broader ERA”.

How much did REGPOT contribute to job creation?

REGPOT's ultimate goal is to unlock the full research potential of the EU by reinforcing and developing emerging capabilities in Europe’s remote and less-developed regions. One of the aims is also to employ new experienced personnel to strengthen the scientific basis of research entities. It is estimated that 201 REGPOT projects created approximately 1000 new jobs for research and technical staff. This employment went beyond the projects' duration and belonged to the overall employment sustainability strategy of REGPOT projects. This action was also aimed at reducing brain drain in the EU as researchers were mainly employed from abroad so called 'returning researchers'.

What was the added value of REGPOT when compared with national research and innovation programmes?

COWI’s Final Evaluation entails 
[Table 5](#_Ref381608611)
 (p. 19), which describes the participant’s perception on the negative consequences of not having received support from REGPOT. These research actors claim that no REGPOT support would in particular have had high negative consequences for RTD achievements, for connections with the European scientific community, and for the capacity to go from project-based research to strategy-based research.

The added value from REGPOT for the projects within biotechnology and genetics research seems to be somewhat lower. This goes mainly for the contribution to the networking capability with end-users – a topic that also scores low for the material, engineering, space and transport projects. The research actors within medical sciences and within agriculture also assess the efficiency of REGPOT to be relatively high, and this is the case for all research capacity issues.

Table 5:
   Possible negative consequences of not having received support from REGPOT – by research theme

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Possible negative consequences | Average scores | | | | | | | | | |
|  | Agriculture | Biotechnology and genetics | Energy | Environment | ICT | Material, engineering etc. | Medical sciences | Physics and chemistry | Socio-economic sciences(1) | Total |
| Less RTD achievements in your research domain | 2.57 | 1.82 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.23 | 2.00 | 2.88 | 2.42 | 2.00 | 2.38 |
| Difficulty to recruit excellent researchers | 2.29 | 2.09 | 2.67 | 2.50 | 2.23 | 2.17 | 2.76 | 2.42 | 0.00 | 2.36 |
| Less capacity to keep excellent researchers | 2.71 | 2.09 | 2.33 | 2.75 | 2.15 | 2.33 | 2.65 | 2.08 | 0.00 | 2.32 |
| Less connections with the European scientific community | 2.86 | 1.64 | 3.00 | 2.25 | 2.38 | 1.33 | 2.41 | 2.17 | 0.00 | 2.19 |
| Lower capacity to update laboratory research equipment | 2.71 | 1.82 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.38 | 2.00 | 2.82 | 2.42 | 0.00 | 2.42 |
| Lower capacity to go from project-based research to strategy-based research | 2.29 | 1.64 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 1.92 | 1.83 | 2.53 | 2.17 | 0.00 | 2.11 |
| Limited networking capability with end-users | 2.29 | 1.36 | 2.33 | 2.25 | 2.00 | 1.33 | 2.29 | 2.50 | 0.00 | 2.03 |
| Total average scores | 2.53 | 1.78 | 2.71 | 2.39 | 2.18 | 1.86 | 2.62 | 2.31 | 0.29 | 2.26 |

Source:
   
   COWI.
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = no negative consequences, 1 = low negative consequences, 
  
   
   2 = average negative consequences, 3 = high negative consequences.

   
   (1)The answers for “socio-economic sciences” are based on one response only.

As shown in 
[Table 6](#_Ref381609211)
, the efficiency question also problematizes the existence of equivalent national programmes/funding to REGPOT. Most respondents claim that there are no or only little equivalent national programmes/funding aside from REGPOT. Furthermore, the respondents provide a number of examples of financial barriers that REGPOT has helped to overcome. While the recent economic crises have put general pressure on national research and development funding sources, the examples include a lack of national and in particular regional funding for specialised state-of-the-art research equipment as well as for the hiring of high-level staff, hereunder foreign experts. Furthermore, many research actors did previously experience very few funds available for conference participation and networking.

Several respondents have also found that REGPOT has helped alleviate the financial constraints of younger researchers, which in turn has helped their career developments, herein by increasing their mobility within the twinning arrangements between REGPOT project partners.

Finally, REGPOT has for some research actors allowed the employment of Intellectual Property (IP) managers and experts with experience in international project applications – hereunder for support from the EU Structural Funds. This has for some research actors also allowed a shift in the focus of the research towards more interdisciplinary research.

Table 6:
   Existence of equivalent national programmes/funding to REGPOT

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Research theme | Average scores |
| Agriculture | 1.29 |
| Biotechnology and genetics | 1.00 |
| Energy | 0.67 |
| Environment | 0.50 |
| Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) | 0.54 |
| Material, engineering, space and transport | 1.17 |
| Medical sciences | 0.41 |
| Physics and chemistry | 1.00 |
| Socio-economic sciences(1) | 0.00 |
| Total | 0.78 |

Source:
   
   COWI.
  
Notes:
   
   Scoring system: 0 = no national programmes/funding, 1 = little, 2 = some, 
  
   
   3 = much.

   
   (1)The answers for “socio-economic sciences” are based on one response only.

To what extent the results of REGPOT contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

Specific links and synergies with Cohesion policy in the regions involved were always sought in REGPOT. Synergies with other policy areas were promoted in particular with the Regional Policy and its Structural Funds. The EC organised a stocktaking seminar in July 2013 during which Regpot project coordinators shared their experience of alignment of FP and Structural Funds. Multiple examples of such synergies were identified which is a proof of complementarity of these two policies.

  

13.5. 
[Science in Society](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=society)

How did SiS contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

In ‘public engagement’, the programmes made advances in establishing new ways to engage, in particular, civil society organisations and public bodies at local and regional levels. The development of Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) Action Plans have resulted in closer interaction between scientists, policymakers and CSOs in key policy areas, and provide an effective model for enhanced integration of stakeholders in European research.

The greatest impact of the SiS programme has been to raise the political importance of science in society at the European level, and thereby raise awareness of the problems and the need for all actors to work together to resolve them. However, policymakers including national officials found it difficult to engage with the large volume of work carried out across a wide number of themes, and general awareness of the key achievements of the programme remains low among key audiences. A ‘gap’ emerged in terms of efforts to appraise, aggregate and package the programme’s content and results into a digestible form and to disseminate this information widely to relevant audiences. To address this gap, a number of projects from 2012-2013 calls (e.g. RRI Tools, Responsibility, RES-Agora, Great and RRI Industry) were very active in mobilise the science/society community and to build overall capacity, in addition to providing research and support activity.

The Science in Society activity proved effective in engaging policy-makers and other societal stakeholders. It is the only programme in the EU supporting EU-wide coordination and collaboration in SiS research. It also provides a platform through which major pan-European initiatives and networks can be established and supported, leading to greater coordination of research efforts, more extensive and diverse collaborative activities, and a greater critical mass of effort to address key challenges relating to Science in Society.
[35](#footnote35)
 

Science education projects raised significant awareness and sparked smaller initiatives at various national levels, which provide an encouraging basis for impact. One such gain has been the strong interest that a German federal body in charge of teacher training has shown in developing the materials PRIMAS project within its own context.

Table below shows the success rates achieved by each type of organisation in FP7 overall, and within SiS specifically. At the level of FP7 as a whole, Research organisations (REC), Public bodies (PUB) and Private commercial organisations (PRC) achieved the highest success rates (28%, 26% and 25% respectively), closely followed by Higher or secondary education institutions (HES) at 22%. In comparison, the “other” category (OTH) achieved very low success rates across FP7 (10%), with only one in every ten proposal participations resulting in a positive funding decision.

The picture within SiS is rather different, with all organisation types achieving a success rate of at least 21%. REC achieved the highest success rate in SiS, with 30% of proposal participations resulting in a positive decision. PRC, PUB, OTH and HES achieved success rates of 24%, 23%, 22% and 21% respectively, all close to the SiS average of 23%.

Considering both demand for participation and success rates, it is notable that OTH had both a high participation rate in SiS proposals and a high success rate in SiS, when compared to the picture for FP7 as a whole. This high level of participation in proposals coupled to a high success rate means that OTH constituted 16% of the project participations in SiS, as compared to just 3% of the project participations across FP7 as a whole.

Success rates in FP7 overall and in SiS, by organisation type
[36](#footnote36)

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Organisation type | FP7 overall | | | SiS | | |
|  | Participations in proposals | Participations in projects | Participation success rate (%) | Participations in proposals | Participations in projects | Participation success rate (%) |
| PUB – Public body | 23,386 | 6,179 | 26% | 628 | 145 | 23% |
| REC – Research organisation | 119,114 | 32,942 | 28% | 1,272 | 376 | 30% |
| HES - Higher or secondary education | 228,005 | 49,886 | 22% | 4,034 | 831 | 21% |
| PRC – Private commercial | 160,755 | 40,491 | 25% | 777 | 184 | 24% |
| OTH – Other | 42,179 | 4,118 | 10% | 1,318 | 285 | 22% |
| Total | 573,439 | 133,616 | 23% | 8,029 | 1,821 | 23% |

Source: FP7 participation data CORDA (December 2014)

The total number of discrete organisations participating in SiS was 1,100. SiS participants made up 3.8% of the (n=28,818) organisations participating in FP7 as a whole. The largest groups of SiS participants were HES (38% of SiS participants), followed by REC (19%) and OTH (19%). PRC made up 15% of SiS participants and PUB the remaining 10%.

Table below shows the profile of participations by organisation type, for FP7 overall and for SiS specifically. Almost half of the participations in SiS projects were by HES (46%) and a further 21% were by REC. OTH made up 16% of the participations, PRC accounted for 10% and PUB the remaining 8%.

Compared to the overall FP7 profile, SiS had a higher share of participation from HES (46 versus 37%), PUB (8% versus 5%) and in particular OTH (16% versus 3%), and a lower share of participation by REC (21% versus 15%) and in particular PRC (10% versus 30%).

The very high relative participation by OTH in SiS compared to FP7 overall is due to a combination of high demand and high success rates for this group within SiS as compared to their demand and success within FP7 as a whole. The relatively low share of participations accounted for by PRC in SiS is due to low levels of demand, rather than due to low success rates (PRC success rates in SiS were in line with the FP7 average).

Participation in FP7 overall and in SiS, by organisation type

|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Organisation type | FP7 overall | | SiS | |
|  | Number of project participations | Share of project participations | Number of project participations | Share of project participations |
| PUB – Public body | 6,179 | 5% | 145 | 8% |
| REC – Research organisation | 32,942 | 25% | 376 | 21% |
| HES - Higher or secondary education | 49,886 | 37% | 831 | 46% |
| PRC – Private commercial | 40,491 | 30% | 184 | 10% |
| OTH – Other | 4,118 | 3% | 285 | 16% |
| Total | 133,616 | 100% | 1,821 | 100% |

Source: FP7 participation data CORDA (December 2014)

How did SiS strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

The Science in Society (SIS) projects had significant impacts on participants, enhancing their relationships and networks, strengthening their knowledge and capabilities, enhancing their capacity and improving their reputation and image.

Within the area of ‘Open Access’, SiS had notable successes in getting open access principles piloted in FP7 and embedded in H2020. In addition, the programme has helped to raise awareness of open access issues. Of the estimated 8,000 publications resulting from FP7 projects so far, the majority (60%) were published in open access journals or repositories.

Within the area ‘gender and research’ the FP7 SiS is considered to have made a major contribution to the definition of relevant indicators and collection of data on the role of women in science (She figures), and hence to a coordinated EU-wide monitoring system. According to Commission officials, this has led to significant advances in the understanding of gender imbalance in science, its impacts and the corrective measures needed. Within the area of ‘science education’, the programme made a major contribution to the development and piloting of inquiry based learning (IBL) techniques and their dissemination throughout Europe, in order to begin to address shortages of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates at all levels.

Within the areas of ‘science communication’ and ‘public engagement’, the programmes have contributed to the development of new tools and working methods that enhance the engagement of the public, policymakers and businesses in scientific debate and improve the provision of scientific information to relevant audiences. Big advances in citizen consultation have been made for example, through the VOICES project, addressing democratic values and aspirations.

Within the area of ‘scientific advice in policymaking’ the SiS programme has piloted new mechanisms for linking policymakers to sources of scientific advice.

Within the area of ‘research ethics’ the programme has been effective in building improved networks of Research Ethics Committees. The programme also contributed to the implementation of ethics frameworks and review procedures across the EU. In addition, the programme has supported the development of new insights and practices in the areas of privacy and social impact assessment. A major policy development was the establishment of an ethical review mechanism for all framework research proposals under FP7, reviewing the potential impact of research proposed in terms of the involvement of children, patients, vulnerable populations, the use of human embryonic stem cells, privacy and data protection issues, research on animals and non-human primates, the avoidance of breaches of ‘research integrity (i.e. plagiarism and falsification), research involving developing countries or dual use.

Towards the end, SiS programme became more policy oriented with a stronger focus on triggering institutional change. In the area of ethics, originally the ELSA (Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of the Life Sciences and Technologies) approach was used, where the most contentious sectoral issues would be identified and receive funding. This was a more reactive approach to funding. With the emergence of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a governance framework, more anticipatory actions and a move upstream “into the lab” was pursued, by supporting the development of assessment frameworks, ethics review and public engagement in institutional settings of RPOs and RFOs.

Over the course of FP7, the ethics reviews became more formalised, streamlined and professional. First, ethics reviews were only conducted at the stage of proposal evaluation. Later on, ethic audits conducted during or after the projects’ lifetime were introduced. This was of course helped by the legal developments in the area of ethics, but FP7 SiS is also said to have contributed to this development.

How did SiS promote the development of European research careers and to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

SiS FP7 contributed to create an environment which triggers an enthusiasm for science in young people, and which provides fair and rewarding career opportunities for women and men.

In SiS ‘Science education’, the programme made a major contribution to the development of Inquiry Based Learning techniques and their dissemination throughout Europe, in order to begin to address shortages of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics graduates at all levels. SiS ‘Science education’ projects contributed significantly to the development and dissemination throughout Europe of Inquiry-based learning techniques and materials. They raised significant awareness of IBL in policy, parent and business circles. It has also promoted IBL at primary level (starting very early) and to girls.

Science education projects reached hundreds of teachers and children through activities via ‘multiplier’ models for dissemination (e.g. Scientix) and giving direct training to teachers all over Europe (e.g. Fibonacci). Some lasting networks have emerged from the activity, independently of FP funding.

Furthermore, one third of FP7 SiS projects worked with students or school pupils and a similar proportion generated science education materials.

How did SiS support key Community policies?

Projects funded under SiS have obviously shaped and influenced Commission’s policy and approach to RRI within H2020. Specifically, based on pilots funded under FP7 SiS, the Commission has been able to embed open access principles within H2020. Similarly the Commission has been successful in introducing articles and obligations for gender under Horizon 2020. Examples can also be found of impact on national policy development. SiS had substantial influence and impact on policy-makers regarding ethics e.g. through discussions on dual use with competent authorities in Member States.

A number of projects had singular impacts on decision making, at various levels. The ETICA project for example was seen as having a high impact on the European Commission’s agenda around ethical issues in Information and Communication Technologies. The PACITA project spread technology assessment approaches across Europe, resulting in two further Member States taking up technology assessment in their parliamentary and government processes for reviewing R&D related legislation and policy. Other impacts were identified at the local level, were for instance the EFORTT project provided a blueprint ethical framework which was taken up by a local council in the process of procuring tele-care services for up to 7,000 patients.

The survey of SiS participants were asked about the actual and expected scale of the impacts of the projects on scientific advice and decision-making processes at five levels. Figure X presents the results and shows that impacts in this area are expected to be largest at local and European levels, with 45% and 44% of participants respectively attesting to large or very large impacts on scientific advice and decision-making. By comparison, large-scale impacts are relatively less likely to be achieved at the Global level and at the National level. Limited impacts at the Global level are to be expected, given that the vast majority of contexts and partnerships are within Europe. The lower level of expected impacts at National level is to some extent outweighed by the larger impact s at local and regional levels (presumably as a result of the direct engagement with project activity). There might be expected to be a longer time lag for the local, project related, activity to permeate to national decision-making levels.

Participant views on the impact of the projects on scientific advice and decision-making processes at different levels (n=94)

Source: ICF survey of SiS participants (May 2015)

Further analysis of the results reveals that the pattern of expected impacts differs to some extent by theme:

- Science Education impacts on scientific advice and decision-making are realised and expected mainly at the local and Regional levels, with relatively little impact at the National, European and Global levels. The lack of impact at National level may reflect a lack of buy-in from, or engagement with, national education authorities and ministries or the ability to bypass national levels of administration and t provide practical advice at the level of local administrations;

- Ethics projects are known and expected to impact mainly on scientific advice and decision-making processes at European level, with relatively low levels of impact expected at the other four levels. This implies that the ethics projects have been engaging with and feeding into mainly EU-level structures and processes, rather than in national systems which are known to be highly heterogeneous. Given the relatively greater development of national systems for debating research ethics, one might expect subsequent dialogue to be promoted between the EU and Member States in this area;

- Gender equality projects are expected to have a relatively high level of impact at all levels, but more so in Europe (at European, National, Regional and local levels) than globally. Impacts are attested to be highest at local level, which in this case perhaps means at Institutional level, given the focus on organisational change;

- Governance project impacts are highest at the National and European levels, given the focus of the theme on governance structures and systems at these levels rather than at local or regional level;

- Open access projects are expected to impact on scientific advice and decision-making processes mainly at the local and European levels. This is due to the impact of the theme on individual and institutional decision making around open access (local level), and due to its influence on European Commission (FP7, H2020) rules and approaches to open access publishing; and

- Public engagement projects are also expected to exert most of their impacts on scientific advice and decision-making processes at Local and European levels, possibly due to greater engagement and influence on citizens, cities, and institutions (local level) and on the European Commission (European level), as opposed to on national science ministries and research agencies (National level).

SiS EU Added Value

Over more than a decade, the greatest impact of the Commission action in FP6, FP7 and via the Science and Society Action Plan has been to raise the political importance of Science in Society at the European level, and to raise awareness of the problems and the need for all actors to work together. However, national policymakers found it difficult to engage with the large volume of work carried out. At MS level, Science in Society communities and activities are scarce, small and fragmented, and funding is limited, ad-hoc and embedded within other policy areas. Several common features can be identified across Europe, but there are also significant differences and clustering of countries in some areas. Science in society in Europe is dominated by issues related to the role of science and technology for sustainable development and issues related to the governance of science are dominant among the national debates.

While the SiS programme has a relatively limited budget, it is seen as one of the main vehicles for accelerating research efforts at the national level. Funding is the most attractive aspect of the programme from a national perspective because of the lack of alternatives, but as a result it suffers from high levels of competition and low success rates and has difficulties in involving less well-established groups.

Significant reforms of higher education institutions, combining increased autonomy and professionalization of management, have swept across Europe and stimulated a higher degree of responsiveness towards societal demands, particularly in the shape of increased science - industry interaction. But while many countries have formalized procedures and opportunities for involving citizens in priority-setting and assessment related to science and technology, the actual degree of public involvement differs significantly, and in some countries, nascent civil societies, lack of appropriate institutions, or non-inclusive political culture, form barriers for a more democratic and inclusive governance of science and technology.

The issue of 'upstream engagement', which has some resonance at the EC level, seems to have only moderate saliency in many MS. However, science and technology communication is gaining attention within governments and other institutions, particularly with regard to stimulating science communication at schools and aimed at younger people in general. Currently, there are efforts in some Member States to develop societal frameworks conditions for R&I.

For example several Member States (e.g. the Netherlands, France) have started experimenting with a ‘societal challenges’ oriented approach for research and innovation funding, which include award criteria that emphasise societal alignment of both research process (public engagement, ethics review) and outcomes (sustainability, industrial leadership). Also, a number of initiatives have been taken in the Member States (e.g. the UK, Germany, Denmark) to foster pubic dialogue within the policy making process, and furthermore encourage scientific evidence for public policy, including research on societal and stakeholders attitudes. Despite the Commission's effort, there is as of today no clear indication of significant progress at MS level, nor at pan-European level.

To address this, the Commission funded targeted FP7 projects in 2012-2013 (RRI Tools, Responsibility, RES-Agora, Great and RRI Industry) to mobilise the science/society community at MS-level and to build overall capacity. In Horizon 2020, there has been a strong shift to support institutional change in MS-level R&I to embed science and society.

Evaluation evidence found strong support from EU and national policymakers and from relevant research communities for the work of SiS.

The programme helped achieve positive benefits and impacts: a greater awareness and interest in the SiS programme itself and what it is trying to achieve; a structuring effect on the size, shape and focus of SiS communities and activities nationally; a networking effect between different countries, dispersed communities and stakeholders; a shift in attitudes as to the importance of SiS issues, pushing it up the political agenda and creating debate; plus some more limited and isolated impacts on policy. The international focus of the programme, as measured by involvement of third countries, has improved in quantitative terms from FP6 to FP7 – contrasting a general fall from FP6 to FP7 overall.

Despite these early successes there is limited knowledge and understanding at the national level of the full spectrum of activities being funded through the programme and the impacts flowing from the individual projects are generally low at this stage. Moving forward, SiS is generally regarded as important, both as a research topic and as a part of wider research activities, and national representatives are keen that the momentum and progress achieved so far is not lost. For many there is currently little or no alternative to the European programme and no likelihood of funding becoming available to fill any gap left by a reduced European focus. The SiS programme, how it is structured, and what it covers is therefore of the upmost importance for the SiS community across the continent.

SiS in H2020: continuity or evolution?

There is a continuity in the sense that Science with and for Society, with its 460 M€, is ensuring that the theme remains on the agenda at the highest level in Europe. There is an evolution in the sense that the concept of Responsibe research and Innovation is proposed as a transformation tool at the interface between science and society. FP7 SiS has contributed to ensuring that ‘Science with and for society’ and ‘RRI’ are both prominent features of Horizon 2020. Various successes in getting RRI concepts and issues featured in national science strategies, statements from funding bodies and foundations, in research agendas, and in research and innovation funding and selection criteria, can also be attributed to the programme.

13.6. 
[Support for the coherent development of research policies](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=policy)

How did CDRP contribute to the competitiveness of European industry?

A pilot action on networks of incubators for social innovation was launched in 2013 to support two European networks to assess, support and scale up social innovations in Europe. For this action, incubators include any organisation that acts as such at local or regional level, including universities and business networks. The two networks, which started in 2013 and will receive an EC contribution of €1 million each in their 3-years duration, are assessing, providing support and scaling up hundreds of social innovations from the local communities where they get started across Europe. In parallel, the two projects will also hold a two days Social Innovation Conference, which will bring together other projects in social innovation funded by different parts of FP7.

Although still early to assess the success and impact of the two projects supported by this scheme (the projects will be completed in 2016), the monitoring of results so far has shown that there is good progress and important results already (see box below).

Transition (Transnational Network for Social Innovation Incubation
[37](#footnote37)
) brings together partners from London, Paris Region, the Basque Country, Milan, Tampere and Ireland. By end of 2014 Transition has developed and applied a common framework methodology that includes a sequence of steps that lead innovators go through as part of the scaling process they enter in the project. This enables them to gain the skills and capabilities they require to grow. More than 500 social innovators across Europe took part in start-up events in six European regions. More than 90 projects entered the incubation programmers. TRANSITION also launched a StartUp Lab, an acceleration programme dedicated to 6 promising social innovations willing to go international.

BENISI (Building a European Network of European Network of Incubators for Social Innovation
[38](#footnote38)
) started on 1 May 2013 with the objective to identify and scale up 300 most promising social innovations over 36 months. Up to mid 2014 the project has developed and applied a common infrastructure to share data among the partners and facilitate learning. More than 110 social innovations are in the process of being scaled up. 

BENISI has also developed an open network structure allowing diverse stakeholders to participate and support scaling (Social Innovation Ambassadors Network). In order to increase the awareness over the role of incubation in scaling up social innovation the BENISI project organizes large events, as well as more than 150 sessions open to public across the EU, with more than 1000 innovators taking part.

  

How did CDRP strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

The EU Prize for Women Innovators was piloted in the CDRP WP 2011 and was continued in the CDRP WP 2013. The award was designed to address women who did research, had received either Framework of CIP funding, and founded an innovative company. The prizes reward three women following a European-wide contest who have founded or co-founded a company and who have at some point of their careers benefitted from the EU funding. Over 150 applications were received in both editions of the contest coming from women innovators across a vast range of sectors with a very diverse applicant pool in which almost all Member states and associated countries had been represented. The pilot prizes were awarded at the Innovation Convention in December 2012 and the second edition was awarded during the second Innovation Convention in March 2014.

The turn-out and impact of the two editions of the EU Prize for Women Innovators is highly successful. It shows the need for such a contest to put attention to the still untapped pool of successful women entrepreneurs in Europe and it gave evidence of the impact of DG RTD research funding since it spotlights research–driven innovations by women entrepreneurs who have benefited from EU funding in their careers.

How did FP7 CDRP support key Community policies?

The Coherent Development of Research Policies (CDRP) activity
[39](#footnote39)
 met the expectations regarding the building up of a demand-led evidence base for decision making. CDRP has been more a collector and synthesizer of existing knowledge rather than a producer of new knowledge. Part of CDRP’s relative advantage comes from doing this well. One of the major strengths of CDRP was its ability to recruit, as authors of the studies and analyses, competent experts from European administrations, consulting companies, research institutes and universities, even if the same names regularly reoccur.

Under CDRP, the focus of the activities has changed over time to match the evolution in EU R&I priorities, moving from the Lisbon Agenda to the ERA and Innovation Union. In this respect, most of the activities have been designed to contribute to the improvement of the coherence and impact of the EU policies and initiatives, and have included, for example, ERAWATCH activities (providing data regarding the state of play of the ERA in Member States) and reports published by the permanent expert groups (EFFLA, ERIAB, I4G and K4G).

  

13.7. 
[International Cooperation](https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm?pg=inco)
 (INCO)

INCO has created new international partnerships between the European research community and the ENP countries, between the EU and third countries and with developing countries, and also partnerships between the EU and other regions in the world. The INCO partnerships and activities consolidate and reinforce trans-European and international networks. A further impact, less quantifiable but nonetheless essential to international cooperation, is the confidence-building that comes with participation, and the changes to mutual understanding/ knowledge and to practice that is associated with international collaboration and shared efforts – outcomes that are essential to integrating research networks.

The INCO Activity provided the framework for coordination and support actions to foster cooperation between participants in the ten activities. Direct achievements of the INCO projects range across outcomes that include participation rates (levels and types of participants), networking activities, and capacity-building actions. Many of the activities undertaken by the projects could be classified as networking and capacity-building.

Across the INCO activity, 1326 partners are involved in international cooperation, 813 from the MS/ACs and 513 from third countries. In total, 61% of the partners are from the EU (member states and associated countries), and 39% are from the third countries. The total number of projects funded is 156. Taking stock of INCO in numerical terms, the conclusion is that the critical mass in international participation has been secured.

The projects funded in the last two INCONET calls have an increased focus on involving industry in networking events in order to promote innovation. Countries have different and often distinct national systems, and the collaboration between the research community and industry can vary substantially. This is where networking activities can be useful in bringing researchers and users together, and effect a gradual change in practice.

Networking and partnership-building was facilitated through the mapping of third country research landscapes, brokerage events, fact-finding missions, and travel grant schemes. INCO projects also disseminated information on FP7 through the websites, newsletters, conferences, workshops and information sessions.

How did INCO contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

INCO instruments were designed to support a policy dialogue that brings together representatives of the European Commission, the EU Member States and the third country, or group of countries in a region, for discussions aimed at promoting cooperation in science and technology, with the objective of formulating action plans and roadmaps for cooperation – particularly the BILATs (bilateral coordination between EU MS/AC and individual third countries) and INCONETs (bi-regional cooperation between MS/AC and third country regions). BILAT activities were directed at third countries that had signed an S&T agreement with the European Union, and the objectives of the BILAT actions included providing information on programmes designed to promote cooperation between Europe and specific third countries, and identifying the mutual benefits to be derived from S&T cooperation.

Across the ten INCO activities, projects concentrated efforts on gathering information about the existing collaborations and policy support, dissemination and monitoring activities. Though the results of these efforts were varied, substantial knowledge about national research and innovation capacities and research policy priorities, national supply and demand conditions, and the identification of key researchers and research actors has proved fruitful in generating a varied data-base to support international cooperation activities into H2020.

How did INCO support key Community policies?

The International Cooperation activity (INCO) succeeded in achieving a critical mass in international participation, capitalising on the links established through other FP7 programmes. At the same time, INCO participation did not guarantee access to the bigger projects in the FP7 thematic programmes. This highlights the importance of involving the other Research family DGs and DEVCO early in the process.

INCO projects contributed to the policy dialogue through intelligence-gathering activities such as documenting the S&T policies, compiling inventories on research specialists and expertise, mapping skills and infrastructure, conducting interviews with stakeholders and organising discussions. INCO-NET projects undertook activities to identify common research priorities in the participating countries, and contributed to capacity-building through the provision of training for third country Contact Points.

The R2I projects contributed to mapping third country research and innovation systems and strategies, providing industry analyses, identifying stakeholders, competencies, infrastructures, business promotion services (including business parks and incubators), as well as preparing supply and demand analyses to identify bottlenecks and barriers to research and innovation.

The INCONET activity supported bi-regional coordination with strategic partners that are key to the EU’s foreign policy and external relations, including Africa, Latin and Central America, ASEAN, the Arab Gulf, the Pacific, and Western Balkans. Similarly, the BILAT activity reflected ongoing scientific and political priorities in the engagement with individual countries including (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, US, China). The ERAWIDE activity enlisted the participation with the European Neighbourhood countries, a central component of EU foreign policy. The thematic priorities of H2020 can already be identified in ERAWIDE projects (food, agriculture, water, biotechnology, biodiversity, marine environment).

Some structural impacts took place as a result of INCO activities, including those in synergy with external funding instruments such as ENPI. For example, the building of institutional capacity to manage international research cooperation thanks to training and networking activities, the further diffusion of peer review and competitive calls due to exposure to the FP Calls and related evaluation.

To what extent the results of INCO contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

The INCO work programmes encouraged coordination with a broad range of community instruments, including these with a defined geographical focus: the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IP), the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), the Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation Instrument (DCECI), the Instrument for cooperation with industrialised and other high-income countries and territories (ICI), Asia and Latin America (ALA), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the European Development Fund (EDF). INCO calls also emphasized instruments in the areas of science, technology and innovation.

Some DEVCO instruments are already linked with research, but only for very specific actions such as food security. However, the link between capacity building and research is now stronger and it is an essential link for developing countries. Capacity building is where the coordination with DEVCO is more visible, one example being the synergy between INCO, DEVCO and DG-CONNECT in Armenia. In this case, an ERA-WIDE project (INARMERA-ICT) and FP7 PICTURE (DG-CONNECT) projects joined forces in order to tackle the challenges of international cooperation in the field of Components, Computing Systems and Networks, supported by the Eastern Partnership (EaP) Platform IV and the multilateral part of the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument (ENPI) in partnership with DEVCO.

The challenge of coordination with other policy instruments is illustrated by the often limited progress in taking the outcomes of priority-setting exercises forward, and there was some difficulty in utilizing the results of the priority-setting exercises. In many of the early INCONETS, it was assumed that the results could be passed on to the European Commission DG RTD thematic directorates to be used in the preparation of Specific International Cooperation Activities (SICA) calls based on such priorities. However, many projects reported difficulties in influencing the Framework Programme or in engaging with national work programmes.

Furthermore, INCO has proven consistency with EU foreign policy objectives.

International cooperation is both an objective of EU foreign policy and an instrument of that policy. The contribution of EU external policies, and particularly the external dimension of internal R&D policy, is central to the delivery of the Europe 2020 Strategy. The research cooperation fostered through the INCO programme has created links with the countries and regions that are also targets of the broader EU foreign policy, and the geographic scope of the

INCO activities reflects in many ways the global scope of EU foreign policy.

Eighty nine third countries participated in the INCO programme, and 39 MS/AC participants. However, there was a concentration in the participation by the MS/AC countries, with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Austria having the highest number of projects. Among the participant third countries, there was an ENP concentration, with Egypt, Tunisia, Ukraine, Jordan, Morocco, Armenia, and Georgia with the highest number of projects. The top twenty (third country) participants included Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia and South Africa– seven countries with which the EU has already concluded strategic partnership agreements.
[40](#footnote40)

The INCONET activities support the inter-regional dimension of EU foreign policy. PACE-Net was one of the INCONET projects that specifically addressed foreign policy objectives, with a work package linking S&T policy to Pacific development goals and the preparation of a set of recommendations on the potential contribution of R&D to regional development. The CAAST-Net Plus project included a workpackage dedicated to ‘Research, technology transfer and innovation to enhance food security’, one of the three strategic priorities of the EC’s Food Security Thematic Programme. The activity will operate within the context of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) and will respond to the objectives of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). The SEA-EU-Net project organized a conference linking the R&D to development, with the objective of identifying how poverty could be alleviated so as to improve the social and economic life of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia.

There are a number of global issues such as cyber security, climate and environmental change, health security (including epidemics), and poverty reduction where the EU can contribute to global debates and provide an input to global governance. European research programmes can provide an input to these debates in the specific research outputs, by taking a more strategic approach to policy dialogue, identifying dialogue pathways and key actors in the individual global policy arenas. In this context, the EU is already engaged in various global governance processes (in trade, environment, development) and can leverage its policy expertise in the respective areas through the EU delegations around the world so as to influence the direction of debate and policy-making in line with EU interests and with established norms and principles.

Coordination across the activities of different Commission Directorate Generals (development, external relations and research) was evident particularly in the latter stage of the INCO programme management. The global opening of the H2020 programme highlights more than ever the need for enhanced coordination, adding to the administrative and managerial responsibilities of the Commission DGs. While the European External Action Service (EEAS) is now in place to run the 141 EU delegations around the world, with a number of delegation staff on secondment from DG Research (and other ‘home’ DGs), the potential for coordination between research and foreign policy exists. However, the top-level division of authority between the different areas of the European Commission in the internationalizing of research policy remains unclear, and this can ultimately compromise the coordination of policies and strategic priorities.

The following figure provides and overview of EU added value of international cooperation under FP7:

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13.8. Risk-Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF)

Looking at the operational and intermediate objectives, the RSFF and RSSI have reached and easily exceeded almost all their operational and intermediate objectives.

The findings of the first RSFF interim evaluation
[41](#footnote41)
, conducted in 2010 by a group of independent experts, were largely positive. The experts concluded that the RSFF had been successfully introduced into the EU’s research funding scheme within FP7, was a model example of an EU financial instrument, and should be further developed and strengthened. The experts felt that some target groups, however (SMEs, research infrastructures) needed more focused support.

Subsequent amendments to the contract between the EU and the EIB changed the risk-sharing mechanism from a project-by-project to a portfolio first-loss-piece (PFLP)
[42](#footnote42)
 approach, with the EU assuming a higher risk. It was judged that this would optimise the leverage effect of EU funds and enhance the EIB's capacity to finance loans, especially to SMEs and research infrastructures. Three compartments were created: primarily corporate finance and project finance transactions; the RSI (see above), an SME and small midcaps guarantee facility run by the EIF; and research infrastructures. Changes were also made to facilitate lending to universities and public research institutions, and also loans to medium and large midcaps. In addition, a counter-guarantee mechanism for the RSI was also introduced.

The findings of the second interim evaluation of the RSFF
[43](#footnote43)
, conducted in 2013 by a further group of independent experts, were also largely positive. The experts concluded that the RSFF had proved to be attractive to RDI companies and had met or exceeded its loan volume targets, improved its geographic coverage, and enabled EIB to increase the bank's capacity to make riskier loans.

By the end of 2013, 127 RSFF operations had been approved by the EIB, with a total loan volume of €16.2 billion, and the Bank had signed loan agreements with 114 R&I promoters, with a total loan volume (active loans) of €11.31 billion. The sector diversification was broad, and the instrument had been implemented in 25 countries.

Figure 2: RSFF signatures by country as of 31 December 2013

EU-15 countries accounted for the large majority of operations. While RSFF operations have been concentrated in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK, EIB has met its geographical deconcentration target, linked to a fee-based financial incentive, of ensuring that the RSFF portfolio does not have more than 60% of its signed operations in the three Member States with the largest share of RSFF operations by volume. The relative scarcity of operations in Central and Eastern Europe appears to derive from the region's still comparatively thin technological base and infrastructure, together with a comparative underdevelopment of its financial sector and a lack of measures to foster access to risk finance.

Figure 3: RSFF disbursement by country as of 31 December 2013

Figure 4: RSFF operations approved and signed by the EIB since launch of RSFF

By the end of 2013, the RSI had been implemented in 14 countries via 23 financial intermediaries for a total guarantee amount of €1.21 bn underpinning a total loan volume of €2.4 bn. The number of final beneficiaries, 578, will continue to increase, under the terms of the pilot facility, until the end of 2016.

Figure 5: RSI financial intermediaries

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In the Commission's "A Budget for Europe 2020" policy paper
[44](#footnote44)
, financial instruments are highlighted as a way of advancing the EU's key policy priorities, thanks to their leveraging of investment:

By working with the private sector on innovative financial instruments it is possible to magnify the impact of the EU budget, enabling a greater number of strategic investments to be made, thus enhancing the EU's growth potential. Experience in working most notably with the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group, national and international financial institutions has been positive and will be taken forward in the next MFF. Guarantees and risk-sharing arrangements can allow the financial sector to provide more equity and lend more money to innovative companies, or to infrastructure projects. In this way, such financial instruments can also contribute to the overall development of post-crisis financial markets.

The Commission considers
[45](#footnote45)
 FIs particularly suitable for addressing sub-optimal investment situations in a wide range of policy areas whenever activities or operations are potentially capable of being financially viable, but are not yet attracting funding from market sources that is either adequate or available on reasonable terms.

EU-level intervention to improve access to risk finance is justified because of a market failure caused by significant information asymmetries and high transaction costs, exacerbated by the credit crunch associated with the financial crisis and the low supply of VC in Europe.

For debt financing, EU-level intervention is needed to increase the likelihood that loans are made and guarantees extended to help achieve EU-level R&I policy objectives. The current gap in the market between the demand for and supply of loans and guarantees for risky R&I investments, addressed by the RSFF, is likely to persist, with banks remaining largely absent from higher-risk lending. Typically, banks lack the ability to value knowledge assets, such as intellectual property, and are therefore often unwilling to invest in knowledge-based companies, which usually lack tangible assets at the early stage. In consequence, many companies — both large and small — cannot obtain loans for R&I activities, or at least not on reasonable terms. Credit constraints for small firms are also due to risks arising from information asymmetries between lenders and borrowers: lenders are not able to easily separate potentially successful businesses and projects from less successful ones without incurring high transaction costs. Another disincentive for lenders is that even if R&I activities give rise to a commercial product or process, it is not at all certain that the company that has made the effort will be able to exclusively appropriate the benefits deriving from it.

For equity financing, EU-level intervention is needed to help improve the availability of finance for early and growth-stage investments and to boost the development of the EU's VC market. During the technology transfer and start-up phase, new companies have to bridge the gap between the cessation of public research grants and the possibility of attracting private finance. Public support aiming to leverage seed and start-up funds to fill this gap is too fragmented and intermittent. Also, most VC funds in Europe are too small to support the growth of innovative companies and do not have the critical mass to specialise or operate across borders.

In both cases, however, financial instruments must be designed to operate on market-based terms in order to minimise the possibility of introducing their own distortions to the market. They must also seek to mobilise additional funding that would not otherwise have been committed, and avoid crowding-out investors.

The European Commission's right to act in the domain of access to risk finance is based on Article 173 of the Lisbon Treaty, which includes a statement that the EU should, with the Member States, encourage "an environment favourable to initiative and to the development of undertakings throughout the Union, particularly small and medium-sized undertakings" and foster "better exploitation of the industrial potential of policies of innovation, research and technological development".

The European added value of EU-level intervention to foster access to risk finance has six principal components:

Helping achieve EU policy objectives:   EU-level financial instruments can support the achievement of the EU's innovation policy objectives by addressing market failures that lead to insufficient funding being available from market sources, typically because the field is perceived as too risky by other lenders or investors.

Facilitating the financing of cross-border projects:   Funding conditions for cross-border projects at national level are difficult, and particularly so in the R&I domains to be covered by Horizon 2020; EU-level financial instruments can ease the fund-raising process.

Demonstration and catalytic effects:   In addition to their financial impact, financial instruments implemented at EU level can have important non-financial effects such as demonstration effects in the targeted markets, triggering wider application to other sectors. The expertise of the EU and the financial institutions responsible for the implementation of EU-level financial instruments can be transferred to national, regional or local authorities. Transferring skills and knowledge across frontiers could play a significant role in aligning national policies with growth and innovation-oriented measures, reducing disparities between Member State economies, and enhancing the EU's competitiveness.

Economies of scale:   Interventions by financial instruments at EU level generate economies of scale due to the enhanced capacity of the EU to mobilise public and private resources from the full range of Member States.

Multiplier effect:   EU-level financial instruments multiply the effect of the EU budget by attracting other public and private financing along the implementation chain comprising entrusted entities (such as EIB), financial intermediaries (such as banks) and final beneficiaries. Through risk coverage or risk participations, the EU intervention may induce investors to invest (or to invest more) in cases where they would have not invested at all (or invested less) without support from the EU budget. This can be achieved through co-financing by international financial institutions or through, for example, the additional debt volumes banks and guarantee institutions are requested to provide to final beneficiaries. For example, in the case of the RSFF, by end-2013 an EU outlay of just over €1 bn is expected to mobilise over €11 bn of EIB loans and support a total investment of approximately €30 bn.

Capacity-building:   National and local institutions can benefit from EU-level entrusted entities' knowhow about the design of financial products which otherwise would not have been available to them. An example is the European loan guarantee schemes implemented under the CIP and the RSFF's RSI in FP7. In many Member States, guarantee societies are scarce or do not exist, and a European counter-guarantee scheme is important in encouraging new entrants and in supporting newer guarantee institutions still building up their portfolios. The presence of a European guarantee and/or counter-guarantee can either help new guarantee societies boost their volumes in their early stages of development, or facilitate the creation of such schemes, and in both case contribute to capacity-building.

  

14.Evaluation of Euratom FP7 indirect actions

Programme's objectives

The Euratom FP7 Decision
[46](#footnote46)
 defined the following objectives:

For fusion energy research: to develop the knowledge base for, and to realise ITER as the major step towards, the creation of prototype reactors for power stations that are safe, sustainable, environmentally responsible, and economically viable.

For nuclear fission research: establishing a sound scientific and technical basis in order to accelerate practical developments for the safer management of long-lived radioactive waste, enhancing in particular the safety performance, resource efficiency and cost-effectiveness of nuclear energy and ensuring a robust and socially acceptable system of protection of man and the environment against the effects of ionising radiation.

Evolution of objectives to respond to the Fukushima accident

Following Fukushima accident, the Council decision on the Euratom Framework Programme 2012-2013
[47](#footnote47)
 increased the focus of fission research on nuclear safety. The research in the domain of nuclear (fission) systems was redefined as follows: While respecting the overall objective, research to underpin the safe operation of all reactor systems (including fuel cycle facilities) in use in Europe or, to the extent necessary in order to maintain broad nuclear safety expertise in Europe, those reactor types which may be used in the future, focusing exclusively on safety aspects. This includes plant life assessment and management, safety culture (minimising the risk of human and organisational error), advanced safety assessment methodologies, numerical simulation tools, instrumentation and control, and prevention and mitigation of severe accidents, with associated activities to optimise knowledge management and maintain competences.

What have been the main achievements of the Euratom Programme?

Fusion research

The fusion programme in FP7 had a number of significant achievements both scientifically/technically and in policy terms. A key milestone in the quest for developing fusion power as a credible energy source was the signature on 21/11/2006 of the ITER International Agreement, which formally entered into force on 24/10/2007 (the ITER partners are China, EU, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and USA). ITER, which is being constructed at Cadarache in the south of France, is the fusion experiment that should demonstrate the viability of fusion at reactor scale. Thus, its significance for the future of the fusion programme cannot be underestimated. Furthermore, a domestic agency, the Fusion for Energy Joint Undertaking (F4E), was established in Barcelona, Spain, on 27/03/2007 to manage the EU contribution to ITER. The signature of the ITER agreement and the establishment of F4E must be ranked as the most important achievements of EU fusion policy in recent years.

An important point is that the investment in ITER must be accompanied by a vigorous fusion R&D programme in the Member States; otherwise the EU will not have the capabilities and competences to reap the benefits of ITER. Furthermore, it is necessary already now to consider the step beyond ITER, i.e. constructing a demonstration fusion reactor (DEMO), especially since there are long lead items where R&D must start early. Here the fusion programmes in the Member States also play an important role. In order to coordinate the EU fusion research activities in FP7 the European Commission used two main instruments: The Contract of Association (CoA) and the European Fusion Development agreement (EFDA). The CoA was the basis of bilateral arrangements between the Commission and some 26 fusion research institutions throughout the Member States, and had a long and successful history in coordinating and supporting activities in EU fusion laboratories. At the beginning of 2000 it was supplemented by EFDA, which was a multilateral agreement between the EU fusion research labs and the Commission. EFDA was particularly set up to manage high priority research items requiring close cooperation between EU fusion research institutions and for the collective exploration of JET (the Joint European Torus, Culham, UK). Since its first plasma in 1983, JET has been the EU flagship fusion experiment; it is still the world's largest fusion device and the closest one to ITER in most respects, especially with its currently unique capacity of being able to operate with deuterium and tritium, the same fuel as ITER and future reactors. Both CoA and EFDA saw further developments in FP7, in particular the expansion to include all the enlargement countries.

Another important policy development was the gradual re-orientation of the fusion programme during FP7, enabling greater emphasis on ITER support, education and training and expansion of fusion technology for DEMO development. This was initially driven via an evolution of EFDA, especially:

In 2011, the setting up of a PPP&T (Power Plant Physics and Technology) Implementing Agreement within the EFDA framework in order to promote joint DEMO-related R&D.

The creation of an ITER Physics Department within EFDA.

The launch of a Goal Oriented Training (GOT) programme, aimed at improving recruitment and training of professionals, especially engineers, where there is a shortfall in the EU fusion programme.

In addition, to provide additional support for education and training, an initiative outside the framework of CoA and EFDA was initiated: the FUSENET project. It was supported by the Commission through a Coordination and Support Action, which led to the establishing of a legal entity with the same name under Dutch law, with the objective of better coordinating and promoting fusion education and training across Europe, especially at Master and PhD level.

Similarly, to enhance industry involvement in fusion and encourage technology transfer between the EU fusion labs and industry, two further initiatives were taken: (i) The formation of the Fusion Industry Innovation Forum (FIIF), which plays an important role in bridging the gap between fusion researchers and representatives of industries with an interest in fusion; (ii) the FUTTA Technology Transfer project, which was launched in 2013 and again supported by the Commission through a Coordination and Support Action, the results of which will help define the strategy in this field to be followed during Horizon 2020.

To provide evidence-based support for the required evolution in the fusion programme, two crucial in-depth reviews were undertaken during the course of FP7:

The Facilities Review
[48](#footnote48)
, a very comprehensive evaluation of how the resources of the EU fusion programme should be best utilised, especially in terms of experimental facilities but also generally. The report played a key role in the implementation of the FP7 fusion programme, both in terms of the use of facilities and the direction of the programme.

The independent panel of experts (the 'Wagner Panel') that assessed the future of the JET facilities and reviewed a Commission document on the strategic orientation of the EU fusion programme. The Panel issued two reports
[49](#footnote49)
, the first on JET was instrumental in the decision to continue JET operation into Horizon 2020 (2014-2018), while the second on overall programme strategy made a number of recommendations regarding the future evolution of the Euratom programme. In particular, it strongly advocated developing a realistic fusion roadmap, with the target of demonstration of (limited) fusion electricity generation by 2050.

Furthermore, the instruments used to implement the fusion programme (CoA and EFDA) up till the end of FP7 were fusion-specific and became increasingly out of step with the 'new management modes' being introduced in EU funding programmes for research and innovation. There were clear advantages to be gained by moving to a more streamlined structure based in joint programming between national research labs, and this became the basis of the Commission's proposal for the fusion part of the Euratom programme in Horizon 2020, as well as the focus of in-depth reflection and stakeholder consultation, starting in 2011.

As the cornerstone of this approach, and in response to the recommendations of the Wagner Panel, the Commission asked EFDA to develop, under the constraint of assuming realistic funding levels, a comprehensive roadmap for demonstrating fusion electricity production by the middle of the century. The work on the roadmap was carried out under the leadership of the EFDA Leader, Dr Francesco Romanelli, and involved key staff seconded to EFDA and in the EU fusion labs together with consultation of F4E and the FIIF. This massive task was carried out during a very short period, essentially six months in 2012. The resulting roadmap was approved by the members of the EFDA Steering Committee (heads of the national fusion labs / research units) in October 2012. The roadmap has been extremely influential, not least for fusion policy, and forms the basis for the new fusion Joint Programme (2014-18) implemented by the EUROfusion consortium of all national labs (ex-EFDA members) under the terms of a Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement for a European Joint Programme co-fund action.

Regarding scientific/technical achievements in FP7, there are numerous examples, though one of the most important was undoubtedly the completion of the ITER-Like Wall (ILW) upgrade of JET (2009-2011). This put the JET tokamak in a unique position as the only device worldwide that uses the same combination of plasma-facing components as those to be used in ITER. It involved replacing more than 4000 internal tiles by remote handling. The ITER-Like Wall in JET has since yielded many important results for ITER. In particular, results confirmed that ITER could be fitted with a tungsten divertor from the start of its planned operation, avoiding the need for an initial carbon divertor and representing significant cost savings for the project as a whole. Furthermore, JET experiments with the ILW have revealed many new aspects associated with operating with a metallic wall, and the lessons learned are vital for future ITER operation. In this context it should be mentioned that the EU fusion programme can boast two tokamaks with ITER-relevant geometries but of different sizes, both equipped with metallic walls: JET and ASDEX-Upgrade (located at IPP, Garching, near Munich), which started operation with a tungsten wall in 2007. This allows for a unique ability to use the 'step ladder' approach for making more reliable extrapolations to ITER.

Another project on JET with direct impact on ITER was the installation and testing of an ITER-like ICRF (Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequencies) antenna (ILA) on JET. ICRF heating is used as one of the sources for heating a fusion plasma to the temperatures required for fusion to take place at a sufficient rate. The ILA provided very valuable feedback for the design of the ITER ICRF antennas.

The construction of two further major new research infrastructures in Europe, which received significant support through the Euratom programme and were prioritised in the Facility Review, advanced significantly during FP7. Wendelstein7-X (W7-X), under construction at IPP Greifswald, Germany, is also a toroidal device but based on the stellarator rather than the tokamak concept. Though not as advanced as tokamaks, stellarators are included in the fusion roadmap as an important mitigation strategy. The first plasma in W7-X is scheduled for late autumn 2015. The other facility is MAGNUM-PSI, which is a linear plasma device for testing plasma surface interaction in a much more controlled manner than is possible in an actual tokamak. Though MAGNUM-PSI has now started limited operation, it will not reach its full specification until equipped with a superconducting coil. Both W7-X and MAGNUM-PSI are or will be exploited by EUROfusion as common facilities under the new Joint Programme.

Structural and high-heat flux materials for DEMO and fusion reactors is one of the long-lead items where research has already started. In order to guide the EU fusion programme on materials, a report by a group of experts was commissioned under EFDA on DEMO Structural and High-Heat Flux Materials ('Stork report'). The final version was delivered in December 2012, and the conclusions by the group of experts had a significant influence on the fusion roadmap. The report makes many important recommendations and endorses the need for an ‘early neutron source’, which is taken up in the roadmap itself.

An important aspect of fusion research concerns theory and modelling of fusion plasmas. Highly developed simulation models will be crucial for analysing ITER results and guiding the design of DEMO. Modelling of fusion plasma has made enormous progress over the years, and complex and sophisticated simulation codes have been developed which require supercomputing facilities to run efficiently. To this end, during FP7 the Commission funded the procurement and operation of the HPC-FF supercomputer (Jülich in Germany), which was dedicated to simulations relevant for fusion research. This was a highly needed tool for the modellers, and it contributed significantly to advancing simulations of fusion plasmas.

Fission research (including radiation protection and medical applications of radiation)

Fission research supported by Euratom FP7 had a substantial number of scientific achievements in all fields supported by the programme: nuclear safety, radiation protection, radioactive waste management. A substantial number of research proposals (288 proposals submitted for seven annual calls) prepared by 3352 applicants demonstrated a strong interest of research stakeholders to participate in nuclear research at European level. Stakeholders, including industry, have also shown a readiness to form consortia in response to the calls - the average consortium size in Euratom was significantly higher than across FP7 as a whole (17 compared to 12 partners per collaborative project). Moreover, total investment in funded projects was almost €660 million for a Euratom contribution of only €354 million (54% of total costs).

Euratom FP7 activities in nuclear safety have concentrated on research in severe accidents, long-term plant operation (i.e. ageing and integrity of various materials and components), plant safety simulation tools and the man-machine interface.

Euratom funded projects, such as SARNET-2, contributed to the resolving of important pending issues on postulated severe accidents of existing and future nuclear power plants (e.g. severe core damage and resulting release of radiation in the event of ‘beyond design basis’ events). These projects optimised use of available resources in this field and established a sustainable network to support the development of joint research programmes and a common computer tool to model and predict NPP behaviour.

Regulatory authorities in many countries are approving lifetime extensions of nuclear power plants (NPP) beyond original design lifetimes. The key consideration in granting an extension to the operation license is the degradation over time (thermal cycling, irradiation damage, other chemical / physical processes) of materials and components with a safety function. A number of Euratom FP7 projects have focused on such issues and related management of safety-related functions (e.g. PERFORM-60, LONGLIFE, STYLE, ADVANCE). These projects included partners from both research organisations and industry. In some cases, utilities were present in ‘end-user’ groups set up to advise the project partners regarding key issues for industrial nuclear generation. The projects are developing and improving tools for predicting the combined effects of irradiation and corrosion on key components such as the reactor pressure vessel, and for the structural integrity assessment of the cooling circuit. Importantly, the projects are establishing a common and harmonised set of tools and methods for use in all reactor lifetime assessments and related predictions in Europe.

Several Euratom projects addressed issues raised by Fukushima accident. Specific projects have been launched addressing hydrogen issues in the containment (ERCOSAM), containment venting technology (PASSAM), modelling tools for severe accidents (SARNET2 and CESAM), PSA methodologies for assessing extreme external events (ASAMPSA\_E), and assessment of in-vessel and ex-vessel phases of a severe accident (SAFEST and ALISA) in SAM topics. In addition, accident consequences for health and the environment, including marine radioecology, were investigated by DOREMI, STAR, PREPARE, COMET, and NERIS-TP under the topic of radiological and emergency preparedness.

In radiation protection, the Euratom Programme supported the development of a comprehensive, state-of-the-art, science-based evaluation of radiation risks in low-dose research and has had a large impact in terms of publications and training of a new generation of researchers in radiation protection. A strong scientific underpinning for regulatory framework in this domain is critical in order to adequately and appropriately protect people, whilst not penalising unduly some activities through unnecessarily protective and over-costly measures.

Euratom projects have substantially contributed to the optimisation of the use of radiation in medical applications. For example, significant advances in the use of radiation in medicine achieved by FP7 help cut down exposures to patients which reduces the recovery time and the chance that secondary cancers occur, as well as the exposure to medical staff. Because of the growing use of new medical diagnostic procedures such as computed tomography (CT) and positron-emission tomography (PET), medical exposure to radiation of the population has increased rapidly in recent years. Euratom projects have substantially contributed to the optimisation of the use of radiation in medical applications by developing innovative products and algorithms in 3D nuclear medical imaging and breast imaging (projects MADEIRA & Breast-CT), for better diagnostics, optimised patient-dose calculation and application, and higher resolution images. By enabling earlier and more accurate diagnosis, these innovations will help to increase survival rates and reduce the high costs of cancer treatment.

The most important development in the area of low-dose research was the launch the Multidisciplinary European Low-Dose Initiative (MELODI). This would not have been possible without the funding and support of the Euratom Framework Programme. This initiative, since evolving into a legal entity under French law, has developed a clear vision for future radiation protection R&D and a related Strategic Research Agenda (SRA), which brings together the full range of necessary disciplines and competencies thanks to its large stakeholder base. SRAs in related sectors such as radioecology have also been developed thanks to other Euratom projects. All these projects have helped retain European competences in technical sectors or growing importance worldwide. It is worth noting that the US House of Representatives passed, in November 2014, the first Low-Dose Radiation Research Act with a view to increasing understanding of the effects of low-dose radiation. This underlines the importance of Europe's vision and leadership in this domain, and also highlights the potential role of and opportunities for international collaboration in this field. The Euratom support has also resulted in the development of new and improved techniques, especially regarding diagnostic and imaging techniques in the medical application of radiation, that have a clear potential for commercialisation.

Emergency management and rehabilitation have also been greatly improved in Europe as a result of Euratom FP7 projects that have integrated Member States' capabilities as well as providing practical information and documentation for improved guidance regarding post-accident response and clean-up.

Managing radioactive waste safely is a concern for all EU Member States, whether it relates to the waste from nuclear electricity production or from radiation use in research, industry and medicine. Following more than 30 years of research co-funded by Euratom, geological disposal now represents a passively safe and sustainable option for the long-term management of nuclear waste. Geological disposal relies on the capabilities of both engineered barriers and the local geology to fulfil specific safety functions in a complementary manner, thereby preventing the release and spread of radionuclides. Euratom projects launched during FP7 have contributed substantially to the overall progress in the development of geological disposal of nuclear waste. Euratom projects have redefined the state of the art in main areas: knowledge base and tools for safety assessment of waste repositories, development of repository technologies (demonstration activities by LUCOEX project), and public involvement – projects such as IPPA, INSOTEC provided a neutral forum for discussion between all concerned stakeholders, including local communities, enabling progress in actual disposal programmes. Decisions regarding disposal of radioactive waste are taken at the national level and should be based on a sound understanding of the scientific and technical issues and related risks. The aim of the Euratom programme over the past 25 years has been to support national waste management programmes in this regard. The success of the overall strategy is now evident, with the leading Member States (Finland, Sweden, France) now confidently expecting to be operating geological repositories by 2020-25. These will be the first such facilities anywhere in the world, and show the responsible attitude and determination in Europe to manage sustainably the waste from the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. This is as much a success for the Euratom programme as it is for the countries concerned.

During FP7, Euratom supported research in the area of advanced nuclear systems and fuel cycles. While safety forms the cornerstone of Euratom nuclear research, sustainability has come to the fore during last 10 years as a key issue and is a major driver behind designs for a new generation of nuclear reactors. Currently, most of the uranium going into water-cooled reactors comes out unused. These reactors operate with 'thermalised’ (slowed down) neutrons, which are less efficient than faster (more energetic) neutrons in maximising the use of the original uranium. Research on next generation (so-called Generation-IV) reactor systems is focusing more on fast neutron spectra, requiring the use of sodium, lead, helium or molten fluoride salts as coolants instead of 'normal' water. These fast neutron reactors will be able to ‘burn’ almost all of the fuel, thereby extracting the maximum energetic content from the original uranium (50-100 times more than in current reactors), at the same time ‘burning’ a significant amount of minor actinides, which would otherwise be a troublesome constituent of the high-level radioactive waste. This has huge implications for the sustainability of nuclear energy.

Euratom FP7 projects represent the next step in the development of advanced nuclear systems, focusing on pre-conceptual designs of main options of Generation IV technologies.

Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) - thanks to the large integrated collaborative project on European Sodium Fast Reactor (CP ESFR), Core design options to improve inherent safety and transmutation capabilities have been identified, and solutions for the improvement of SFR safety have been identified and reviewed. Finally, innovative options for the main reactor components and fluids have been identified and studied.

Gas Fast Reactor (GFR) – the FP7 project GOFASTR advanced conceptual design of GFR to the point where the viability of the system can be established. Also the conceptual design of an experimental demonstration reactor (ALLEGRO) was developed. Probabilistic safety studies and severe accident analyses were conducted for both the GFR and ALLEGRO.

Lead Fast Reactor – FP7 project LEADER resulted in the conceptual design of the demonstrator Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED), a 300 MWth pool system aimed at proving the viability of the European LFR technology for use in a future commercial power plant. The project defined also an extensive portfolio of R&D needs to be covered by future projects. Other FP7 project SILER addressed specifically the risks associated with seismic-initiated events in Generation IV Heavy Liquid Metal reactors (including MYRRHA), with a view to developing adequate protection measures.

The Euratom programme supported research on the design of the multi-purpose hybrid research reactor for high-tech applications (MYRRHA). MYRRHA, once constructed, will be a large-scale state-of-the-art research infrastructure fostering European leadership in nuclear technologies, by maintaining a high level of expertise in fission safety, management of high level nuclear waste through P&T, and cross-cutting fields. The secure production of radioisotopes for medical applications for European citizens' health and welfare will also be ensured.

How did Euratom contributed to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

Fusion research

Fusion research in Europe, thanks to the role played by Euratom since the 1970s, is widely acknowledged as one of the best examples of the European Research Area (ERA) in action. The cooperation between European fusion laboratories was further strengthened during FP7, and in a foretaste of what was to become widespread under the Joint Programme in Horizon 2020, many activities within EFDA took on an increasingly projected-oriented form.

Collaboration under EFDA was expanded through the signature of an Implementing Agreement on Power Plant Physics and Technology (PPP&T) in 2011, which led to enhanced cooperation particularly on technology for DEMO. Despite the restricted budget and relatively short duration, this activity can report a number of substantial achievements during 2011-2013, undoubtedly driven by the effective cooperation and open exchange of results. The strong response of fusion labs to the research needs of ITER was also a result of the coherence of their programmes brought about by the steering and funding of the research by Euratom, especially that channelled through EFDA.

Of course, an important focus of EU-wide cooperation remained the joint exploitation of JET, though other smaller facilities supported by Euratom also generated an extensive network of bilateral and multilateral collaborations between the European laboratories.

Other successful EFDA initiatives include the taskforces on Plasma Wall Interaction (PWI-TF) and Integrated Tokamak Modelling (ITM-TF), which were complimented by a number of topical groups on high priority physics topics and have provided important results and feedback for ITER in particular (code development and validation, benchmarking, etc.).

The integration of the fusion programme into an effective European Research Area can be seen quantitatively in the number of joint publications, the level of participation in the collective exploitation of JET, and in the 'clustering' of national labs. A growing majority of publications (about 57%) originate from the joint efforts of two or more labs. These papers also have higher than average number of citations. Specifically, for CEA the number of publications co-signed with partners outside France increased from 75% in 2006 to 84% in 2009, with an overwhelming preponderance of institutes in the Euratom programme. For CCFE (UK) the fraction of joint publications (other than those generated by JET) was 65% for the years 2009/10. For IPP-Garching, publications resulting from the exploitation of ASDEX Upgrade and co-authored by IPP researchers and external co-authors (usually from another European labs) account for more than 60% of all publications since 2004. This 'Europeanisation' of ASDEX Upgrade has resulted in approximately 35% of papers now having a first author from outside IPP. For smaller labs, the Euratom programme provided the possibility to work on world-leading devices such as JET, ASDEX Upgrade and other medium-sized facilities across Europe. In the case of IST (Portugal) the fraction of journal publications being an outcome of such to 90% (2008).

  

Fission research
[50](#footnote50)

Improvement of ERA was one of the main objectives of Euratom projects. ERA needs well-coordinated research programmes and priorities, including a significant volume of jointly-programmed public research investment at European level involving common priorities, coordinated implementation and joint evaluation. These objectives can be achieved by the creation of interest groups, networks, consortia, and through international cooperation.

In the Euratom fission programme, one very positive initiative was to launch projects that could improve the links between such areas as basic and more applied research, or between investigations at various scales (e.g. atomic to macroscopic), or that could combine effectively modelling and experiments, experts and students, etc. A good example was the project F-BRIDGE – basic research in support of innovative fuels design for the Generation IV systems.

Special attention was also devoted to the access to experimental facilities. Projects were supported in the area of developing and running world class research infrastructures in Europe, including increased integration, networking and accessibility to research teams from across Europe and the world. One can underline the following positive examples: ACTINET-I3 (ACTINET Integrated Infrastructure Initiative), HELIMNET (Heavy Liquid Metal network) and JHR-CP (Jules Horowitz Reactor – Collaborative Project), which all brought together the key stakeholders and facility managers in Europe.

In ASAMPSA2 (Advanced safety assessment methodologies: level 2 PSA) an end-user community was set up to apply the results of the project – this same approach was also adopted in other projects. The results of SARNET2 are very positive: the project succeeded in networking R&D activities over a range of severe accident disciplines and diverse organisations, which led to the acceptance of a pan-European severe accident code as a reference and also to the updating of R&D requirements in this field, including at the international level. The project EU-NMR-An (Towards a European Competence Centre for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) on actinides) successfully combined the efforts of experts in NMR and actinide chemistry. Similarly, EUROPAIRS (End-User Requirements for industrial process heat applications with Innovative nuclear reactors for sustainable energy supply) brought together nuclear and process heat R&D organisations.

These and several other projects made significant progress in pushing interdisciplinary research agendas in areas that were formerly quite disparate, with effective cooperation between national efforts (at least within Europe, but also internationally) being a key prerequisite. By also stressing the international dimension, these projects contributed to a widening of ERA to the world as a whole (EUROPAIRS is a good example). They also provided the basis for long-term European cooperation, which contributed to the establishing of clear European leadership in the given field, as well as reconciling differences between Western Europe and the new Member States. This was especially important in view of the Russian reactor technology in use in a number of new Member States; LONGLIFE (Treatment of long term irradiation embrittlement effects in RPV safety assessment) is a good example of such a project.

How did Euratom contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional Energy research policies?

Fusion research

In the fusion domain, Euratom played a significant role in the definition and coordination of fusion policy and strategy in Member States. Through the bi-lateral Contracts of Association, the Commission shared equal rights with the national labs in the definition of national programmes as well as having voting powers on the Steering Committee of EFDA. Significant examples of the role that Euratom played in the coordination of the programme include: the provision of the High Performance Computer; a coordinated approach to code development and validation resulting in the licensing to the main IT platforms for ITER operation; the generation of a common understanding and strategy for the use of facilities recommended in the Facility Review report; the development of the roadmap to electricity from fusion energy and the unanimous agreement of all the European stakeholders.

Fission research

In the fission field, Euratom supported the creation of area-specific Technology Platforms and, in the context of the SET-Plan, European Industrial Initiatives. The period 2007-2010 saw the launch of key technical forums that brought together all key nuclear research and industrial stakeholders across Europe. These are the Technology Platforms in Sustainable Nuclear Energy and Implementing Geological Disposal (SNETP, IGDTP) and the joint programming initiative the Multidisciplinary European Low-Dose Initiative (MELODI). None of these achievements would have been possible without the funding and support of Euratom FP7 through projects such as SNF-TP, CARD (establishing of SNETP and IGDTP) and HLEG & DoReMi (for MELODI). All three technical forums came together around agreed visions for future R&D in their respective fields, and all have defined Strategic Research Agendas (SRA) and Deployment Strategies, implemented jointly by sharing resources or even joint programming. SNETP and IGDTP were closely aligned with the objectives of the SET-Plan, and all three forums continue to be used by the Euratom programme as a source of priority topics for inclusion in calls for proposals. This ensures that the Euratom programme remains focused on the issues of most widespread interest and importance in Europe.

  

How did Euratom strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

Fusion research
[51](#footnote51)

Scientific outputs of the Euratom Programme in fusion research have been substantial. There is a steady flow of results from Euratom-funded research in internationally peer-reviewed scientific articles in high impact scientific journals. Results have been published in more than 5000 internationally reviewed articles as shown in figure 1 below.

Source: Scopus

The average number of peer-reviewed publications per annum in journals from European fusion associations (at least one author) over the FP7 period is 665. This represents an almost 20% increase over the FP6 period, when an average of 565 papers per annum were published. The total number of citations – a measure of the impact of the work – has increased even more strongly: an average of over 8600 citations per annum during FP7 compared with around 2200 under FP6. Indeed, the number of citations rose more or less steadily over the FP7 period, almost doubling between 2007 and 2013.

These papers are in leading international journals. The greatest number (over 1000) appear in “Fusion Engineering and Design”, an indicator of European scientists’ role at the forefront in the technology, operation and design of current and future devices – this journal publishes many papers on ITER, DEMO and longer term reactor studies. Over 100 papers have also been published in the leading journals in the field “Nuclear Fusion” and “Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion”, focusing more on physics, with the strong research efforts into materials and plasma-wall interactions represented by over 800 papers in “Journal of Nuclear Materials”. European leadership in the crucial field of plasma wall interactions is evidenced by a key paper summarising the outcomes of the PWI task Force with relevance to ITER
[52](#footnote52)
, which already has over 240 citations. European work on ELM mitigation has also had notably high impact, with, for example, two papers receiving respectively over 220 and 150 citations
[53](#footnote53)
. Many of these papers have won prizes. Much other European work has featured as invited talks at leading international conferences, notably the biennial IAEA Fusion Energy conferences.

Fission research

In nuclear fission, 73 completed projects (out of 134 in total during FP7) resulted in 563 publications in peer-reviewed journals, of which 128 were published in high impact journals (see tables 1 and 2 below)
[54](#footnote54)
.

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Table 1  Publications from fission related projects | | |
|  | No. of publications | No. of publications in high impact peer-reviewed journals |
| Management of Ultimate Radioactive Waste | 109 | 29 |
| Reactor Systems | 207 | 48 |
| Radiation Protection | 94 | 15 |
| Infrastructures | 56 | 11 |
| Human Resources and training | 1 | - |
| Cross-Cutting Actions | 65 | 12 |
| Cooperation with Third Countries | 31 | 13 |
| Total | 563 | 128 |

Source: European Commission

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Table 2 Top 20 Peer Reviewed Journals by Number of Publications submitted by Euratom FP7 fission projects | | | |
| Journal title | SJR [55](#footnote55) | Number of publications | % of all publications |
| Chemical Reviews | 15.9 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Science | 11.2 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Nature Reviews Cancer | 9.3 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Proceedings of the NAS of the United States | 5.4 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Journal of the American Chemical Society | 4.4 | 1 | 0.18% |
| International Journal of Plasticity | 3.7 | 2 | 0.36% |
| Energy and Environmental Science | 3.1 | 3 | 0.53% |
| Materials Today | 3.1 | 2 | 0.36% |
| Acta Materialia | 2.9 | 6 | 1.07% |
| ISME Journal | 2.9 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Environmental Science and Technology | 2.7 | 2 | 0.36% |
| European Physical Journal C | 2.7 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics | 2.7 | 17 | 3.02% |
| Geochmica et Cosmochimica Acta | 2.5 | 6 | 1.07% |
| FASEB Journal | 2.4 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Chemical Communications | 2.3 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Chemical Geology | 2.3 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Physical Review C - Nuclear Physics | 2.3 | 4 | 0.71% |
| Radiotherapy and Oncology | 2.3 | 5 | 0.89% |
| British Journal of Cancer | 2.1 | 1 | 0.18% |
| Total |  | 58 | 10.30% |

Source: European Commission

How did Euratom promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

Knowledge creation and competence building are at the heart of the Euratom research and training programme since its origin (Euratom Treaty, Article 4.1). Effective transfer of knowledge, skills and competences from the current generation of experts to the next is indispensable, but the recruitment of young talent is increasingly difficult across the full spectrum of scientific disciplines. This has not been helped by the decline in the nuclear sectors in several Member States. Ironically, even these Member States will still require expertise for many years to come, e.g. in the areas of decommissioning and waste management, and must continue to ensure high levels of safety across the sector as a whole. The Euratom programme has been very much aware of these issues, in particular in the fission disciplines, and has targeted a number of projects in key areas.

Fusion research

The Goal-Orientated Training (GOT) programme and researcher fellowships funded by Euratom have successfully contributed to supplying fusion research with urgently needed new fusion engineers (160) and researchers (24). Fusion research depends heavily on a transnational pool of skills and expertise. The European programme has operated a Mobility Agreement since 1983, facilitating movement of researchers across Europe. In Euratom FP7, the number of researchers participating has generally increased from around 600 in 2006 to 1100 in 2013 (see graph 2 below).

Source: European Commission

JET has provided a key focus for mobility of scientists and European integration, operating as a truly international collaboration with participation from across the EU and beyond. During FP7, 958 scientists made visits to JET to undertake research, many of these visiting more than once. This collective use of JET allowed scientists to participate based solely on the quality of their experimental proposals, and facilitated access to the world’s leading fusion experiment by all European fusion labs and institutes without exception.

Fission research

In nuclear fission, 73 completed projects (out of 134 in total) involved 520 PhD students (see table 3 below), of which 33% were female. This indicates that on average, each project supported more than seven PhD students.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Table 3 | |
| Number of PhD students in nuclear fission and radiation protection participating in Euratom FP7 projects | |
| Management of Ultimate Radioactive Waste | 95 |
| Reactor Systems | 176 |
| Radiation Protection | 68 |
| Infrastructures | 54 |
| Human Resources and training | 44 |
| Cross-Cutting Actions | 54 |
| Cooperation with 3rd countries | 29 |
| Total | 520 |

Source: European Commission

How did Euratom provide the knowledge base needed to support key Community policies?

Activities supported under Euratom FP7 have reinforced EU energy policy by contributing to the triangle of EU energy and climate policy objectives: sustainability, security of supply and competitiveness. It underpins the EU '20-20-20-10 targets' for 2020, the new set of targets for 2030 and the EU Energy Roadmap 2050 which calls for an almost totally decarbonised European energy system. In addition, Euratom supported structuring of stakeholders at European level and facilitating the definition of common objectives and Strategic Research Agendas that have become the basis for European priority-setting and also influence national R&I agendas. Policy impact is difficult to estimate for participants, as it is often only an indirect consequence of the project activities and is not easily traceable unless a proper follow up is made (which is often not the case). According to the survey of project coordinators carried out regarding Euratom FP6 and FP7 fission projects, in 63% of the projects the research had impacts on national or EU policy in nuclear safety, radiation protection or radioactive waste disposal.

How did Euratom increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

Euratom Programme had taken on high risk, high cost, long-term infrastructures beyond the reach of individual Member States, thereby sharing the risk and generating a breadth of scope and economies of scale that could not otherwise be achieved.

The scientific and technological feasibility of fusion has to be demonstrated at very large scale (ITER) and cannot be broken down into smaller projects that could be handled at national level. Only by pooling financial resources and sharing risk with six international partners will Europe be in a position to prove the feasibility of fusion as an energy source.

Another example is JET, which is the largest fusion device currently in operation worldwide and the closest in design to ITER. The total expenditure for construction, upgrade and exploitation of this European facility during the period 1978-2014 amounts to ca. €2 billion. The contribution of JET to the development of fusion cannot be underestimated: (a) it is the only current fusion device which can operate with the fuel mixture of genuine fusion reactors; (b) it holds all the records for peak and sustained production of controlled fusion power; (c) it is the most ITER-relevant machine for studies in preparation for ITER technology and operations; (d) it is the only present fusion device in which the essential fusion technology of remote handling has been developed and used for major interventions; (e) it is the most useful experiment for the training of future operational staff for ITER.

The High Performance Computer for Fusion (HPC-FF) was an invaluable new tool for the fusion programme. Fusion modelling requires powerful computer resources; increasingly realistic simulations that are able to take into account the full ITER plasma will be essential for the safe and efficient operation of ITER. The HPC-FF computer, hosted and operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, was among the 30 most powerful computers in the world. Euratom capital investment amounted to around €7.4 million, while the total budget including the capital investment and exploitation over the four years was around €16.8 million, with contributions from the entire European fusion community.

In nuclear fission, Euratom was essentially directed at facilitating and supporting transnational access to infrastructures, through traditional Euratom collaborative research grants and some more dedicated Euratom activities (Transnational Access to Large Infrastructures - TALI). For example:

The ACTINET-I3 Network aimed at reinforcing the networking between existing European infrastructures in actinide sciences, and to facilitate their efficient use by the European scientific community. Five internal calls for proposals for Joint Research Programmes (JRP) were issued. Out of 91 submitted proposals, 59 were selected and funded. A number of improvements and additions to the available instrumentation and infrastructure of the different pooled facilities were identified.

The ERINDA co-ordination and support action aimed at coordinating European efforts to exploit up-to-date neutron beam technology to gain nuclear data for advanced concepts of nuclear fission reactors and the transmutation of radioactive waste. The ERINDA consortium grouped all relevant neutron data facilities (time-of-flight facilities for fast neutrons, charged-particle accelerators and experimental nuclear reactors) in Europe that could offer part of their available beam time to the project. In three years, 3015 beam time hours have been delivered in 26 experiments, in which 27 young researchers (within 6 years of obtaining their PhDs) participated.

The EUFRAT coordination and support action, a transnational access programme at the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements of the JRC (IRMM) aimed at facilitating the access of outside users to the nuclear data facilities of its Unit Standards for Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguards. The IRMM facilities delivered within 5985 hours of beam-time for a total of 33 experiments on nuclear data, development of experimental set-ups and techniques needed for data measurements and advanced methods in nuclear technologies, safety and security.

A forward looking investment was also made in buying access rights for Euratom researchers to the Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR), a high performance materials testing research reactor under construction in France that should become operational by 2019.

How much did Euratom contribute to job creation?

Fission research

The Euratom programme has been contributing to job creation within the participating organisations directly by offering job opportunities for researchers and, indirectly, as a result of technological advancement and of training. In fission research, the completed FP7 projects (73) had a total workforce of 5100, of which 30% were female (see table 4 below). In some areas such as radiation protection, participation of female researchers is equal to male, while in waste management it reached 38%. During the implementation of these projects, an additional 354 researchers had been recruited.

  

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Table 4  Workfore in fission projects supported by Euratom FP7  (73 projects completed by September 2015) | | | |
|  | Work force reported | Additional researchers recruited | Total workforce |
| Management of Ultimate Radioactive Waste | 966 | 47 | 1013 |
| Reactor Systems | 1864 | 62 | 1926 |
| Radiation Protection | 497 | 110 | 607 |
| Infrastructures | 299 | 4 | 303 |
| Human Resources and training | 352 | 10 | 362 |
| Cross-Cutting Actions | 496 | 84 | 580 |
| Cooperation with Third Countries | 270 | 37 | 307 |
| Total | 4746 | 354 | 5100 |

Source: European Commission

Regarding broader impacts on growth and jobs, it is important to note that the Euratom fission programme is structured around technological research but also supports projects addressing issues of public concern. The economic impacts of the latter are more difficult to assess, but are present nonetheless. In more technology-oriented activities, Euratom funding often plays the role of catalyst, and the limited budget means the focus is mainly on pre-commercial research. Specific patents have been produced only in projects that develop technology close to the market. From a survey, six projects (EVOL, JHR-CA, Genepi-Entb2, ARCHER, ACSEPT, CARBOWASTE) covering all main areas of R&D in the fission programme, resulted in the filing of new patents. About 46% of project coordinators expect improved competitiveness of one or more partners as a result of the project. New companies were also indicated in the case of SAPIER2 and NULIFE (though also true for SARNET2 and HLEG), and the project coordinators reported that new jobs were created in 21 projects (17%).

  

Indirect economic impacts of Euratom research could be summarised as follows:

Euratom projects looking at material degradation and related safety issues support plant lifetime extension of currently operating light-water reactors. Similarly positive impacts stem from the implementation of sustainable waste management solutions. Projects in P&T and other techniques to reduce waste (e.g. PUMA, LWR-DEPUTY) can lead to increased fuel utilisation or reduced volumes / toxicity of final waste for disposal. In view of the high cost of geological repositories, the economic impacts are potentially enormous.

Reducing uncertainties enables nuclear plants to be run more efficiently. Projects such as EFNUDAT/ERINDA and ANDES contribute to improvements in neutron cross-section data for present and future reactors. Projects on fuel materials and related properties (e.g. F-BRIDGE) enable fuel performance to be optimised while maintaining safety margins. These improvements lead directly to increased competitiveness of nuclear plants.

Euratom also supported major infrastructures and therefore contributes over the long-term to the positive economic impacts these can bring, not only locally but also to the EU as a whole. Only two 'fission' infrastructures of pan-European importance were identified and retained by ESFRI, and both have been supported through the Euratom programme. They are the Jules Horowitz Reactor, under construction at CEA Cadarache, which benefited from support through the JHR-CA and CP-JHR projects, and MYRRHA, to be constructed at SCK.CEN in Belgium, which had been supported by a number of FP6 and FP7 projects (EUROTRANS, CDT, MAX, FREYA).

Advanced nuclear systems using Generation-IV designs are not expected to be deployed at an industrial scale in Europe before 2040. However, development times for these types of technologies are long, and demonstrator reactors are already being built in other countries (China, Russia, India, Japan). The size of the potential market in this technology is huge, and it is critical for Europe is to remain a major player in the mid to long term. Euratom contributes by pooling know-how in a number of pre-conceptual design projects and by stimulation education and training in key disciplines.

As Euratom supports nuclear research which in turn has impact on nuclear sector in general, it is important to look at the broad economic impacts of this sector as a whole. Nuclear energy generates important investments and therefore one has to underline the socioeconomic role of nuclear energy to growth and jobs in the EU: 131 operating NPPs in 14 Member States; 28% of EU’s electricity supply; ~2/3 of EU low carbon electricity; four reactors under construction (FI, FR and SK); new reactors planned in BG, CZ, FI, FR, HU, LT, PL, RO, SW and UK; more than 800 companies covering all the activities of power production and of the fuel cycle; about 900,000 jobs; and potential investments of €70 billion/year.

  

Fusion research

In European fusion research laboratories supported by Euratom, the total workforce in 2014 was about 3318 (female accounted for 19%), including 2159 professionals (engineers and physicist) and 1159 support staff
[56](#footnote56)
.

Turning to the EU investment in fusion, 75% of the EU funding for ITER construction (i.e. around EUR 4.5 billion) is for components and activities that result in the creation of new knowledge and cutting-edge technology, offering European high-tech industries and SMEs an excellent opportunity for innovation. Over the period 2007-2020, F4E should spend EUR 6.6 billion (in 2008 values) on the construction of ITER. To date, more than EUR 3 billion has already been committed by F4E, resulting in more than 300 procurements and contracts with high-tech European companies in key industrial areas (civil, mechanical, electrical, materials and nuclear engineering). In addition, around EUR 100 million has been committed on more technical and research-based work carried out by European research laboratories. F4E estimates that through all these contracts, industry is creating over 15,000 person-years of employment in Europe and will create many more during the remainder of ITER's construction phase. ITER work is more labour and knowledge intensive than conventional industrial manufacturing owing to the high content of R&D and engineering tasks. Thanks to its leadership in fusion research and the construction of ITER, Europe will be in a privileged position to reap the benefits of constructing and operating the first generation of fusion power plants in the future.

To what extent do the results of Euratom contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

Establishing a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy is among the top priorities of the new Commission. According to the Commission Communication on Energy Union (COM(2015)80), the EU must ensure that Member States respect the highest standards of nuclear safety, security, waste management and non-proliferation. The EU should also ensure that it maintains technological leadership in the nuclear domain, including through ITER, so as not to increase energy and technology dependence. Euratom FP7 projects have been contributing to these priorities by enhancing safety of nuclear technologies, funding state-of-the-art research for a new generation of fission reactors and for preparation of ITER. In the long term, fusion energy could provide a safe and abundant energy source. In the near term the fusion programme is answering to the Commission's priority of innovation through enhanced technology spin-off to other sectors and through technology transfer to industry, which will enhance competitiveness for growth and jobs.

  

To what extent was Euratom coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

Euratom FP7 was the main instrument for implementing the nuclear part of technology pillar of the EU's energy and climate policy – the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. By addressing key technological bottlenecks, Euratom FP7 contributes directly to the EU's energy and climate policy's targets in the long term. Equally important, Euratom research in the fission area supported EU policy objectives concerning nuclear safety, radiation protection and waste management. In this respect research contributes to the implementation of European law in these areas, such as Council Directive 2009/71/Euratom of 25 June 2009 establishing a Community framework for the nuclear safety of nuclear installations (and subsequent amended Directive), the Council Directive (2011/70/Euratom) of 19 July 2011 establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste, and the Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom laying down basic safety standards for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation.

What was the added value of Euratom when compared with national Energy research and innovation programmes?

The Euratom programme mobilised a wider pool of excellence, competencies and multi-disciplinarity than is available at national level. The achievements of the fusion programme, in particular resulting from joint exploitation of JET, rely on the collective endeavours of researchers and engineers from across Europe (about 350 persons per year), supported by Euratom funding for mobility. Euratom finances two mobility schemes, one used generally for short visits to JET and between Associations (ca. EUR 5 million per year) and the other aimed mainly at longer-term participation in the collective exploitation of JET (up to 4 years).

In the fission area, projects such as STAR, DoReMi and SARNET-2 ensured that competences in key technical sectors can be retained in Europe, requiring the bringing together of expertise from many Member States, and the establishing of legal entities to ensure sustainability in the long term.

The Euratom programme helped to generate an optimum programme of activities and maximise knowledge sharing and information dissemination, lowering the overall costs of achieving a given objective – for example the Euratom projects in the field of Partitioning &Transmutation represent a comprehensive and integrated programme of research on ADS
[57](#footnote57)
 and related lead-cooled technology. This programme is also notable for the involvement of large numbers of PhDs (about 170) and post-docs and the interaction with other research in Generation-IV systems. All this, including the decision by the Belgian Government to construct MYRRHA
[58](#footnote58)
, would not have been possible without Euratom involvement

Euratom had a strong leverage effect on coordinating national efforts, through the use of funding instruments that promote the European Research Area, for example:

These effects are well demonstrated in case of the European fusion programme where Euratom contributes to the costs of national laboratories (ca. EUR 54 million per year): (a) national funding agencies accepted a limitation of their independence by allowing the scientific assessment of the programme and proposals for its evolution to be done collectively by representatives of Euratom associated laboratories and Member States with strong input by the Commission; (b) all the most important fusion facilities have been built with financial support from Euratom, which requires that their operation be open to researchers from all laboratories in Europe; (c) smaller laboratories can concentrate on a limited range of scientific topics or subsystems and still make important contributions while maintaining visibility; (d) in addition to formal training activities, the extensive exchanges of personnel between the national labs ensure a Europe-wide dissemination of expertise; (e) in some cases the management of the programme of these facilities is shared with the other participating labs.

Structuring effects of technology platforms in fission R&D: All major stakeholders in fission and radiation protection research are now grouped in technical forums: SNETP, IGDTP and MELODI, thereby promoting strategic planning, sharing resources and even joint programming, with a strong participation of industry in the two former forums.

The Euratom programme increased the willingness of research stakeholders to release capital for projects with particular importance for nuclear safety. The SARNET-2 project is an excellent example of the leverage effect of Euratom funding – the total budget was almost €39M but the Euratom contribution is just €5.75M (i.e. less than 15% of total costs). The project supported the efforts of a number of European R&D organisations, including safety authorities, industry and universities, to network their research capacities in the area of severe reactor accidents, thus enhancing the safety of existing and future nuclear power plants. This Network of Excellence defined joint research programmes and developed common computer tools and methodologies for safety assessment of nuclear power plants, and ultimately supported efforts for sustainable integration of the key R&D organisations in this sector.

Nuclear research in Horizon 2020: continuity or evolution?

Fusion research

In fusion research the programme has continued to evolve. Under Horizon 2020, Euratom support is focussed on the priorities of the fusion roadmap. The management of the programme has been revised with the Contracts of Association and EFDA agreement being replaced by a single Grant Agreement for a Joint European Programme in fusion research. All the fusion laboratories in Member States have come together to form the EUROfusion Consortium. The description of work defines the activities that are prescribed in the 'Roadmap to electricity from fusion energy'. In addition to this grant agreement, the Commission has signed a bi-lateral contract with the UK fusion research centre, CCFE, to continue to operate JET over the period 2014-18. EUROfusion is tasked with the scientific exploitation of JET. Both the grant and this bi-lateral contract are for a duration of 5 years, providing continuity for the whole joint programme. Roughly 80% of the research programme and budget is focussed on achieving successful commissioning and operation of the ITER project. The remainder is dedicated to the pre-conceptual design of the first demonstration reactor (DEMO) that will produce electricity for the grid around mid-century.

Fisssion research

In fission research, the Euratom programme is also evolving. With respect to generation II and III reactors, during Horizon 2020 Euratom will further target its support on safety research through a careful assessment of the critical remaining gaps, in close partnership with industry and the regulators' Technical Support Organisations (TSO). This will be undertaken through focused innovation actions covering areas such as reactor safety upgrades, safe lifetime extension, accident prevention and accident mitigation strategies. With respect to generation IV reactors, Euratom will aim at stimulating the developments of the three systems currently considered as a priority by European stakeholders: the sodium-cooled fast neutron reactors (SFR), the lead-cooled fast reactors (LFR), and the gas-cooled fast reactors (GFR). Euratom will support accompanying research actions notably with respect to front-end engineering and conformance of the project to the highest possible European safety standards. In the field of radioactive waste, Euratom-funded research will help during Horizon 2020 to resolve some last remaining scientific and technical issues for Europe's first-of-the kind repositories, expected to become a reality in the next 5-10 years. Euratom will also further support research on societal and public involvement in this area, building on lessons learned with public engagement regarding site selection for example. In the field of radiation protection, Euratom support will also evolve regarding the support in the area of exposure to low doses of radiation. A strong scientific underpinning for the regulatory framework in this domain is critical in order to adequately and appropriately protect people, whilst not penalising unduly some activities through unnecessarily protective and over-costly measures. In this respect Euratom will further consolidate the European Joint Programme (EJP) in low-dose research launched in 2015 on the basis of actions funded during FP7.

  

15.Joint Technologies Initiatives (JTIs) under FP7

The Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) were a novel instrument of FP7 and the first experience in setting up public-private partnerships in research at the European level. Established under Article 171 of the Treaty, they aimed to create long-term public-private partnerships to support large-scale multinational research activities in areas of major interest to European industrial competitiveness and issues of high societal relevance. The JTIs were also designed to perform better than the traditional instruments of the Framework Programmes which had proven not adequate
[59](#footnote59)
.

Implemented under the FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme, the Joint Technology Initiatives were managed within dedicated structures based on Article 187 TFEU and projects were funded by match funding between the European Commission and industry and Members States for at least an equivalent amount.

Five JTIs were set up, in the following areas
[60](#footnote60)
: public health, Aeronautics and air transport, embedded computing systems, Nanoelectronics, Fuel cells and hydrogen.

15.1. Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)

IMI was implemented under the FP7 Cooperation Health theme.

Objective: To foster Europe as the most attractive place for pharmaceutical R&D, thereby enhancing access to innovative medicines for patients: “It shall have the objective of significantly improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the drug development process with the long-term aim that the pharmaceutical sector produces more effective and safer innovative medicines”
[61](#footnote61)
.

Key deliverable: To provide new tools and methodologies to remove major bottlenecks in drug development.

Through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) JU, Europe has succeeded in establishing a new model for open innovation in the pharmaceutical research area, which unites research strengths across European pharmaceutical industry
[62](#footnote62)
, academia, patient organisations and SMEs. The consortia formed carry out focussed research addressing problems of immediate relevance to industry and future public health. IMI has proved that the different partners can be brought together in open innovation networks to participate along the long and risky biopharmaceutical innovation chain. To have formed and embedded this new, applied, research environment is a significant achievement for Europe. Taken as model for how to invigorate research and investment in this key growth industry, it is being copied across the globe.

Financial resources available to the IMI JU, totalling € 2 billion, make it the largest public private partnership in health research in the world. IMI constitutes a novel model for implementing the concept of “open innovation”. No other European programme has enabled cross-company collaboration within the pharmaceutical sector on the scale that has been achieved with IMI
[63](#footnote63)
.

IMI has already produced important breakthroughs such as simpler path for conducting clinical trials, or new biomarkers and models of disease, all of which directly contribute to the goal of quicker development of new treatments
[64](#footnote64)
. Thanks to IMI a large European network of 261 clinical centres in 32 countries has been created and several compounds are in various stages of clinical development.

IMI has played a major role in consolidating the European pharmaceutical research base by acting as a "one stop shop" for biomedical research and development in Europe. This has contributed to reinforcing Europe’s attractiveness for pharmaceutical R&D, stemming the flow of investment away from Europe to the USA and Asia.

IMI has already (in 2013) generated twice as many jobs per euro spent compared to FP7 projects. Projects funded by IMI have contributed to creating approximately 1,500 new direct jobs so far, with an average cost per job of € 200,000 compared to € 400,000 per job in FP7 projects.

By supporting a better alignment of R&D strategies, IMI will in the long run increase the innovative capacity of the sector as a whole.

The second Interim Evaluation of the IMI concludes that:

- IMI has demonstrated the feasibility of large, multi-stakeholder PPPs for research and development in biomedicine. It has become recognised as a world-leading PPP in healthcare.

- This unique model of funding and interaction between the pharmaceutical industry and other key stakeholders has proved to be effective and efficient in delivering projects of relevance to healthcare challenges and building trust between participants. Specifically:

on-going IMI projects have already demonstrated scientific excellence;

IMI-funded projects are effectively addressing key challenges and barriers in the field of biomedical research and development;

IMI's operational implementation and efficiency has significantly improved over the past years.

- IMI's specific governance structure has proven to work well overall and has been kept for IMI2 under Horizon 2020.

The following recommendations were made:

- IMI needs to finalise and implement an articulated communication strategy with clear and measurable goals and objectives, addressing both the key stakeholders and a wider audience.

- Alongside the existing Key Performance Indicators (KPI), aggregated KPIs need to be developed and measured in order to quantitatively demonstrate the IMI impacts and socioeconomic benefits.

- IMI should make an additional effort to increase engagement from a wider range of industry stakeholders.

- The IMI Executive Office should seek further ways of reducing bureaucracy and ensure that it has the optimal organisational structure for the tasks ahead.

- IMI should seek to maximize the potential of its advisory bodies to gain support for the remaining calls and other activities at all levels.

- IMI needs to plan for and design new and more flexible funding mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of current and future projects, where appropriate.

  

15.2. Clean Sky

Clean Sky was implemented under the FP7 Cooperation Transport theme.

Objective: To develop environmentally-friendly and cost efficient aircraft
[65](#footnote65)
.

In aeronautics and air transport, the identification of certain needs within the research agenda lead to establishing the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking (CSJU). CSJU is a PPP between the European Commission and the aeronautics industry. The founding members of the Clean Sky JU are the European Union, represented by the European Commission and 12 Integrated Technology Demonstrator (ITD) leaders and their Associates. They represent 86 organisations in 16 countries, among which 54 industrial partners (including 20 SMEs), 15 RTOs and 17 universities. The total budget of Clean Sky is € 1.6 billion, half of it comes from the EC. Between 2009-2013, 14 calls have been published, covering more than 550 topics, funding 410 projects and involving more than 800 participants overall. The success rate of Clean Sky calls is of the order of 35%.

Since its establishment, the Clean Sky JU is successfully stimulating developments towards the strategic environmental targets. The programme provides ground for radical new technological concepts that would otherwise be beyond the manageable risk of the private sector and gives the necessary financial certainty and stability to the aviation sector and investors to develop and introduce game-changing innovations in timeframes otherwise unachievable. Clean Sky has established also links with the SESAR Joint Undertaking which develops Air Traffic Management (ATM) technologies in line with the "Single European Sky" initiative of the Commission.

The first Interim Evaluation report of Clean Sky acknowledged that the programme was highly successful in attracting a high level and wide participation from all EU key industries and a large number of SMEs. The report underlined that Clean Sky has led to new collaborations and the participation of new organisations thus enhancing European integration.

Its Second Interim Evaluation concludes that:

- The Clean Sky JU has successfully demonstrated the principle of Public-Private Partnership in aeronautics, and has become a central element of the European aeronautic landscape.

- The JU has marked satisfactory progress towards meeting the objectives set. Notably, the technical development of the demonstrators is making satisfactory progress. The Panel believes that by the end of Clean Sky, the demonstration programmes will allow to provide evidence of integration of several technologies and to indicate the potential benefits in a relevant operational environment.

- Clean Sky is tackling a major gap through the commitment of a critical mass of public and private resources towards the development of demonstrators. More lessons-learned from Joint Technology Initiatives will be needed to support strategic discussions.

- Overall, the large Clean Sky research and demonstrators portfolio is of high quality.

- While there is no doubt about the quality and the relevance of the technical activities carried out within Clean Sky, the problems of resource allocation together with "slipping" schedules may jeopardize this quality is some cases.

- The Clean Sky governance is efficient in the management of the programme and delivery of calls and projects. However, efforts for increasing the organisational efficiency, reducing the administrative burden and enhancing internal and external communication are still required.

The following recommendations were made:

- Clean Sky has a lot of ground and flight demonstrations at programme end.

- Significant attention should be paid towards the most critical and success factors for the programme. Careful monitoring and prioritization of available resources vs. remaining work and vs. technology environmental benefit towards demonstration is recommended.

- Progress towards environmental targets The Panel recommends a more transparent traceability between the ACARE goals and the specific contributions from Clean Sky.

- It is recommended to deepen the existing relationship with both SESAR Joint Undertaking and ACARE aiming to reach a better view within the JU at large about the airlines, Air Navigation Service Providers and other stakeholder communities.

- The Panel notes that, in some cases, the inappropriate choice of subcontractors has led to poor results relative to the project they are related to. The Panel therefore recommends the JU to investigate possible ways of improving the selection process of subcontractors.

Many projects will need a phase of technological development before they eventually result in an innovative marketable product or a service. Although it is still a very new initiative, our analysis of Clean Sky suggests that Joint Technology Initiatives are a very promising tool to fill this gap, bringing results up to the demonstration stage. Clean Sky is tackling a major gap through the commitment of a critical mass of public and private resources towards the development of demonstrators. More lessons-learned from Joint Technology Initiatives will be needed to support strategic discussions.

  

Objectives

Original objectives

Clean Sky objectives for the whole programme at the aircraft level are to reduce CO2 aircraft emission by around 20-40%, NOX by around 60% and noise by up to 10dB compared to year 2000 aircraft. These objectives have been identified as a sum of different objectives by aircraft type.

Evolution of objectives to respond to the crisis

During the Clean Sky JU lifecycle some changes in aircraft fleet replacement strategy were introduced in the sector. In 2007, when the CS objectives, key demonstrators and relevant schedules were defined, the fleet replacement for ‘single aisle’ aircraft was scheduled for 2018-2020. Due to the steep increase of oil prices, the introduction of new generation of single aisle aircraft was postponed to 2025 and beyond and a new intermediate generation of aircraft is introduced bringing ca 15% fuel efficiency over the current year 2000 generation. The future R&D investment in the sector will be benchmarked against the performance of this new generation. This market change has also led to slight modifications in the Clean Sky technical programme without changing the overall objectives.

How did Clean Sky contribute to the competitiveness of European Transport industry?

The European aeronautics sector is one of the world leaders in terms of production, employment and exports but despite this leadership, the sector evolves in a complex international environment and the EU aeronautics industry is increasingly confronted with strong international competition from traditional or emerging competitors. Today, the fuel efficiency is the major competitive differentiator and the constant high fuel prices will drive the demand for more efficient aircraft in the future. Clean Sky succeeded in increasing European competitiveness in the aeronautics sector by developing new technologies integrated at system level addressing environmental goals that greatly enhance EU industry competitiveness, since greater energy efficiency implies reducing operating costs and result in higher demand.

How did Clean Sky contribute to increase European and international wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

The Clean Sky programme has achieved critical mass bringing together all partners and complementary knowledge resources required to achieve its objectives. In total, more than 500 participants took part in the programme and more than half of the beneficiaries were newcomers in European funded research programmes.

How did Clean Sky contribute to improve the coordination of European, national and regional Transport research policies?

The Clean Sky Programme worked in coordination with the national funding schemes for research. The scale and scope of the research agenda for greening of aircraft go beyond the borders and the capacity of individual Member States. Clean Sky supported the coordination of research policies by addressing in full the major technological advances due to the Pan-European nature of the aeronautics industry and brining all relevant European stakeholders cooperate in developing and maturing the most promising key technologies.

How did Clean Sky strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe?

Clean Sky aimed mainly at applied research with high levels of TRL. However, it stimulated new collaborations and the participation of new organisations into the EU Framework Programme.

How did Clean Sky promote the development of European research careers and contribute to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

The nature of the Clean Sky programme, focused on demonstrators validating technologies at high TRL, helped to strengthen the synergies between researchers and industry.

How did Clean Sky provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

Clean Sky supported the objectives of climate policy and resource efficiency. Since its establishment, the Clean Sky was successfully stimulating developments towards the strategic environmental targets. The programme allowed maximising technological innovation which will help to address more ambitious objectives for air transport regarding not only environmental impact but also passenger mobility, following the Europe 2020 strategy, the Transport White Paper and the Europe’s Vision for Aviation, Flightpath 2050.

How did Clean Sky increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure?

The success of the Clean Sky technological programme strongly relied on the availability and use of the first class aeronautics research infrastructure; therefore, all the main European research infrastructure providers in the sector have been strongly involved in the design and the implementation of the Clean Sky programme. That has helped already from the early stages to ensure that the infrastructure capabilities, access and availability will be secured and contribute to the full implementation of the programme and the achievement of its objectives. From the infrastructure side it has helped to develop further the existing infrastructure and to use for testing the state of the art technologies.

How much did Clean Sky contribute to job creation?

At this stage, it is difficult to quantify exactly the impact of Clean Sky on job creation. However, on a macroeconomic scale Clean Sky did contribute to the economic growth of Europe as the European air transport industry generates 3.1% of the European GDP directly and supported 5.1 million jobs in 2010 in Europe. Due to the growth forecast in the air transport industry, this contribution is growing and therefore has an impact on the generation of new jobs through the better performance of the industry with more successful products resulting in a higher demand.

To what extent do the results of Clean Sky contribute to the achievements of the new Commission's priorities?

Clean Sky contributed to the environmental and societal challenges by developing less polluting air transport and supported the competitiveness of the European aeronautics industry that depends on the quality of products it delivers and in particular on the fuel efficiency of the proposed technologies.

To what extent was Clean Sky coherent with other EU actions (CIP, ESF) and EU policy?

Clean Sky set-up has allowed a good coordination with the Members States and regions using the European Structural funds. Although, the responsibility of using the Structural Funds lies with national representatives, these representatives were actively involved in the Clean Sky programme governance through the National States Representatives Group. This allowed them to coordinate their ESF investments with the Clean Sky programme and among themselves. Therefore, in a number of occasions additional and complementary work to the Clean Sky programme towards the same ambitious objectives of accelerating the introduction of energy efficient aircraft technologies has been done in a coordinated way. In addition, ESF investments have been instrumental in raising the capacity and capabilities of the stakeholders in less performing aeronautics regions to participate in the Clean Sky implementation and have contributed to the success of Clean Sky in bringing together more than 500 participants from more than 20 countries.

Which was the added value of Clean Sky when compared with national transport research and innovation programmes?

The national programmes funding is allocated at national level and programmes address individual national technology developments. However, the European aeronautics industry is a cross-border industry and achieving ambitious objectives and addressing major challenges in the sector can be achieved only at level higher than the individual members States actors with strong collaboration between major aeronautics players and other participants. In this context, the Clean Sky programme allowed strengthening the collaboration at European level and enhancing European integration by bringing stakeholders together and achieving jointly agreed roadmaps.

  

Clean Sky in H2020: continuity or evolution?

Clean Sky 2, established under the Horizon 2020, will enable a natural continuation to the progress achieved in the first Clean Sky Programme and will bring a step further to the integration with full aircraft demonstrators so as to understand the full impact, including risks and synergies of the combination of innovative technologies. This would allow maximising technological innovation which will help to address more ambitious objectives for air transport regarding environmental impact and passenger mobility, following the Europe 2020 strategy, the Transport White Paper, Flightpath 2050 and is in line with the Horizon 2020 objectives.

15.3. Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Initiative (FCH)

The FCH JTI was implemented under the FP7 Cooperation Energy theme.

 Objective: To speed up the development of fuel cells and hydrogen technologies in Europe in order to enable their commercial deployment between 2010 and 2020
[66](#footnote66)
.

The three members of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) are the European Commission, fuel cell and hydrogen industries represented by the NEW Industry Grouping and the research community represented by Research Grouping N.ERGHY.

The EU contribution to the FCH JU was EUR 470 million (2008-2013) in cash, of which EUR 20 million are for administrative purposes. The budget was contributed by the FP7 Themes “Energy” (accounting for 2/3 of the total budget), “Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and New Production Technologies (NMP)”, “Transport (including Aeronautics)”, and “Environment (including Climate Change)”. The overall total budget of the FCH JU was EUR 940 million, including the private contributions.

The FCH JU has launched 7 calls for proposals between 2008-2013 (one per year, except 2 in 2013). Success rates for applicants were between 33% and 50% which is above the average for the FP7 Energy Theme.

Almost two third of all unique participants came from industry, accounting for around 60% of the total EU contribution (SMEs benefitted from 27% of the total funding). Research centres account for almost 15% of the total participations but received more than 20% of the total EU contribution because their participation rate has been particularly high (on average, one single research centre participated in more than 5 projects). Universities represent slightly above 15% in terms of total participations and unique participants receiving around 11% of the total budget. Public bodies received by far the highest EU contribution per participation (because they were mainly involved in transport/infrastructure demonstration projects), followed by industry participants.

(Given the fact that the JU launched its first call only in 2008, the following report on achievements can only draw from a small sample of well-advanced/finished projects).

As of 2013, FCH JU-funded projects have produced almost 70 research publications in peers reviewed journals with high citation index (from 9 finished projects) and 12 patent applications (from 4 finished projects) 
[67](#footnote67)
.

FCH transport demonstration projects will see 150 cars and 45 buses deployed through projects financed over the 2008-2013 period. In addition, at least 20 hydrogen refuelling stations will be realised through FCH JU-funded projects.

In the stationary applications sector, deployment of micro-CHP (residential) units through the FCH JU programme alone is expected to exceed the EU 2015 target of 1000 units.

In terms of material handling vehicles (MHVs), over 400 MHV units or 25% of the EU 2015 target, will be met through FCH JU projects under the 7th Framework Program.

The creation of the FCH JU has been an achievement as such because it has served as a signal of EU commitment and policy direction in the way of FCH technologies, while also providing stable funding – even in times of economic crisis – to support research and cost reductions in the sector.

Although it is difficult to separate the commercial and technical progress in the sector from influences other than the FCH JU, a survey
[68](#footnote68)
 of companies involved in FCH showed that the FCH JU has had significant real impact
[69](#footnote69)
:

Respondents estimated the number of jobs had been increasing by about 6% per year since 2007, to around 4,000 full-time equivalents in 2013;

The number of patents granted in the EU to European companies for FCH showed a 16% annual increase compared to the average annual growth for all EU industries of 1.5%;

Annual turnover of respondents increased by 10% per annum;

R&D expenditures of respondents increased by 8% p.a.,

Market deployment expenditures of respondents increased by 6% p.a.

Furthermore, respondents expected that turnover would increase on average by 35% per year towards 2020 and research expenditures by 12% per annum; the fact that turnover is outpacing RD&D expenditures is an indication of impending commercialisation.

The main achievement in transportation and refuelling is the coordinated deployment of vehicles and infrastructure generating a base for further development. In this manner, the FCH JU has helped Europe to a leading position in fuel-cell technology for the automotive industry. Other areas have proved more challenging and innovation has mainly been incremental and at the level of components.

The FCH JU has succeeded generally in maintaining Europe in a satisfactory position compared to international competitors, but the positioning varies by application areas: it is strongest in mobility and good in hydrogen production and storage.

The second independent interim evaluation of the FCH JU concludes that:

- The FCH JU has successfully demonstrated the viability of the PPP concept for research in FCH. It has realised an adequate governance structure, created an effective dialogue between industry and research around a common strategic agenda, and has successfully implemented that agenda.

- The expression of a long-term political commitment by EU institutions that is manifest in the FCH JU, coupled with stable funding has given confidence to industry and helped the sector through the difficult times caused by a shifting emphasis to Battery Electric Vehicles and the economic crisis.

- The FCH JU has helped to stimulate new relations including trans-national linkages between the public sectors and private sectors of different Member States and strong communities within the Industry- and Research Group. In the latter case, formerly dispersed actors have been brought together to formulate a collective position on research priorities and to debate that position between the two communities.

- A strict assessment of effectiveness against the requirements of the Regulation establishing the FCH JU shows a few deficiencies, but in some cases the objectives go beyond what might reasonably be expected. The FCH JU has demonstrated successful depot-based applications of vehicles and to some extent has contributed to automobile applications, but its impact is limited in the latter case by the need for specialised infrastructure if a mass market is to develop. Concrete results pertaining to the energy theme are relatively few at this stage in the programme, and there is little sign of an impact on policy.

- Technological developments as a consequence of the work programme have ensured that the market position is stronger than it was at inception and demonstration projects, particularly in transport, have strengthened knowledge of the technology among potential developers and reduced perceptions of risk, but it needs policy interventions and strategic planning by the competent authorities to deliver a real impact on policy and on welfare.

The following recommendations were made:

- Governance of the programme needs to ensure that decision-making is more prompt;

- That more resources are assigned to programme and knowledge management and that the private sector’s commitment continues to be comparable to the EU’s effort.

- SME participation should be further strengthened through a scheme of financial guarantees as in the Framework Programme and linkage between research projects and venture capital funding from the RSFF to generate new and innovative European companies and businesses.

-The research strategy for the continuation of the FCH JU should focus more sharply on three main principles: alignment on EU policies; areas where Europe has or can achieve leadership; adaptation to changing needs of the sector.

- Finance of future deployment and capacity build-up projects is vital and will require new financial arrangements. The Commission should investigate whether Hydrogen infrastructure can be made eligible for funding within the new National Strategic Reference Frameworks for Structural Funds.

  

15.4. ARTEMIS and ENIAC Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) and Joint Undertakings (JUs)

The ARTEMIS and ENIAC Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) and Joint Undertakings (JUs) were established in February 2008 in order to devise and implement strategic research programmes in the areas of, respectively, embedded systems and nanoelectronics. The ARTEMIS and ENIAC JUs are public-private partnerships jointly funded by industry, research organisations, participating Member States and the Commission's own ICT programme.

In the period 2008-2012, the two JTIs supported altogether more than 100 projects for a total cost in excess of €2.8 billion with a public funding of €1.126 billion (EU + Member States), involving more than 2000 organisations (1260 unique participations) of which around 40% are SMEs, 30% large enterprises and 30% research and higher education organisations.

ENIAC and ARTEMIS JTIs provided a major opportunity to cooperate across Europe, create critical mass and leverage investments. This capability has been demonstrated by the ENIAC JU’s success in jump-starting the implementation of the Key Enabling Technologies recommendations in nanoelectronics with five manufacturing pilot lines worth €730 million and by the ARTEMIS JU’s first launch of two large-scale innovation pilot projects worth €150 million.

The largest project in the ARTEMIS portfolio is CESAR - Cost-Efficient methods and processes for SAfety Relevant embedded systems. For key transportation domains (automotive, aerospace and rail) it developed ultra-reliable embedded systems in order to meet societal demands for increased mobility and safety. For ENIAC a clear success is the E3Car, which overcame the main challenges regarding the electrical vehicle using advanced semiconductor components. An increase in energy efficiency by 35% in certain components has been achieved.

A second Interim Evaluation of ARTEMIS and ENIAC was carried out in 2012 and concluded that the original objectives of the tripartite JTI instrument for ARTEMIS and ENIAC were still valid, and many such objectives had been achieved. Projects funded by the ARTEMIS and ENIAC JTIs were considered all justifiable in the strategic context of the needs of EU industry. The significant value and achievements of the ARTEMIS and ENIAC JTIs were confirmed by the panel.

The panel found that:

- The relevance of the ARTEMIS and ENIAC programmes remained high, and both JTIs continued to address the key European technological and industrial sectors in their respective domains (with some exceptions). However, the panel found that to ensure continuing relevance into the future it was essential to link the JTI research, development and innovation agendas in to a wider European ECS strategy based on a coherent and common vision and common goals. This strategy would determine a clear, coherent European view on the appropriateness of JTI research agenda, on the prioritisation of projects for funding, and would be the basis for any related review procedures.

- The level of effectiveness of the JTIs/JUs in achieving their objectives was also in general high, but effectiveness would be improved by increasing the coherence of programmes and funded project portfolios within and between JTIs, by strengthening exploitation of project results and by a greater involvement of, and strategic leadership by, the respective Industrial Associations and Governing Boards.

- The efficiency of administrative processes was in general found to be good, but the panel considered that it would be considerably improved by various changes in current practice, in particular in relation to the harmonisation and simplification of Member State practices, by allowing a greater flexibility in funding arrangements, by streamlining JU administrative and governance structures.

- The quality of projects funded by the JTIs was found to be high, and in many instances world-leading, but that steps should be taken to increase inter-project co-operation and avoid potential duplication and overlap in content, to improve the quality of project management and to devise reliable metrics for measuring the impact and success of projects.

The panel also identified a number JTI structural changes that would significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the programmes and bring much welcome strategic coherence. In particular the integration of ENIAC & ARTEMIS JTIs, along with the European Technology Platform (ETP) on Smart Systems Integration (EPoSS), into a single organisation (one legal entity - an ECS JTI), although the broad scope of such an integrated JTI would mean that some continuing differentiation (e.g. via separated, but linked, SRAs, workplans, budgets, IAs etc.) might be appropriate.

In 2013 the Commission made the proposal for a JTI bringing together the EU and Member States in Electronic Components & Systems (ECSEL). ECSEL is operating since 2014 and will run for 10 years, replacing ENIAC and ARTEMIS JUs in the fields of nanoelectronics and embedded systems. This merging builds on their respective strengths while unlocking additional synergies. The ECSEL JTI will support an integrated European strategy in electronic components and systems allowing the development of a sustainable electronic components and systems industrial ecosystem, and providing effective means for European stakeholders to keep pace with technology, to get access to advanced components and to consolidate their leadership in electronic systems for key economic sectors.

16.Joint European Research Programmes under FP7

16.1. Eurostars

The Final Evaluation of the Eurostars Joint Programme concluded that the Eurostars Joint Programme has succeeded in accelerating the growth and innovative outputs of R&D-performing SMEs. However, several aspects of governance and managerial implementation need to be improved.

The expert group studied the Eurostars interim evaluation of 2010 and the uptake of its recommendations. In contrast to the interim evaluation, the expert group was able, due to the considerably higher numbers of applications, applicants and funded projects, to make quantitative calculations and carry out extensive econometric analyses.

The results of the final evaluation provide evidence that Eurostars is relevant for the growth of R&D-performing SMEs in Europe. The employment growth rate of R&D-performing SMEs funded by Eurostars was nearly twice as high as that of applicant SMEs which were not funded. This can be causally attributed to Eurostars funding. Given the still relatively small number of completed projects, this estimate will become more precise in future. In addition, the market impact of Eurostars projects has not completely manifested itself yet. The programme has accelerated the development and roll-out of new and improved products, processes and services. The econometric evaluation established a positive and significant impact on the patent portfolio of funded firms relative to unfunded applicants. The programme has stimulated new cross-border collaborations that the members of the funded consortia intend to continue beyond the Eurostars funding period.

At the same time, the final evaluation reveals the need for improvement in harmonising funding rules and synchronising national processes. The effectiveness of central governance, administration and operations also needs to be improved. National resources are still too scarce, though some countries have increased their Eurostars budgets significantly above the originally agreed levels. The maximum rate of funding for the same type of partners varies between countries. Insufficient resources in some of the consortia’s partner countries have resulted in the exclusion of selected projects from funding. With the increasing number of applications, the success rate - measured as share of eligible project proposals which were approved for funding - has fallen from 48% in 2008 to 20% in 2013. The time elapsed from submission deadline to evaluation, signing of grant and consortia agreements and activation of funding have gone down significantly, but is still too long and varies between partner countries, causing delays in starting projects. The High-Level Group has repeatedly discussed these issues, but so far failed to translate them into binding decisions and actions.

16.2. European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP)

Interim evaluation results
[70](#footnote70)
:

The EMRP is performing well in relation to most of its original expectations;

There are significant gaps between expectation and reality in relation to three qualitative impact indicators: capacity building, interaction with the wider scientific

community and mobility.

16.3. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)

Among the innovative initiatives which have been included in the FP7, the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme (JP) represented a new joint R&D funding activity implemented by 20 EU Member States and 3 Associated States with EU support. The AAL Joint Programme aimed at using intelligent products and providing remote services in order to extend the time elderly people can live independently in their home environment. The Programme over the years 2008-2013 had a budget of €700 million, half of which was public funding (split between Partner States and the European Commission). Over 
[150 projects](http://www.aal-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AALCatalogue2013_Final.pdf)
 were funded over 6 calls, the last of which closed in Spring 2013. Each project involved at least 3 Member States, one research body, one user organisation, and an SME participant.

As the Programme came to a completion in December 2013 a high level expert group produced a 
[final evaluation report
[71](#footnote71)](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/node/68343)
that highlighted its key achievements:

The high participation rate of SMEs (over 40%; far higher than average in FP7 projects), attracted by the opportunity to work within familiar national rules and procedures.

The launch of a number of commercial products and services originating directly from the first projects: nearly 50% of the projects from the first two calls have secured IPR results and a number of first commercial results have also emerged.

The shaping of a new innovation 'ecosystem' around a dynamic AAL community of stakeholders (user organisations, care professionals, research bodies, industry and government). Around 1200 of them participate in the annual 
[AAL Forum](http://www.aalforum.eu/)
.

The creation of a critical mass of research, development and innovation activity in AAL systems and services at European level.

Strong network effects and the seeding of pan-European communities that bring the AAL field closer to the market.

A leveraging of national efforts for the European good under the Article 185 approach, through the pooling of national resources.

A strong catalytic effect on national initiatives and activity in ICT for ageing.

A diverse and interesting portfolio of projects that well address the 2-3 years to market time horizon.

A high participation of users, with around 30% of project participants having some form of user role.

Stimulating industrial leadership, with around two-thirds of projects (67%) led by industry.

Effective governance and management, with the management overhead within accepted norms.

The main findings of the evaluation were the following:

The objectives were appropriate and well targeted and the Programme had made meaningful advances. The objectives continues to be strategically relevant for Europe but requires strengthening and reinterpretation in certain areas to reflect emerging opportunities and trends.

Given the growing importance of demographic ageing - a shared and urgent challenge across Europe - the AAL JP was considered to be very well justified. In forging new forms of collaboration among various stakeholders and stimulating the creation of new markets, it occupied a unique position in the policy landscape and well matched the specificities of the European situation. As European activities in this domain expand, the panel found that the Programme must continue to assert its uniqueness and to show leadership within an increasingly crowded policy space.

The AAL JP operated as a coherent framework that delivered clear added value for Europe. In acting as a bridge between research and innovation, the Programme showed strong complementarity with other initiatives and programmes, both EU and national. The fact that Member States have made contributions significantly beyond the required minimum is strong evidence of their commitment and interest.

Research, development and innovation activity associated with the Programme was found to be reaching critical levels. New networks and communities are being created that together significantly enhance the prospects for European players in taking AAL innovations to market. The strong participation of SMEs was particularly noteworthy. Although users are well represented within projects, they were not sufficiently integrated and overall effective user involvement was still sub-critical.

Activities aimed at improving conditions for industrial exploitation had expanded significantly since the Interim Evaluation. To ensure sustainability and impact, scalability and integration needed to be more strategically addressed, however. In addition, the knowledge and insights from projects needed to be better shared across the Programme so as to assist market penetration.

The Programme was found to be well managed and to have well-functioning governance arrangements. The panel recommended that under AAL JP2, the Member States should take steps to further improve operational performance by building on the trust established and by analysing carefully possible bottlenecks and improvements. Opportunities should be sought to further optimise the respective governance roles (including the role of the CMU), workflows and procedures.

Progress under the Programme was found to be encouraging, although large-scale social and economic impacts had yet to emerge. The main outcomes were found to be a shared vision, the creation of a new innovation ecosystem of stakeholders and a demonstrated promising potential for exploitation of results within a new rapidly evolving field, one of great strategic relevance, economic potential and societal importance. These justify the Programme’s continuation under AAL JP2, where further contributions can be expected.

The European Commission welcomed 
[the final evaluation report](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/node/68452)
 and committed to address its recommendations. In July 2013 the Commission launched a 
[proposal](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/node/67188)
 for a follow-up that in May 2014 was 
[adopted by the Council](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/node/69975)
in a compromise text. The Active and Assisted Living JP will be further optimised for rapid decision-making and new types of support (like prizes and innovation grants) to further lower entrance barriers. Moreover, it will support the implementation of the 
[European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing](http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm?section=active-healthy-ageing)
 by aligning to the ICT-based innovation: from independent living and integrated care (including telehealth and telecare) to fall prevention, medication adherence and age-friendly environments and communities.

16.4. Bonus

The Baltic Sea is a unique and semi-land locked inland sea, surrounded by eight EU Member States and Russia. The sea is degraded by many pressures both natural and man-made which seriously impact on the Baltic Sea's capacity to provide the sustainable goods and services upon which the region depends. For example, the world's largest oxygen depleted dead zones are within the Baltic Sea, covering an average area of 49,000 km2.

Solutions to the Baltic Seas challenges can only be achieved through collaborative action undertaken by all of the coastal Baltic states so as to jointly establish innovative solutions and develop common understandings. This is the role of the Baltic Sea Research and Development programme BONUS which together with the EU has enabled all coastal Baltic Sea Member States to jointly establish and implement an integrated research and innovation programme for the Baltic Sea.

Implementation of BONUS commenced in 2012 and is foreseen to continue for at least 5 years until 2017. An interim evaluation was undertaken in 2014 and the Commission's conclusions following this evaluation were adopted in March 2015
[72](#footnote72)
 . The evaluation was positive, concluding that BONUS successfully establishes an integrated research and development Programme for the Baltic Seas which overcomes the fragmentation of national research programmes, brings together a variety of skills and focusses these on creating the essential knowledge and innovative solutions necessary to address the Baltic Sea's environmental problems. The evaluation also noted that the agreement of the participating states to a structure which enabled greater centralisation of the management of national funds would further improve the programmes administrative efficiency.

17.Emergence of contractual PPPs as a response to the economic crisis

Launched in November 2008, the research public private partnerships (PPPs) were set up as a response to the economic crisis with a view to supporting research, development and innovation in the manufacturing, construction and automobile industries, which had seen demand plummet. Although originally envisaged as a short‑term measure, the ongoing crisis, linked with a better understanding of the need for a long‑term perspective on the support for these strategic industries, has led to a call from industry for a long‑term commitment to these economically important industrial sectors and to these PPPs.

Factory of the Future (FoF) PPP: About 13% of the projects and of EC contribution are devoted to this PPP. Funding by NMP theme is € 400m out of € 600m EC funding; industry and EC each contribute 50%.

Energy efficient Building (EEB) PPP: This PPP accounts for about 7% of the projects and for 8% of total EC funding in NMP. Funding by NMP Theme is € 250m out of total of € 500m EC funding, industry and EC each contribute 50%.

Green Car (GC) PPP: It comprises just 2% of the total number of NMP projects and 2.5% of EC funding in the NMP Theme. Funding by NMP Theme is € 60m out of total of around € 500m EC funding; industry and EC each contribute 50%.

The Final Evaluation concludes that:

The PPPs have proved useful in strengthening the European value chains and in particular in giving a role to SMEs. The PPPs have all been successful in engaging top industrial companies, SMEs and research organisations within Europe, increasing significantly the large industry and SME participation.

Research PPPs have strong potential for a good overall leverage effect for private investment, and have boosted industrial participation (57 % in PPPs vs 34 % in FP7 Cooperation).

The three research PPPs have facilitated a closer working relationship between the Commission and industry in the setting of goals and longer-term research programme objectives. This has allowed industry to commit to longer-term strategies for research investment.

The stable funding of the research PPPs throughout their 4 years of implementation, as well as the competitive process of distributing the funding without the use of direct beneficiaries gives increased confidence to industry to invest in participating in these projects.

Research PPPs have moved forward in the latest calls to enlarge their coverage of the innovation chain closer to the market.

The PPPs have not achieved a regionally balanced engagement as it has been shown that sector specificities have a stronger role in defining funding opportunities than geographical parity.

The following recommendations were made:

The governance model of the research PPPs should be underpinned by a higher degree of formalisation, particularly with regard to the roles and duties of the private and public parties to the agreement.

The research PPP model should be further used, developed and expanded in scope within Horizon 2020 and provided with sufficient funding to achieve a significant industrial effect.

The PPPs should work under the Horizon 2020 common rules, but its procedures need to be further streamlined and simplified to increase ease of entry into PPP projects for industry, especially SMEs.

In order to maximise the benefits and widen participation in the research PPP activities and results, awareness about the research PPPs needs to be strengthened, particularly among the often hard‑to‑reach SMEs.

Furthermore, the ex-post evaluation of NMP demonstrates that:

The introduction of the PPPs has contributed to a better balance in FP7 NMP in terms of supporting different phases in the innovation chain. Such balance between activities at all TRL levels should also be kept as NMP enabled innovation is driven by strong interaction between scientific activities and innovative activities; there is no short cut to innovation.

PPP participants - especially the PPPs Factory of the Future and Energy efficient Buildings, are relatively more productive in terms of economic outputs than participants active in other areas.

Three quarter of the participants from PPP projects reports that they already have reached the development of a new or significantly improved product.

participants of on-going projects (that include relatively more PPPs) report consistently higher numbers for high and medium impact as compared to the participants of finished projects (such as for the number of patent applications that is already done and expected by the end of the project).

It was a good decision of EC to change the strategy during the programme. The EC has been successful in pushing the programme, to some extent, towards higher TRL levels.

  

18.Evaluation of the EURAXESS Project (2008-2012)

The EURAXESS portal has been effective in boosting researcher career development, notably by providing information that assists in overcoming barriers to relocation, such as visa, residence permit, social security, as well as speeding up procedures. Promoted through EURAXESS Rights, the Human Resources Strategy for researchers (HRS4R), which supports research institutions and funding organisations in the implementation of the Charter and Code, was also successful. Since the adoption of the Commission Recommendation on the Charter and Code in 2005, over 1200 institutions from 35 countries in Europe and abroad have endorsed it, and 102 have obtained the Commission's "HR Excellence in Research" badge. The implementation of the 40 principles of the Charter and Code by research institutions will render them more attractive for researchers worldwide. The diffusion of the resulting improvements in the management of Human resources within research organisations will also benefit to the attractiveness of the ERA at large.

- The level of awareness of EURAXESS Services and Jobs among the researchers’ community has slightly increased. Among the different branches, awareness is higher for the EURAXESS Jobs portal than EURAXESS Services.

- Coordination of Information and Communication activities within national EURAXESS networks and with the EC is considered to be effective.

- Training provided at European level within the current framework is considered of good quality and relevant but frequency should be increased. There is also a demand for covering topics not included so far (from issues linked directly to researchers’ mobility to others more related to management of staff and use of communication tools).

- The main risk identified for the EURAXESS network is the sustainability of the network. Stronger political support at European and national level are considered crucial for ensuring the sustainability of the initiative.

- A stronger involvement of industry partners in EURAXESS Jobs was very much praised by the stakeholders encountered. In particular, allowing industry partners to publish their vacancies on the portal was deemed as a good way to increase opportunities for researchers and to strengthen cooperation with private sector.

- Evidence collected for the evaluation of EURAXESS links in the period 2008-2012 pointed out that EURAXESS Links responds to most of researchers’ needs in the US, Japan and China.

- Many researchers expressed their problems in permeating the vast array of local institutions in the countries where they are based, due to intrinsic complexity, the multiplicity of actors and, in the case of China and Japan, the relevance of language skills that European researchers often lack.

- Awareness of EURAXESS Link is varied. It appears to be higher in Japan and China than in the US.

- Among good practices worth implementing across the EURAXESS Links network, it is worth considering the high level of collaboration between the IO and EU Delegation, especially in China and in Japan. Networking events in all three countries have also received nearly universal praise, as has the European Funding Guide, which has already been adopted elsewhere after initial success in Japan.

  

19.Open Access to Scientific Peer Reviewed Publications in FP7

Open access (OA) can be defined as online access to the results of publicly funded research at no charge to the end user. Over the last years, an increasing number of governments, research funding bodies and research performing institutions world-wide have therefore developed open access policies to improve the access to the scientific publications resulting from the research they fund. Two main business models for open access to scientific peer reviewed publications have been developed:

Self-archiving (also referred to as 'green' open access) means that the published article or the final peer-reviewed manuscript is archived (deposited) by the author - or a representative - in an online repository before, alongside or after its publication. Repository software usually allows authors to delay access to the article ('embargo period'). Some publishers request embargo periods, arguing that these protect the value of the journal subscriptions they sell.

Open access publishing (also referred to as 'gold' open access) means that an article is immediately provided in open access mode when published. In this model, the payment of publication costs is shifted away from readers (paying via subscriptions) to the author, through a one-off charge, a so called 'Article (sometimes 'Author') Processing Charge' (APCs). These can usually be borne by the university or research institute to which the researcher is affiliated, or to the funding agency supporting the research. In other cases, the costs of open access publishing are covered by subsidies or other funding models.

The Commission has been leading by example by promoting open access to scientific peer reviewed publications in FP7. For green open access it is running a pilot action in 7 areas of FP7
[73](#footnote73)
, mandating green open access on a 'best effort' basis (embargo period 6 months for natural sciences and 12 months for social sciences and humanities).
[74](#footnote74)
 A 2011 survey of projects participating in this pilot found no major difficulties for projects to comply with these provisions.
[75](#footnote75)
 Furthermore, the Commission also supported open access in all areas of FP7 by making relevant costs for gold open access (APCs) eligible for reimbursement as part of the overall project grant.

1. Uptake of open access in FP7

1.1. Data Source

The EU funded project OpenAIRE (
[www.openaire.eu](http://www.openaire.eu)
) promotes open scholarship and substantially improve the discoverability and reusability of research publications and data. OpenAIRE and its successor projects inter alia assist in monitoring FP and Horizon 2020 research outputs. OpenAIRE computes statistics based on data retrieved from a range of sources: OA repositories and journals (literature and data), CRIS systems, library databases and end-user feedbacks. They also employ a variety of deduplication, cleaning, and text-mining processes on the metadata, as well as on the actual content.

1.2. Overall uptake of open access

From the total of 171,258 FP7 publications 92,826 are OA, 3,216 are restricted (i.e., OA but with a more restrictive license or restricted to specific groups), while 315 are still in embargo. This translates to a 54,2% success rate. It should be also noted, however, that not all FP7 projects have yet ended. At the time of writing and that, furthermore, publications are also published after the end of a project. The figure of 54.2% is therefore provisional. Furthermore, looking at individual years (see table 1 below), open access publications have significantly increased in recent years, reaching 67% in 2014 and 80% in 2015. This could be seen as an indicator of the growing support towards open access in the scientific community.

Overall FP7 OA evaluation.

[Table 1](#_Ref301170572)
 shows the breakdown of FP7 publications from 2007-2015 broken down by their access state. The overall data is somewhat biased to closed access as a) we cannot easily define OA articles in hybrid journals, and b) there is still a large number of not fully OpenAIRE compliant repositories (i.e., no funding information attached to the publication metadata) so FP7 publications may have been deposited but not yet identified.

Table 1. FP7 publications 2007-2015 by access status

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Year | | Open Access | Closed Access | Embargo | Restricted | Total | OA success rate |
| 2007 | 142 | | 14 |  | 8 | 164 | 87% |
| 2008 | 783 | | 295 |  | 52 | 1,130 | 69% |
| 2009 | 3,179 | | 1,992 | 1 | 147 | 5,319 | 60% |
| 2010 | 7,039 | | 5,063 | 3 | 291 | 12,400 | 57% |
| 2011 | 11,385 | | 9,534 | 14 | 502 | 21,438 | 53% |
| 2012 | 17,271 | | 14,345 | 37 | 567 | 32,237 | 54% |
| 2013 | 23,035 | | 18,245 | 49 | 673 | 42,019 | 55% |
| 2014 | 21,911 | | 10,276 | 106 | 478 | 32,797 | 67% |
| 2015 | 5,871 | | 952 | 102 | 239 | 7,319 | 80% |
| Total | 90,616 | | 60,716 | 312 | 2,957 | 154,823 | 59% |

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15019.jpg)

Figure 1. FP7 timeline, including OA status.

Table 2. FP7 publications by scientific area by access status.

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Scientific Area | Total | Open Access | Closed Access | Embargo | Restricted | OA success rate |
| COH | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100% |
| ENERGY | 1,914 | 715 | 1,108 | 52 | 34 | 37% |
| ENV | 7,774 | 4,162 | 3,219 | 193 | 55 | 54% |
| ERC | 63,385 | 38,565 | 24,271 | 466 | 44 | 61% |
| Fission | 625 | 196 | 401 | 21 | 6 | 31% |
| Fusion | 7 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 43% |
| GA | 307 | 127 | 176 | 3 | 1 | 41% |
| HEALTH | 21,456 | 11,730 | 9,395 | 282 | 45 | 55% |
| ICT | 32,445 | 12,854 | 18,235 | 1,303 | 19 | 40% |
| INCO | 107 | 37 | 66 | 3 | 1 | 35% |
| INFRA | 8,803 | 5,816 | 2,805 | 148 | 26 | 66% |
| KBBE | 6,220 | 3,109 | 3,005 | 91 | 14 | 50% |
| NMP | 6,712 | 2,112 | 4,354 | 219 | 23 | 31% |
| PEOPLE | 21,871 | 14,767 | 6,734 | 303 | 45 | 68% |
| REGIONS | 24 | 16 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 67% |
| REGPOT | 1,889 | 1,017 | 849 | 22 | 2 | 54% |
| SEC | 840 | 399 | 399 | 40 | 2 | 48% |
| SME | 567 | 224 | 319 | 22 | 0 | 40% |
| JTI | 939 | 562 | 366 | 11 | 0 | 60% |
| SPA | 2,125 | 1,433 | 659 | 28 | 5 | 67% |
| SSH | 1,153 | 990 | 123 | 31 | 7 | 86% |
| SiS | 205 | 138 | 53 | 11 | 0 | 67% |
| TPT | 1,134 | 438 | 610 | 78 | 4 | 39% |
| Total | 180,505 | 99,413 | 77,156 | 3,330 | 334 | 55% |

2. Supporting open access to scientific publications published after the end of the FP7 grant

According to current OpenAIRE data, most publications are published within the project lifetime (136.872), but an overall 13% (21.810 publications) are published after the project ended. The European Commission therefore decided to launch a dedicated separate pilot fund for covering gold open access charges (APCs) arising from completed FP7 projects. The fund – 4 million euros – is administered and run by OpenAIRE. It will last for a maximum of two years (i.e. until Apr 30th, 2017) or until its budget is exhausted. Its success will be evaluated to ascertain whether further action is needed.

OpenAIRE has, in consultation with the community, established the following eligibility criteria
[76](#footnote76)
 for applying to the fund:

A maximum of three publications will be funded per eligible FP7 project as a means to ensure a fair distribution of the funding across projects;

Publications eligible for funding must be peer-reviewed;

Funding requests must be submitted once the publication has been accepted;

Publications submitted to hybrid journals will not be funded, but only those accepted at fully Open Access journals;

Funding caps of €2,000 for research articles and €6,000 for monographs apply for this Pilot;

The final version of the funded output must be deposited in an OpenAIRE-compliant Open Access repository.

The pilot started its operation on June 1, 2015. It is therefore too early for a statistically significant analysis. At the time of writing (August 2015) 20 eligible funding requests have been collected so far, 16 for journal articles and 4 for books. 11 requests have been approved and six publications have already been published as a result of the pilot fund.
[77](#footnote77)
 The currently available data shows that an average of € 1356 per article was paid to the publishers in article processing charges.

20.The recommendations from FP7 Interim evaluation and their follow up

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Recommendations from the Expert Group November 12, 2010 | a) Commission response in the Communication in 2011    b) Further measures taken since 2011 |
| 1.      To advance ERA and Innovation Union objectives, integrating the research base by overcoming fragmentation in research is vital, while simultaneously achieving a sharper division of labour between what is done at EU level and what is undertaken in national programmes. European research and innovation efforts must concentrate on themes where critical mass is vital for success and where breakthroughs require cross-border solutions, while also allocating sufficient resources to R&D topics which promise radical innovations. Addressing the ‘Grand Challenges’ confronting the European Union should increasingly be at the heart of EU research policy, starting in the last three years of FP7, but more emphatically so in a successor programme. This process could be structured according to who sets the research agenda and to take account of the ‘smart, sustainable, inclusive’ leitmotif for Europe 2020, although they will need to work together to address the ‘Grand Challenges’ as follows:  - Science for science - the researchers set the agenda  - Science for competitiveness - industry sets the agenda  - Science for society - civil society actors set the agenda | a) The need to overcome research fragmentation and build critical mass in research, both public and private, are still major issues despite the many achievements such as JTIs, ERA-NETS, article 185 activities, co-funding mechanism in the Marie Curie training activities and now first steps towards Joint Programming. Future EU research programmes must provide a clearer focus on the major research items for science, technological leadership and industrial competiveness and focus on the large societal challenges. In turn this will provide multiple benefits, including more coherent priority setting, a better capacity to leverage private sector investments, enhanced European added value and a stronger base for measuring impact. Such an approach needs to be developed within the framework of the European Research Area, identifying areas of common or convergent interest, while ensuring better alignment of research capacities.  The Innovation Union sets out how the Europe 2020 objectives of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth can be achieved through a strategic and integrated approach to research and innovation. The forthcoming Green Paper on a Common Strategic Framework for EU Research and Innovation funding will launch a wide public debate on the key issues to be taken into account in future programmes.    b) In the context of FP7, the work programmes covering the last years of this programme acted as a bridge to its successor. They introduced the integration of research with innovation to tackle societal challenges by providing more support than ever before for activities that helped bridge the gap between research and the market, for example by demonstrating that new technologies have commercial potential or can work on a sufficiently large scale to be industrially viable (close-to-market activities such as piloting, demonstration, standardisation and technology transfer have been proposed). This market-linked approach is also central to the European Innovation Partnerships (EIPs), set up under the Innovation Union action plan.    Horizon 2020, the biggest ever EU Research and Innovation programme with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020), has been launched in December 2013. Aimed at spurring economic growth and creating jobs, it represents a radical change from the previous research framework programmes, as it brought together in a single strategic framework formerly separate research and innovation programmes, introducing major reforms, like a most important increase in budget, coupling research to innovation with support at every stage to bring research results 'from lab to market' and a challenge-based approach through which the bulk of Horizon 2020's investment will be made in solving major societal challenges, requesting a problem-solving approach. Further to these, Horizon 2020 has a simple architecture, centred on three pillars, which makes it easy for participants to identify funding opportunities:  'Excellent Science', which aims to reinforce and boost the excellence of the EU's science base and to consolidate the European Research Area in order to make the Union’s research and innovation system more competitive globally;  'Industrial Leadership', which aims to speed up the development of the technologies and innovations that will underpin tomorrow's businesses and help innovative European SMEs to grow into world leading companies; and  'Societal Challenges', through which Horizon 2020 reflects the policy priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy and addresses major concerns shared by people in Europe - a challenge-based approach will bring together resources and knowledge across different fields, technologies and disciplines. The "three pillar" structure is complemented by the specific objectives 'Spreading excellence and widening participation' and 'Science with and for society'. Part of Horizon 2020's budget also goes towards funding the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), research activities carried out under the Euratom Treaty and research carried out by the Joint Research Centre.  Overall, in the implementation of Horizon 2020, account is taken of the need to build appropriate synergies and complementarities between national and European research and innovation programmes.    The Joint Programming Process, addressing societal challenges jointly between Member States, was supported in the last years of FP7 by providing support to the 10 JPIs in establishing structures and developing their Strategic Research Agendas and Implementation Plans. Furthermore transnational calls implemented by JPIs have been cofunded with ERA-NET Plus actions in two cases, paving the way to a broader support under Horizon 2020. Joint Programming and EC-co-funded Public-to-Public Partnerships (ERA-NET and Art. 185) have been redesigned in a way for H2020 which allows for more strategic cooperation between the national and EU level and to speed up this cooperation. Under H2020, the lessons learnt from FP7, have been put in place for ERA-NETs (ERA-NET and ERA-NET plus were merged, making it obligatory to launch a call under the new ERA-NET scheme). Art. 185 initiatives were brought closer to the Framework Programme, meaning that these initiatives are required to apply the Rules for Participation and Dissemination of the FP (derogations are only possible where operating needs so require). Also, H2020 more explicitly spells out the 3 needed levels of integration for an Art. 185. Finally, alignment with the objectives of H2020 is a basic condition for an Art. 185. Under FP7, the contribution to societal challenges was not a criterion for Article 185 Initiatives. Joint Programming in ERA was further spurred at the start of H2020 with the introduction by the Commission of the concept of alignment in order to increase interoperability between national science systems and align national priorities towards the JPI's SRA.    The Commission committed itself in the ERA Communication of 2012 to continue stimulating P2Ps, to map activities in agreed priority areas and to support MS and funding agencies to apply joint international peer review evaluations and setting common funding standards. Where EC funding is not involved, the EC has very little influence on developments. Eg commitment to Joint Programming remains completely voluntary for MS. The EC is a member in the GPC (Groupe de Programmation Conjointe) set up by the Council. More could be done in this group (however not on EC initiative) to define minimum conditions for JPI establishment and also for elaborating strategies for future joint priority areas for societal challenges.  A major task only partially tackled at the start of H2020 is the better concentration and deployment of synergies of national, transnational and EU-programmes. A true European research policy, taking full account of Art. 13 of the H2020 regulation (Synergies with national programmes and joint programming), is a difficult task and being established only slowly. In the EC point of view, societal challenges should guide the process as the vehicle to facilitate alignment of MS (and the EU level) towards common goals in the ERA.    The 2nd ERA progress report was published in September 2014. Although considerable progress has been made, further implementation efforts are needed. It was decided by the Council in February 2014 that an ERA roadmap should be developed by mid-2015 which should serve the purpose of facilitating and reinforcing the efforts undertaken by the Member States. These will have to be translated in National Action Plans before mid-2016. The Council also decided in May 2015 that ERAC will propose by the end of 2015 a set of core indicators and, where appropriate, qualitative methods allowing monitoring the implementation of the ERA Roadmap.    According to the 2014 Progress Report further work is also needed on the ERA monitoring mechanism (EMM) to identify and fine tune essential indicators of progress in ERA. To this end recently a study by ICF on ERA monitoring has been completed.    The Innovation Union flagship initiative (EU2020 Strategy) was a comprehensive strategy addressing a wide range of elements that impact Europe’s innovation eco-system. The strategy includes 34 commitments across a number of areas crucial for fostering innovation capacity in Europe. The main results are highlighted in the Staff Working Document (published in June 2014), e.g. p90 with a summary table of progress reached until 2014 : http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/state-of-the-union/2013/state\_of\_the\_innovation\_union\_report\_2013.pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none and Eurostat monitoring of the EU2020 indicators in research and development: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Europe\_2020\_indicators\_-\_research\_and\_development#How\_much\_is\_the\_EU\_investing\_in\_R.26D.3F |
| 2. To develop and implement high quality research infrastructures. Research infrastructures (RIs) are pivotal for the Knowledge Triangle, and as such are a pillar for implementing the ERA, but there needs to be coherence between what is funded by FP7 under the heading of Capacities, the ESFRI and capacity building undertaken as part of Cohesion policy and what is being considered in the context of Joint Programming. More effort should be made to boost RIs during the latter stages of FP7, especially the Integrated Infrastructure Initiatives (I3) that have the greatest scope for added value at European level. In addition there should be a focus on promoting their impact by establishing synergies between training instruments and utilisation of RIs and by stimulating industrial and third country access | a) The Commission recognises that infrastructure funding will be improved through better alignment of the FP, with funding from the European Investment Bank and Structural Funds. FP7 support for new research infrastructures targets the preparatory phase for projects in the ESFRI Roadmap and for some of these projects possible synergies with Cohesion Policy have been worked out and information disseminated to project consortia. The Commission is confident that synergies should bring results before the end of FP7. Support for Integrating Activities (I3) will continue to be provided for the last years of FP7. The reinforcement of training related to research infrastructures in the People programme is an interesting possibility to be considered. Following the Europe 2020 Strategy a work package on innovation could be included in all research infrastructure projects thereby favouring greater involvement of industry. The work programme 2012 will better highlight the possibility for researchers from third countries to benefit from access to European research infrastructures. The development of e-Infrastructures will connect researchers, instruments, data and computation resources throughout Europe, creating a seamless "online ERA". As an integral part of the Digital Agenda flagship initiative, this work will continue in the second half of FP7 including development of online services for computation and data-intensive research, the upgrade of the GÉANT network and further development of the PRACE supercomputing infrastructure.    b) The Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3) was devised for the integration of existing research infrastructures as one of the key actions under FP6. In FP7 "Integrating Activities" this activity has been implemented through both bottom-up and targeted approaches to support the integration of and access to national research infrastructures of pan-European and regional interest, corresponding to the follow-up of the FP6 initiative.    Under FP7, each funded project was a combination of three mandatory types of activities:  a) Trans-national access and/or services Activities, to provide trans-national access of researchers or research teams to one or more infrastructures among those operated by participants, and/or to provide access to scientific services freely available through communication networks.  b) Networking Activities, to foster a culture of co-operation between research infrastructures, scientific communities and other key stakeholders, and help developing a more efficient and attractive European Research Area.  c) Joint Research Activities, to improve, in quality and/or quantity, the services provided by the infrastructures.    In Horizon 2020, the aim of these "Integrating Activities" is to provide a wider and more efficient access to, and use of, the research infrastructures existing in EU Member States, Associated Countries and at international level when appropriate. Funding will be provided to support, in particular, the trans-national and virtual access activities provided to European researchers (and of researchers from Third Countries under certain conditions), the cooperation between research infrastructures, scientific communities, industries and other stakeholders, the improvement of the services the infrastructures provide, the harmonisation, optimisation and improvement of access procedures and interfaces.    Some Research Infrastructure projects under the ESFRI Roadmap have been supported by both FP/Horizon 2020 and ESIF and they illustrate concrete synergies. For instance, one example is the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project which aims to create the latest laser equipment in the world as a distributed infrastructure in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. Another example is the European Spallation Source (ESS) project which aims to build a powerful neutron facility of the next generation in Sweden. |
| 3. The level of funding should, at least, be maintained. Although the straitened budgetary conditions following the severe economic crisis will mean tough choices have to be made in public spending, the competitive challenges that the EU faces require sufficient investment in long-term economic development and there should be no reduction in funding for FP7 in its latter stages. There is a compelling case for continued substantial funding of research in the Eighth Framework Programme, not least as one of the key tools to achieve the Europe 2020 goals. A reasonable level of funding per year could be that reached in the last year of FP7. In relative terms, this would mean that the percentage of the total EU budget that FP7 will have when it ends should be regarded as a minimum. Funding at this rate would help to overcome the problem that many individual proposals adjudged to be excellent are not funded which, coupled with the substantial effort needed to prepare a proposal, may deter some of the best researchers from applying. | a) The Europe 2020 strategy acknowledges very clearly that research and innovation are the key engines of societal progress and economic prosperity. In order to meet the objectives of this strategy, the key challenges which need to be addressed at EU level and the challenge laid down by our competitors planning huge and ambitious investments for Research, Development and Innovation (RDI), there must be a credible funding level provided to the research and innovation framework. As proposed in the Budget Review, a common strategic framework will ensure a more efficient use of the EU's research and innovation funding by enhancing its EU added value, making it more results oriented, and by leveraging other public and private sources of funding.    b) The annual budget of FP7 steadily increased over the years, reaching a level of funding that was almost double in its last year in relation to the first one.    With total funding of €80 billion, Horizon 2020 is one of the few areas of the EU's budget for 2014 to 2020 to see a significant increase in resources, even if it was not as high as the budget foreseen in the Commission proposals. The first wave of the calls for proposals totals €15 billion for 2014/15. |
| 4. A well-articulated innovation strategy needs to ensure that instruments and priorities encourage participation from a broad spectrum of small and large enterprises, universities and research and technology organisations. The research and innovation strategy also has to take into account the need to support European enterprises’ efforts to integrate in global innovation networks. The open, international character of the FP7 could therefore be expanded. Specific actions should be taken in the context of the evolving financial crisis to channel financial support for research and innovation to areas of crucial importance for European competitiveness. An increased emphasis on monitoring progress in FP7 projects is needed if the intended impact is to be achieved. Innovation also requires more attention to the distinctive needs of industry, among which reductions in administrative burdens are vital. | a) The Commission agrees with the recommendation which is convergent with the orientations provided in the Communication on Innovation Union within the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy. In recent years, the approach to align FP funding priorities with the technology needs of industry, namely through encouraging European Technology Platforms and the support to Joint Technology Initiatives and Public-Private Partnerships, have not only increased the industrial relevance of FP research but also, more fundamentally, have helped whole industry sectors to align behind shared research strategies. As set out in the Innovation Union, future EU programmes should strengthen this, along with stronger knowledge transfer mechanisms and the launch of European Innovation Partnerships to bridge the gap with demand-side measures (such as standard setting, procurement and regulatory frameworks). While Innovation Union commitments will only be fully implemented in the next generation of spending programmes, the Commission is already investing significant effort in enhancing the innovation impact of the current Framework Programme. This will be achieved in the remaining FP7 work programmes, including through funding for projects which take research results closer to market (e.g. demonstration projects) and additional emphasis on innovation impacts in evaluating proposals. In addition, further funding will be provided for both SME specific projects and topics which are attractive to SMEs or organisations that are 'new comers' to FP7.    b) Under the FP7 two interim evaluations took place to monitor the implementation of the Joint Technology Initiatives Joint Undertakings (JTI JUs), highlight their first achievements and identify potential weaknesses. In particular the second interim evaluations, which were run in 2013, report on the very promising participation of industry, including SMEs, to the JTI JUs. The evaluations also confirmed that PPPs are a successful cooperation model to address in a pre-competitive way R&I challenges in specific technologies and JTI JUs are capable of creating and maintaining strong communities across industry, research organisations and academia. PPPs also created a critical mass of expertise to address the most complex problems and deliver high-quality scientific output. At later stage, the analysis of data on participation showed that large industry and SMEs accounted for about 30% of the participations each in the calls launched by the JTI JUs established under the FP7 (i.e. Clean Sky, FCH, IMI, Artemis and Eniac), which overall resulted in about 850 Grant Agreement signed.    Under H2020, apart from excellent science and fundamental, pre-competitive research (low TRL technologies), the full innovation cycle from research to retail is covered through calls for demonstration actions (more mature technologies, higher TRL levels), pilot and market replication projects, industrial scaling. Strategic investment decisions in key technologies underpin innovation across existing and emerging sectors through investment in Future Emerging Technologies, and Key Enabling Technologies, as well as investing in the Joint Technology Initiatives (public-private partnerships) in key industrial areas and through the European Institute of Technology (EIT) funding Knowledge and Innovation Communities that cover the ‘knowledge triangle’ (i.e. industry, research and education) to tackle some of the EU’s toughest challenges. Specific measures are taken to coordinate national funding and collective agenda-setting between specific Member States and between public and private actors (e.g. Article 185 initiatives, ERA-NETs, public procurement of innovative products and services) to provide additional leverage for funding research and innovation activities.  Furthermore, Horizon 2020 funds high-potential innovation through a dedicated SME instrument, supporting high-potential SMEs in developing ground-breaking ideas for products, services or processes that are ready to face global market competition.  Funded research under H2020 takes a problem-solving approach focussing on grand (societal) challenges that know no national borders, and encourages and supports all types of innovation (e.g. service, product, process, social, business, organizational, etc.). European Innovation Partnerships bring together all relevant actors at EU, national and regional levels and focus on societal benefits and a rapid modernization of the associated sectors and markets in order to achieve targets quicker and more efficiently in addressing societal challenges e.g. in the area of health, urban development, agriculture, water and materials shortage.    By the end of 2013, 127 RSFF operations had been approved by the EIB, with a total loan volume of €16.2 billion, and the Bank had signed loan agreements with 114 R&I promoters, with a total loan volume (active loans) of €11.31 billion. The sector diversification was broad, and the instrument had been implemented in 25 countries. Also by the end of 2013, RSI, the pilot loan guarantee instrument, had been implemented in 14 countries via 23 banks and other financial intermediaries for a total guarantee amount of €1.21 bn, underpinning a total loan volume of €2.4 bn. The number of final beneficiaries will continue to increase, under the terms of the pilot facility, until the end of 2016. The figures as of January 2015 show loans of around €1.06 billion to some 1800 companies employing about 116 000 people. The RSFF and RSSI reached and easily exceeded almost all their operational and intermediate objectives, while three evaluative assessments showed that RSFF (RSI was not within their scope) is well on its way to realising longer-term objectives and wider achievements. These assessments (two interim evaluations and a special report by the Court of Auditors), coupled with an ex ante evaluation of potential financial instruments under H2020, formed the basis for the design and launch in 2014/2015 of a new generation of 'InnovFin' financial instruments targeting a wide range of firms and other entities: large firms, midcaps, SMEs, universities and research institutes, public-private partnerships, and special-purpose vehicles or projects. InnovFin offers access to loans, guarantees, counter-guarantees and hybrid, mezzanine and equity finance. |
| 5. Simplification needs a quantum leap, and the Expert Group calls for all Directorates-General and agencies rapidly to implement the short-term simplification measures recently put forward in a Communication by the Commission and to ensure that they are applied rigorously from 2011-2013. Coherence of procedures and approaches between Commission Directorates General and the Executive Agencies responsible for administering FP7 is of crucial importance. The Expert Group proposes that the Commission consider the upcoming revision of the Financial Regulations as an opportunity to create more flexible conditions for research in subsequent FPs. In addition the Group pleads for the Commission to switch from its present low-risk/low-trust attitude to a more trust-based and risk-tolerant approach. | a) The Commission has acknowledged the need for further simplification. The Commission Communication (COM(2010)187) on simplifying the implementation of the FPs, presenting a set of short term and longer term options, has triggered an intensive inter-institutional debate. While there is also a strong plea for stability and continuity as regards the applicable rules for FP7, a broad consensus emerges that fast progress should be made on three potential wins already on FP7:  A re-definition of the criteria for the acceptance of average personnel cost methodologies, removing the criteria for acceptable deviations between average costs in a personnel category and the actual costs related to the individual persons working in the projects. This would allow for the acceptability of majority of average personnel cost methodology actually applied as usual accounting practice by beneficiaries, in particular in industry, including the cost-centre based methods;  Provision of a possibility for owners of SMEs and natural persons not receiving a salary registered in the accounts to reimburse the value of their work brought into FP7 projects by way of a flat rate based on the allowances for Marie Curie fellowships in the People specific programme;  Establishment of a clearing committee between the Directorates-General in the Commission implementing the research framework programmes, in order to achieve a uniform interpretation and application of the rules and procedures for implementing research grants;  The Commission has on 24 January 2011 adopted the required implementing decisions to set the above simplification measures in operation without further delay and with retroactive effect for ongoing FP7 grants. The issue of interest on pre-financing is addressed in the Commission proposal COM(2010)815 for the revision of the Financial Regulation. The revision of the Financial Regulation, as proposed by the Commission, is also essential for achieving more radical simplification ('quantum leap') in the next research and innovation funding programmes.    b) The revised Financial Regulation was adopted, comprising the simplifications proposed by the R&I DGs: abandoning the obligation to report interest on pre-financing; eligibility of non-recoverable VAT.    Major simplification ("quantum leap") was introduced with the basic legal acts of H2020, in particular via the complete overhaul of the cost reimbursement approach:  - the principle of "One project - one funding rate", replacing the complex matrix of funding rates by organisation categories and types of activities  - the replacement of the 4 methods for charging indirect costs by a single flat rate    Moreover, the administrative burden is reduced by a lower number of ex-ante financial capacity checks and certificates on financial statements. Administrative rationalisation is achieved by a fully electronic grant management process through the Participant Portal as the one-stop shop for all interactions with applicants and beneficiaries. Ex-post audit is rationalised via the creation of a single audit service and the reduction of the period for ex-post audits from 5 to 2 years after project closure.    As an example, the MCA under Horizon 2020 were better streamlined – four main actions instead of big number of different actions. |
| 6.   The mix of funding measures in FP7 and successor programmes should strike a different balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches to research, with greater emphasis in the specific programme Cooperation during 2011-2013 on more open calls. It is also important to ensure that education does not become the forgotten side of the Knowledge Triangle and thus that the linkages between research and innovation are adequately complemented by research training. | a) Significant parts of FP7 already provide bottom-up approaches to research. These include the Marie Curie Actions (MCA) for researcher training and mobility and the European Research Council (ERC) for curiosity-driven research. Also noteworthy is the Future and Emerging Technology (FET) scheme which, through top-down thematic calls combined with bottom-up open calls is supporting multidisciplinary exploratory research in ICT. The move towards more bottom-up funding is set to continue, with the Commission proposal for further open, challenge-driven calls for proposals in the final years of FP7. Beyond this, the Innovation Union has committed to strengthen the role of the ERC and the issue of bottom-up versus top-down approaches will feature strongly in the orientation debate on the next FP. What is most important for the FP as a whole however is to ensure a proper balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches. Further to the comments concerning future activity strongly focused on major challenges, it is important to remember that this will only succeed if it allows creativity and ingenuity to flourish at the projects' and researchers' levels. The Commission reaffirms its support for the knowledge triangle concept and points to the ongoing work under the European Institute of Technology as also providing a major boost for the education component. Also, important will be the 'university-industry' forum and the 'knowledge alliances' announced in the Innovation Union Communication, as well as the development of appropriate skills for researchers to innovate as provided by the MCA.    b) Horizon 2020 continues with the bottom-up schemes known under FP7, such as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA), the European Research Council activities (ERC) and the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET). New schemes were added to them under the specific objective 'Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies' and under the priority 'Societal challenges', such as the SME instrument that provides staged and seamless support covering the whole innovation cycle to innovative SMEs showing a strong ambition to develop, grow and internationalise and the Fast Track to Innovation Pilot (FTI) that aims to attract newcomers and supports innovation actions on the basis of a continuously open call. In a way that transcends bottom-up and top down schemes, a novel strategic programming approach in the preparation of the biennial work programmes under Horizon 2020 ensures focus on areas where EU-level action has greatest impact, with a coherent set of actions from research to innovation and less prescriptive calls with fewer and broader topics to encourage new ideas, with more emphasis on impact and greater interdisciplinarity. |
| 7.   A moratorium on new instruments should be considered until the existing ones have been sufficiently developed and adequately evaluated, and care should be taken to avoid a confusing proliferation of instruments. | a) The remainder of FP7 will continue to work with the current legal base and the existing set of instruments. However, the Commission will examine the current portfolio of instruments to identify areas for simplification, possible redundancy and potential gaps. Novel approaches such as prizes or innovative procurement schemes should also be considered. This work will be supported in a number of ways including discussions within the European Research Area Committee (ERAC) and the forthcoming 'Communication on Partnerships'. The resulting ideas will be reflected in the Commission's proposals for the next FP. Making the best possible use of the EU budget will require gearing funding towards more European added value, stronger impact and enhanced leveraging. A common strategic framework as mentioned earlier will aim to ensure that all EU research and innovation funding works towards common goals and according to a shared strategy. This will in itself necessitate a development of a coherent and streamlined portfolio of instruments.    b) Radical simplification is one of the major features of Horizon 2020, the main aim being to make the programme more attractive to the best researchers and most innovative companies and to minimise financial errors. Simplification is fully reflected in its design, rules, financial management and implementation. Horizon 2020 aim to attract the strong participation of universities, research centres, industry and specifically SMEs and is open to new participants, as it brings together the full range of research and innovation support in one common strategic framework, including a streamlined set of forms of support, and uses rules for participation with principles applicable to all actions under Horizon 2020.    Horizon 2020 supports actions through one or several of the forms of funding provided for by the Financial Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012, in particular grants, prizes, procurement and financial instruments, without adding any unnecessary variations of them. |
| 8. Further steps to increase female participation in FP7 should be taken in its remaining years, in particular:  - Measures to boost female participation should be reinforced throughout project life-cycles, paying particular attention to overcoming gender-specific obstacles which women face.  - The Commission should reinvigorate its approach to promoting female scientists and should aim to galvanise Member States to address gender gaps, especially where female researchers face specific obstacles, while ensuring that it redoubles its efforts to achieve gender balance with a specific strategy for the remainder of FP7. It should accept its responsibilities in a leadership role, with the support of the Member States, to use positive measures for the training of female scientists, including a dedicated scheme under the Marie Curie actions.  - The 40% target for female participation in Programme and Advisory Committees should be sensitively but rigorously implemented. | a) The Commission attaches great importance to this issue although notes, since the FP is only a small part of total European research activity, the limits to what it can achieve on its own. Real progress necessitates a common approach actively supported by funding agencies and researchers across the European Research Area. In this context, the Commission accepts the challenge of taking a leading role. Further to the current activities - notably the 40% target; monitoring, awareness and promotion activities; and successes under the Marie Curie Actions - a series of additional activities are proposed. The Commission will:  - fully implement the target to achieve 40% female participation in all evaluation and advisory committees – it will also seek the support of Member States to achieve this target for Programme Committees;  - launch new analyses with the support of Member States and research institutions to identify, by end 2011, the cultural and situational factors which help shape female researcher participation, as well as measures to overcome these;  - reinforce monitoring in all stages of the project life-cycle;  - under the Marie Curie Actions, reinforce the role of a dedicated Career Restart Panel, helping those who wish to resume a career in research after a break, for example due to maternity leave.    b) The EC has continued its effort in pursuing gender equality in Research and Innovation within the ERA and in the EU funding Programmes (FP7 and H2020). According to the Communication 'A Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth', the Commission is committed to foster gender equality and the integration of a gender dimension in Horizon 2020 programmes and projects from inception, through implementation to evaluation, including through the use of incentives. In H2020 three main objectives have been set: gender balance and equal opportunities in research teams at all level, gender balance in panels and advisory groups and integration of the gender dimension in research and innovation content. The Commission raised the target of the advisory groups to 50%.    In FP7 a target of 40% of the under-represented sex was set for experts' panels and other groups. The overall proportion of women evaluators was slightly higher than the target (40.4%). The European Research Area Board (ERAB) reached 45,5%, (higher than the FP6 European Advisory Board –EURAB- at 33%). The proportion of women in Advisory Groups, was overall 33%, with four of them ranging from 40 to 43%, three ranging from 37 to 39% and three lower than 30% (Space, NMP and ICT). Participation of women in Programme Committees increased from 2009 and almost reached the target (38 %).    The Commission published an expert report on 'Structural Change in research institutions - Enhancing excellence, gender equality and efficiency in research and innovation' in 2011. In 2014 the Commission published a report on 'Gender Equality Policies in Public Research' based on a survey among the members of the Helsinki Group, the Commission’s advisory group on gender, research and innovation. It gives a detailed analysis of the current state-of-play of EU Member States’ and associated countries’ initiatives for promoting gender equality in research and innovation. The Commission published the 2013 ERA Progress Report, presenting an overview of the political context, steps taken and first achievements. It was followed by the 2014 ERA Progress Report, which presented the new and updated measures adopted at national level, and for the first time compared them with the implementation of ERA actions at national level by research funding and research performing organisations. The monitoring in all stages of the project life-cycle has been enhanced and since the 6th FP7 Monitoring Report new indicators have been added: ie. for the Cooperation Programme the types of Gender Equality Actions implemented or the association of the gender dimension with the research content; projects workforce and gender of scientific staff for Cooperation, Capacities and Euratom Programmes. |
| 9. To pave the way for increased participation from Member States that are under-represented greater prominence should be given to improved connections between the Structural Funds and the FP. Moreover, within the FP, the importance of the People programme for developing the potential for scientists from EU12 should be stressed, as should the scope for using infrastructures. | a) A specific example of progress already being made is the Synergies Expert Group (SEG), set up to find synergies between FP7, the Structural Funds and the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme. With members from academic, policy and practical backgrounds, as well as the education corner of the knowledge triangle it will advise on both the current programming period (2011-2013) and into the next one, as well as on the future of FP7 regional actions. The SEG will benefit from recent analysis of synergies undertaken by the ERAC (European Research Area Committee). The Europe 2020 flagship initiatives on Innovation Union and the Digital Agenda have significant implications for achieving a better alignment of EU policies and activities, including research, innovation and cohesion funding. The Structural Funds should provide support for capacity building, such as for research infrastructures and actions to deploy high-speed internet across Europe, thereby broadening the base of EU research and innovation and building capacities for a knowledge-based society.    b) In its final report in 2011, the Synergies Expert Group made comprehensive recommendations on the development of synergies during the remainder of the 2007-13 programming period and the next (now current) programming period and on the future of the FP7 regional actions: Regions of Knowledge (RoK) and Research Potential (RP). Subsequently, in order to assist in the process of promoting synergies between European Structural and Investment funds and H2020, the Commission services have produced guidance to the relevant authorities through a staff working document (SWD (2014)205 final) which contains explanations on the basic rules and principles for obtaining synergies and combining the different funds, and contains recommendations to the relevant actors as well as Commission support to facilitate synergies. In addition, a short guide for the final beneficiaries has been produced. Since 2011 the Commission has invested more than EUR 250 million into the programmes Research Potential and Regions of Knowledge. Research Potential helped to build capacities in terms of infrastructure and human resources for research organisations in less favoured regions that often prepared the ground for significant investments from he structural funds. Regions of Knowledge helped to upscale regional research intensive clusters to European partnerships and to align their research agendas with regional smart specialisation strategies.    Horizon 2020 includes for the first time a clear legal mandate to maximise synergies with the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF).    Horizon 2020 allocates around EUR 800 million for the period 2014-2020 through the specific Part IV dedicated to 'Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation'. These 'Widening actions' of Horizon 2020 are also aimed to fostering synergies: the excellence of beneficiary institutions will be stepped up through Horizon 2020 whereas the necessary physical infrastructures of these institutions are expected to be built up through ESIF. Part IV also contributes EU 150 million to the Intergovernmental Framework COST in order to develop and connect pockets of excellence in less research performing countries.    The Marie Curie Actions are perceived as a good entry point into collaborative research.  The process of raising awareness of the EU-13 research organisations and researchers about the possibilities of funding is in place. Working more closely with the National Contact Points from the EU-13 Member States, sharing best practices and organising specialised workshops are important elements of ensuring broader participation of EU-13 in the Framework Programme.    Under FP7, 11 ERA Chair projects have been funded to enable institutions to attract top academics so that they can compete with centres of excellence elsewhere in the European Research Area (ERA) and in the world. The selected institutions have to award ERA Chairs to outstanding academics who have the capacity to raise standards and attract more high level staff as well as money from other sources, such as EU research funding or regional funds. ERA Chair holders can come from anywhere in the world. Currently, under H2020- Spreading Excellence Widening Participation, 13 projects have been selected for funding and the grant agreements will be signed soon. |
| 10. Opening of the FP7 to international cooperation is of great value. As other regions rapidly strengthen their research and innovation capacities (with Asia perhaps being the most notable example), but also as the urgency to address global challenges grows, the ability of European research and innovation to link up with other regions, markets and research and innovation agendas and to meet global needs for innovative solutions to ‘Grand Challenges’ becomes increasingly important. A review based upon a thorough analysis of the current strategy towards international cooperation is needed. The international perspective must be integrated into all programmes and instruments. | a) FP7 is already very open to international collaboration and involves participants from more than 160 countries. But both in finance and total numbers of participants the scale of this collaboration is relatively small, notably with the leading and emerging research nations. This is a serious missed opportunity which must be addressed. Building on the experience of existing initiatives such as EU bilateral S&T agreements and coordinated calls there is an urgent need for a more strategic approach.  To this end the Commission will carry out a major review - to report by the end of 2011 - of its strategy for international collaboration. This will examine how to build critical mass and specialisation, in areas of European need and comparative advantage, taking into account the proposal above (2.1) for a future focus on major challenges. In this context, it will also be essential to better define the common and respective roles of Member States and the Framework Programme as well as the means, such as through the Strategic Forum for International S&T Cooperation, to identify areas of common interest and approaches.    b) In September 2012 the Commission adopted a Communication on 'Enhancing and focusing EU international cooperation in research and innovation: a strategic approach' aiming at strengthening the Union’s excellence and attractiveness, tackling global societal challenges, and supporting the Union’s external policies. The dual approach proposed (openness and targeted international cooperation activities) has been applied while ensuring coordination with EU MS and AC and devoting growing attention to address framework conditions.    A first two-year implementation report with roadmaps for eleven countries and regions published in autumn 2014 acknowledged the implementation of the strategy and recommended to better integrate international cooperation in the work programme development and to refine the communication strategy.    However the preliminary results of the first Horizon 2020 calls have shown a sharp decline in the participation of International Partner Countries compared to FP7. This is also due to the fact that BRIC-M partners are no longer systematically funded. Redress measures will be implemented through the 2016-17 work programmes to be published in autumn 2015. |

21.The Assessment of Impact of FP7 At National Level

I. Summary of the evidence base

The evidence base concerning the assessment of the impact of FP7 participation at national level is summarised in the table below:

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Item | Country | Literature reference | Methodology employed |
| 1. | Sweden | Impacts of the Framework Programme in Sweden [78](#footnote78) | Impact analysis based on bibliometric analysis, longitudinal analysis dating back to 1990 participation statistics and interviews |
| 2. | Austria | Evaluation of Austrian Support Structures for FP 7 & Eureka and Impact Analysis of EU Research Initiatives on the Austrian Research & Innovation System [79](#footnote79) | Mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods based on surveys, interviews, literature review, logical framework analysis and secondary data analysis. |
| 3. | Denmark | Firm Participation: Descriptive Statistics and Impact Assessment (to be published by Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation in September) | Quantitative method |
|  |  | The evaluation of Danish participation in FP6 and FP7 [80](#footnote80) | Survey, interviews and statistical analysis |
|  |  | Bibliometric performance analyses of publications from Danish researchers linked to FP6 and FP7 (to be published by Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation in September) | Bibliometric analysis |
| 4. | Czech Republic | The 6th Continuous Report on the CZ Participation in the FP7 [81](#footnote81) | Statistical methods including regression analysis and network analysis |
| 5. | United Kingdom | The impact of the EU RTD Framework Programme on the UK [82](#footnote82) | A mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods including desk research, survey and interviews |
| 6. | Slovenia | Participation in the EU FP – Policy implications [83](#footnote83) | Advanced statistics including correlation analysis (Pearson's) and cluster analysis |
| 7. | Switzerland | Impact of Swiss Participation in the Seventh European  Framework Programme for Research [84](#footnote84) | Survey and statistical analysis |
| 8. | Norway | Norwegian Research Barometer 2013 [85](#footnote85) | Participation statistics and international benchmarking based on indicators |
|  |  | An evaluation of the Norwegian participation in FP6 and FP7 [86](#footnote86) | A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods based on survey, interviews, case studies and bibliometric analyses |
|  |  | On motives for participation in the Framework Programme by Technopolis [87](#footnote87) | Desk research, survey and interviews |

II. Main findings and policy implications based on evidence aimed at assessing the impact of FP7 participation at national level. (see evidence in order of reference above)

1. Impacts of the FP participation on Sweden

The study suggests that the FPs have had some important impacts in Sweden and that some of the areas of limited impact result from a lack of strategic direction from the Swedish side. The FPs have had limited strategic impact because there are not many strategies to impact. This is a vicious circle: in the absence of national strategy, it is difficult to articulate how the FPs’ strategies should change in order to serve the national interest. Partly as a result of this, the FPs’ ambition to structure’ research in Sweden has not been realised at all.

The FP resources have added a little scale but not changed the structure of the higher education and research sector – and certainly not helped address the long-standing problem of fragmentation. In principle the FP resources could be used to support restructuring, but only in the presence of national strategies.

It appears likely that the FPs have had a positive influence on research quality.

Where there are strong industrial lobbies or groupings, it has helped generate agreement about technical directions and influenced standards – and this has been very beneficial for major Swedish companies. It has more broadly supported industrial innovation in both small and large firms.

The analysis also points to circularities. Where there is a national strategy or an industry strategy, the FPs can be recruited to this cause. The openness of the FPs to strategic ideas means that where there are powerful lobby groups, their ideas are likely to be adopted, and the vehicles industry example shows that this can have very positive industrial effects.

While the FPs have tended (with varying degrees of success) to conserve existing strong industrial structures (vehicles) and even to build on success (telecommunications) they have had no visible industrial effects in the science-based life sciences and health industries. For example, they have not significantly been able to encourage the needed industrial risk-taking in sustainable energy

The study showed that the effect of the FPs in the universities is – with some modest exceptions – to magnify national efforts and strategies. In the absence of such strategies (formal or de facto), it is hard for the FPs to add value in their present form. European-level, redistributive instruments such as centres of excellence and competence centres would probably be needed in order to overcome such national constraints on the FPs’ mission to restructure research within the ERA.

  

From the Swedish perspective, the most urgent policy implications are:

- An acute need to develop strategies for thematic and institutional concentration in the ERA

- A need to communicate about strategy and needs to the Commission and with the research and industrial communities

- A requirement to support increased Swedish participation in the Technology Platforms and other new structures such as the JTIs – not least because it is not clear that the FPs will continue in their present form

- A need to maintain a fully independent set of national strategies and programmes tuned to national needs but more deliberately to consider how to use the complementary resources available from the FPs. A slavish reproduction of the FP priorities is in the interests neither of Sweden nor of Europe

- A need to find policy mechanisms that can compensate or substitute for the Framework Programme’s weakness as an instrument to tackle fragmented SME- and technology-based industries

- A need for new mechanisms that can go beyond R&D support to tackle some of the key innovation risks in radical technological change in areas like energy and climate change, where there is not necessarily time available to wait for a market solution to emerge but where risk-sharing between equipment supply and major users is a requirement for transition.

2. Impacts of the FP participation on Austria

Researchers generally consider national programmes, such as the FFG General Programmes, FWF support or fiscal support, more relevant to their needs than European programmes. Of the European programmes collaborative FP projects were considered the most relevant. The newer FP instruments such as JTIs and ERA-NETs barely figure on the agendas of even the most experienced FP participants.

Researchers participate in the FP primarily to get research funding. The FP is very complex, with high administrative barriers and low success rates. However, if researchers want to obtain public funding for international research projects there are few alternatives. Further, the FP is by far the most important programme that funds international cooperative research.

Participants consider follow-up projects the most important result of FP projects, though these need not necessarily be FP projects or even be tied to a funding programme. They consider research outputs more important than innovation outputs. This is because the FP is a pre-competitive programme in which universities and research institutes are the major players.

The most important impact of the FP are new and improved relationships, R&D collaborations, and the building and maintaining of research partnerships. Other important impacts are enhanced reputation, increased scientific and technological capabilities and the capacity to conduct R&D.

Radical innovations are not an important impact of FP projects. In fact, most participants felt that the FP could not systematically produce radical innovations due to programme design and the selection procedure employed.

International research collaboration has become an everyday occurrence. The control group shows that a substantial amount of international R&D cooperation takes place outside international R&D programmes, mainly funded from own sources. However, the FP remains the most significant public funding source for this type of activity. Researchers participate because it suits the needs of themselves or their organisation– not for idealistic reasons. It is important to note that training of young researchers not only occurs in the human resources oriented measures (People Programme and ERC Starting Grant) but also in the „traditional‟ cooperative FP projects.

Almost two thirds of Austrian FP users reported that the benefits of participation outweighed the costs. Interestingly, researchers from different types of organisations (universities, institutes, companies) gauged the costs and benefits in similar ways. This is also true for SMEs, suggesting that Austrian SMEs know how to position themselves in the FP.

The analysis implies the need for three significant changes in strategic direction for Austrian research and innovation policy:

 

- Rejecting the idea of FP participation as a goal in itself and therefore abandoning the goal of maximising participation

- Mainstreaming internationalisation in research and innovation policy and re-conceiving it as „globalisation‟ rather than just „Europeanisation‟

- Unlocking and adapting the internationalisation support apparatus to focus on promoting behavioural additionality: that is, learning how to understand and participate in new international activities, rather than subsidising the continued performance of activities that have (or should have) been learnt or that should be taken over by other actors.

3. Impacts of the FP participation on Denmark

The main findings are that most of the outputs sought and produced through FP projects are research outputs (publications, conferences, trained personnel, etc.), and there is far less activity in relation to innovation outputs such as new products, patents, licenses and so on. This is to be expected given the pre-competitive nature of the research carried out within the FPs.

It is notable, however, that a significant proportion of participants do rate innovation outputs as important but the projects appear far more likely to deliver them at a level below expectations, while the research outputs are generally delivered in line with or above expectations. With regards to the benefits of participation, a comparison of the motives and goals of the participants with the benefits actually realised indicates that FP projects do tend to deliver the kinds of impacts that the participants are seeking.

The main positive benefits realised include new relationships and networks, increased understanding and knowledge, increased scientific and technological capabilities, and enhanced reputation and image. The vast majority of participants report medium-high impacts in each of these areas.

One of the major impacts of the FPs has been to increase the level of collaboration and networking between scientists and technologists at an EU-level, and based on our analyses we have estimated that during FP6 Danish participants were exposed to some 10,000 new partners, almost half of which are expected to endure in the future. This level of networking and partnership formation simply could not be achieved in the absence of FPs.

The study shows that more than two-thirds (68 per cent) of Danish FP6/7 participants have realised a positive benefit to cost ratio, with the reminder split between those who stated that the costs and benefits were evenly balanced, and those who stated that the costs of participation had outweighed the benefits.

Those reporting a negative benefit to cost ratio pointed to problems associated with the high levels of administration and bureaucracy involved the limited amount of funding received, difficulties in securing cofounding to support their participation, and failure to achieve the scientific objectives of the projects.

The study identified in relation to the execution of FP projects concerned the very high administrative and reporting burden that falls particularly on project coordinators.

There is, however, a potential issue with regard to the level of support available for SMEs during the projects. It is not clear that SMEs enjoy the same level of support as their university counterparts, and while the EuroCenter is very good at encouraging participation and helping to explain how the whole process works, it is not clear that it is able to provide the same level of support to SMEs as can be assigned by the universities to their own researchers. Danish industry participation rates are in line with the FP averages as a

whole, but companies receive a far lower share of the funding than might be expected, given their level of participation.

The study recommends among others that efforts are made to develop a stronger mapping of Danish research strengths in both the public and private spheres, in order to (i) improve understanding of areas where Danish FP participation can be strengthened, (ii) improve partner-matching services, both within Denmark and across the EU, and (iii) improve promotion of Danish research capabilities.

4. Impacts of the FP participation on the Czech Republic

An international comparison shows that the CZ is consistently among the five member states with the lowest participation in FP7. The CZ’s low rate of participation is partly caused by the fact that in the long term, Czech teams have been involved in preparations of significantly fewer project proposals (in international comparison) than what the size of the Czech population or the capacity of the Czech research and development system would suggest.

However, an important role is also played by the success rate of submitted proposals. The CZ’s participatory success rate has reached 19.5%, which was lower that the success rate of the old member states (21%) but higher than that of the new member states (17.7%). The differences are even greater if we are to consider financial success rates. Analyses suggest that the CZ’s financial success rate has been significantly degraded by teams that worked as project coordinators.

Czech teams cooperated with more then 14 000 foreign teams during FP7. This means that FP7 provided Czech institutions with an unprecedented opportunity to develop international cooperation in research and development. Almost 700 Czech teams have been given a chance to collaborate with teams from the most important European scientific and research institutions on FP7 projects. The report provides evidence that Czech teams have made more use of this opportunity than teams from the other new member states.

The most common participants in FP7 are teams from universities. However, in the case of the CZ, participants from private enterprises and organisations are almost as numerous as Czech university teams, and the private teams expend significantly greater amounts for their participation than do the university teams.

FP7 enabled Czech teams to cooperate with the most important European research institutions. The ten institutions that received the highest amount of contributions from the FP budget, aka TOP10, are undoubtedly among the most prestigious European R&D institutions. Cooperation with the TOP10 significantly increases participatory success rates of all EU-28 states.

5. Impacts of the FP participation on the UK

Impacts on research

The FP has had a big impact on the nature and extent of UK researchers’ international relationships and networks, as well as on their knowledge base and scientific capabilities. Other notable outcomes include increased scientific reputation, an improved ability to attract and retain worldclass researchers and a positive impact on researcher careers. Lastly, FP has had a positive impact on the attitudes, outlook and connectedness of individual researchers, as well as serving as a training ground for project management and administration.

Impacts on business

The FP has yielded important commercial benefits. UK business participants had made or gained access to new or significantly improved tools or methodologies and other forms of intellectual property. Participation had contributed to the development of new products and processes and increased income and market share.

Framework would appear to have been of especial importance to UK intermediaries, private laboratories and technology consultancies. One might reasonably expect these ‘knowledge carriers’ to be sharing the benefits of FP-derived know how and methods with their clients. Lastly, company interviews suggested that FP participation had made a significant contribution to the competitiveness of leading players in several niche technology markets, from inkjets to photonics.

Impacts on policy

There is scant evidence of specific impacts on UK policy, however UK government departments and agencies have benefited from the FP in various ways, but in particular from:

- Stronger relationships with their counterparts around Europe

- An increase in the volume of research funded in some areas of policy interest

- An increase in awareness regarding overseas colleagues’ priorities

- An ability to more readily address questions one might struggle to progress nationally

Impacts on international relationships

The FP has had a large, positive impact on UK researchers ability to work successfully with universities or businesses outside the UK, however knowledge exchange might not be as strong as the statistics suggest, with a tendency for work to be conducted in a somewhat fragmented fashion as largely discrete, smaller projects.

Impacts and instruments

The study was unable to establish a line between particular FP instruments and the scale of their respective impacts. Participants and stakeholders did express strong preferences for particular instruments, although this tended to reflect ‘fitness for purpose’ and administrative efficiency to a much greater extent than the fruitfulness of the instrument in question. On balance, it seems that UK stakeholders – officials and participants alike – value two things above all else from amongst the FP’s portfolio of instruments: they like the scale and scope of the work that can be supported through the FP; and they like the growing number of bottom-up instruments.

Opportunities for change

The biggest challenge would seem to relate to the issue of widening participation outside the areas where UK universities and research institutes have been so successful: life sciences, ERC, Marie Curie, Research Infrastructure. This relates to business engagement in particular, with whole swathes of businesses seemingly unaware of or indifferent to FP. Moreover, comparing participation data with income statistics suggests UK businesses have been playing secondary or otherwise less intensive roles than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.

6. Impacts of the FP participation on Slovenia

Based on availability of data, the following factors, which might affect performance in FP were considered: number of inhabitants, scientific, technological excellence and innovation of a member state, investments in RD and time of accession to EU. It is evident that the year of accession to EU (“learning effect”) has no effect on FP indicators. However, the R&D expenditure, which highly correlates with RDI excellence, as well as the population in member state account for 92% of differences between Member states in their financial contributions per retained project.

Recommendations:

Firstly, performance of member states in FP is strongly related to the investment in RD in a country. In order to improve their participation, the countries therefore need to invest more.

Secondly, population of a county matters. In case of big countries this is likely due to the existence of internal networks of actors, which collaborate on national scale, and continue with the partnerships on EU scale. In fact, a recent survey in ICT area demonstrated that the coordinators choose their research team in 49% from previous collaborations and 27% on the suggestion of other consortium members.

This means that for a collaborative research, networking and cooperation skills may be as important as research expertise, which represents a barrier for newcomers from smaller countries who are not well connected to European networks. Of course, little can be done to increase the size of population of a country in order to offer more possibilities for networking on a national level, but it can virtually grow in size by opening its programmes to collaborations across borders and thus contribute to stronger integration of its research community in ERA. Lastly, measures can be established in Member States, which will stimulate researchers to take leading roles in projects. With this, their visibility, impact as well as financial participation is likely to increase.

7. Impacts of the FP participation on Switzerland

The positive net financial return or financial return coefficient is thanks to the very competitive nature of the Swiss research community. This community boasts internationally top-level players in many disciplines, who are above average in successfully attracting framework programme funding.

The framework programmes are an important source of funding for research and development (R & D) activities in Switzerland Overall, participants in FP projects stated that 62% of these projects would most certainly not have been realised without FP funding. Participation in the FPs has a positive impact on the economy and creates jobs.

Currently available data suggest that each time a Swiss company or institution participates in a framework programme project, this leads to the creation of two jobs on average, although these are temporary in two out of three cases. Jobs are also created indirectly when start-up companies are generated as the result of participation in an FP project. There is also an economic benefit from project participation when this leads to new patents and other forms of intellectual property (e.g. copyright, trademark registration etc.) and frequently as a result of commercialisation. Furthermore, in many cases companies were able to increase turnover as a result of participating in an FP project.

The study shows that participation in FPs has an impact on knowledge and skills production. FPs provides access to international R&D and the FPs complement national research funding.

  

8. Impacts of the FP participation on Norway

Project impacts.

The FP6 participants report extensive impact of their projects on their R&D capabilities and activities, and significant long-term effects are found. The EU projects explore new research areas of significant importance for the participants’ future research/innovation activities. A substantial proportion of the projects have had positive effects on research and innovation capabilities, and long-term cooperation links. The FP6 participants’ research activities are becoming more collaborative, international and organised in larger projects. Moreover, Norwegian researchers participate in more European collaboration also outside the FPs. In other words, the behavioural additionality of participation in the Framework Programme is high.

Limited synergies with national priorities.

The data suggest a potential for increasing the alignment of national research with participation in the Framework Programme, in particular within the thematic priorities of Health and ICT, and also Ideas and People. There are indications of substantial synergies and integration of Norwegian research with the Framework Programme: a high number of Norwegian researchers are involved in the Framework Programmes (the FP6 survey alone, accounting for 42 per cent of the Norwegian participations, report 2499 involved researchers). About 18 per cent are PhD students indicating potential for long-term synergies and integration. Moreover, 72 per cent of FP7 applicants report that the project was an integrated part of their organisation’s internationalisation strategy.

National policy measures.

Norway’s participation in EU research involves a number of organisations and measures. For the Norwegian research community, two issues are critical for their participation and for this reason need to be improved: better advice on how to combine national R&D funding with FP activities, and more assistance with financial rules and regulations, audits and financial reporting.

Recommendations:

- Internationalisation as a comprehensive national research strategy

- Ease the administrative and economic burdens

- Ensure increased participation of the large enterprises

- Improving conditions and participation of SMEs – improve dissemination of results

- Transferring the skills of successful participation and experts

  

22.COST (Co-operation in Science and Technology)

COST is an intergovernmental framework that funds the networking of nationally funded research in an intergovernmental structure since 1971. The Commission finances the networking and the operations of the secretariat (COST office) but not the underlying research itself. In FP7 a grant totalling 250 Million € was allocated to the European Science Foundation (ESF) as the host organisation for the Framework. Evidence for the impact and effectiveness of the Framework has been provided by the final report submitted by ESF (1) FP7 final review (2) and an impact assessment commissioned by ESF to the Technopolis Group (3).

According to the impact assessment (3) COST was effective on networks and network building, capacity building, structuring and agenda setting and had an overall impact on wider economy and society. The impact on networking is to some extend expressed by the sustainability of the actions leading to follow-up funding. E.g. 473 successful follow-up projects in the Framework Programme were initiated and COST participants attracted 22 ERC and 35 ERA-NET grants. In addition COST participants were successful in other instruments such as Lifelong Learning Programme, Life Programme, the Structural Funds, Artemis, Clean Sky or IMI. Successful capacity building in FP7 e.g. was achieved by 8981 participations in training schools and 5069 short term scientific mission whereby approximately 50% of the participants were Early Stage Researchers (ESR). The impact on structuring and agenda setting at an international level was assessed by a survey where the most frequent answer (36%) stated a moderate impact. At the level of individual actions more favourable answers were given in terms of enabling more effective collaboration and faster, dissemination and the provision of a platform for coordination of scientific work. Impacts on wider economy and society could be identified in case studies e.g. by addressing climate change, cultural heritage and contributions to standardisation.

The FP7 final review (2) highlights the added value of COST for scientific networking and acknowledges the contribution of COST for the career development of early stage researchers (45 % participation) and scientists from new member states. They state a considerable leverage effect of the COST networks attracting on average per year 650 million € of national funding. In addition, COST managed to extend the range far beyond its 35 member states by collaborating with 17 Near Neighbourhood Countries around Europe and further 27 global partner countries. Interviews with stakeholders revealed a high level of satisfaction. However, some room for improvement for governance and management is stated while acknowledging the progress already made by the deployment of new electronic workflow management and the envisaged reform of the Committees and the evaluation system.

The ESF final report for the FP7 grant (1) highlights the achievements in terms of scientific networking (370 actions carried out), inclusiveness policy, internationalisation and dissemination (more than 300 publications funded). A high demand from the scientific community is expressed by the submission of more than 8000 proposals at stage 1.

In conclusion the intergovernmental framework had a significant impact on overcoming the fragmentation of nationally funded research activities, promoted transdisciplinary research strands, built capacities for researcher careers and expanded the range of the European science community globally.

  

23.Ex-post evaluation of FP 7 using the NEMESIS model

A first attempt of retroactive or ex post evaluation of FP 7 was carried out using the NEMESIS model which was used for the "ex-ante" impact assessment. For this assessment, actual figures were used in the simulations, reflecting funding allocation and responses.

The actual data of the 7th FPRD

Data provided by the DG-RTD consisted of FP7 funding by starting date, country, type of institution, EC contribution and total R&D expenditures. It was assumed an average duration of 3 years for each project, and an allocation of 50 % the first year and 25 % the next two.

These assumptions are quite different from the ones used in the ex-ante evaluation.

The actual amount of financing over the period 2007-2016

The total EC contribution used in the simulation was EUR 40.8 billion
[88](#footnote88)
 over the period 2007-2016, for a total amount of R&D of 58.2 billion. This amount was lower than the one used in the ex-ante evaluation.

The annual EC contribution by country was estimated taking into account the assumptions about average duration of the projects and the real yearly allocation of funding (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Distribution of amounts financed and total per year (EUR million)1

  

The breakdown of public/private finance

In the ex-ante evaluation, the hypothesis was that the private sector would receive 60 % of the EC funding, whilst the public sector would receive 40 % of it. However, in the actual situation it seems that the ratio is closer to 25 % for the private sector and 75 % for the public on average, albeit with significant differences between Member States (see Figure 2). This difference between the assumptions and the actual situation is important and will in particular affect the average leverage.

Figure 2:2 Share of private companies in the financing fp7 between Member States

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15020.jpg)

EC contribution allocation between Member States

In the ex-ante assessment, two different kind of EC funding allocations were used. The first one consisted on a proportional allocation according to their R&D expenditure, called "grand-fathering". The second one was based on performance using the Innovation scores. In the ex-post simulation, the actual allocation was used. It varies quite significantly from the ones used in the ex-ante simulation (see Table 1).

  

Table 1 Distribution of funding by Member State (% of total)1

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Country | FP 7 | Grandfathering | Performance |
| DE | 17.63 % | 29.56 % | 25.71 % |
| UK | 17.24 % | 12.09 % | 15.55 % |
| FR | 12.86 % | 17.39 % | 15.64 % |
| It | 8.94 % | 7.45 % | 9.65 % |
| NL | 8.31 % | 4.70 % | 5.01 % |
| ES | 8.14 % | 4.80 % | 6.14 % |
| BE | 4.78 % | 3.32 % | 3.18 % |
| SE | 4.36 % | 5.31 % | 3.84 % |
| At | 2.92 % | 3.35 % | 2.46 % |
| DK | 2.66 % | 2.85 % | 2.54 % |
| GR | 2.49 % | 0.54 % | 1.24 % |
| FI | 2.17 % | 2.46 % | 1.84 % |
| IE | 1.55 % | 1.00 % | 1.33 % |
| PT | 1.29 % | 0.86 % | 1.11 % |
| PL | 1.09 % | 1.27 % | 1.46 % |
| HU | 0.72 % | 0.52 % | 0.48 % |
| CZ | 0.71 % | 1.11 % | 0.89 % |
| If | 0.42 % | 0.34 % | 0.26 % |
| RO | 0.35 % | 0.21 % | 0.43 % |
| BG | 0.24 % | 0.10 % | 0.12 % |
| EE | 0.24 % | 0.12 % | 0.10 % |
| CY | 0.23 % | 0.03 % | 0.13 % |
| SK | 0.19 % | 0.23 % | 0.26 % |
| LU | 0.15 % | 0.19 % | 0.34 % |
| LT | 0.13 % | 0.12 % | 0.09 % |
| LV | 0.12 % | 0.05 % | 0.05 % |
| MT | 0.05 % | 0.02 % | 0.03 % |

The EC contribution by thematic priorities does not correspond to the 30 economic sectors used in NEMESIS. Therefore, the allocation across sectors was done using the grandfathering method (R&D intensity in each sector) in the ex-post simulation.

Leverage

In the ex-ante assessment, the leverage effects (additional direct and indirect expenditure per EUR 1 million funding) selected were 0.3 for the public and 1.1 for the private sector. The analysis of the direct contribution (co-funding) by the stakeholders in FP7 shows an average leverage effect of 0.85 for the private sector and 0.28 for the public sector, with differences in time and space. As a result, the average leverage effect for Europe and over the whole period is 0.42 instead of 0.74 as used in the ex-ante assessment.

Figure 3 Average leverage effect on private by Member State3

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15020.jpg)

The results

The differences between the initial assumptions and the actual data led to a significant change of the results of the simulation. First, the total R&D expenditure considered in the simulation is estimated to be 58.2 billion euros, below the one originally simulated. Second, the higher contribution to the public sector modifies the spill-overs in the economy and in particular delay the maturity of research results reaching the real economy. Third the allocation of EU contribution between the Member States is significantly different than the one previously used. Fourth, no additional EU R&I spending is simulated after the end of FP7, in order to isolate its impacts.

It is estimated that the impacts of FP7 will take place during and after the conclusion of the projects, therefore the simulation considers the period 2007-2030 (24 years). On this period:

- FP 7 will cumulatively generate a total of additional 398 billion of GDP over the whole period, i.e. 16.6 billion per year, an additional 0.12 % GDP growth.

- FP 7 will create 950,000 Full Time Equivalents in research, and a total employment of 2.9 million Full Time Equivalents, equivalent to an average increase of 121,000 jobs/year

The original results obtained in the ex-ante Impact Assessment with the NEMESIS model for the same period were the EUR 560 bn of additional GDP and 4 million jobs. The difference is mainly explained by the reduced financing of the initial shock. A detailed analysis of the results also shows a lower multiplier of GDP in the first 15 years of the simulation, but growing faster at the end of the period, due to the more fundamental nature of the research carried out by public partners, which requires longer maturation periods to be economically efficient but also creates more externalities.

Annex 1

The comparisons of the cumulative multipliers between FP7 ex-ante and ex-post shows:

- The multiplier of GDP in the ex-ante evaluations is on average 6.3 to 15 years between 2012 (median of the temporal dimension of FP 7, and 2027.

- In the ex-post evaluation, the multiplier is 6.03, below, for the reasons indicated above. However, in 2027 the aggregate multiplier tends to increase more quickly than what was observed in the ex-ante simulation, probably because of the long-term impact of public innovation

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15021.jpg)
![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15021.jpg)

Top Graph: Results of the ex-ante simulation. Bottom Graph: results of the ex-post simulation

  

Annex 2: NEMESIS

General characteristics of NEMESIS

Nemesis is a system of sectoral detailed models for every EU- 28 countries, and less detailed models for the rest of the world.

NEMESIS distinguished 30 production sectors and decomposes households’ final consumption into 28 different consumption sub-functions. The public sector is very detailed, and the model can give a precise description of the evolution of the public accounts, as the debt to GDP and deficit to GDP ratios.

The core of the economic mechanisms results from the choices of representative private agents, that have imperfect expectations of the evolution of prices, incomes and demand, to make decisions on investment and consumption, and from public decisions, that influence trade-offs of private actors through taxation, public investment and expenditures, and of welfare payments.

The particularity of NEMESIS, compared to the other large scale simulation models for Europe, is that it is not a general equilibrium model, and all the behavioural equations of NEMESIS include econometrically estimated coefficients. Nemesis is therefore well adapted for the description of short to medium terms dynamics, and for the analysis of the impacts of structural policies, such as R &D and innovation policies. Nemesis, that is principally governed in short term by its demand side, has a long term trajectory never properties coming from the new theories of growth.

Endogenous technical change in NEMESIS

The endogeneisation of technical progress in nemesis is derived from by the new growth theories where innovations result from the investment in R &D by private firms. For a country, at a sectoral level, three main phenomena are involved in the assessment of R &D policies:

I. The R &D decision that increases the R &D stock of the sector;

II. The knowledge externalities, which following the accumulation of R &D stocks, flow towards other sectors’, and, what is important for European policies, towards other countries;

III. The economic performance resulting from all these spillovers and R &D expenditures, that, in NEMESIS, come from the innovations provoked by the variation of the knowledge variable at the sectoral level.

The innovations that appear in each sector are process and product innovations. This distinction between process and product innovation is crucial as the econometric studies show that process innovations alone have a negative, or only a slight positive impact, on economic performance and employment, whereas the impact of product innovations is always positive. Therefore, in NEMESIS, innovations enhance competitiveness, by price and quality improvement. They impact simultaneously on internal demand, notably on final consumption, in reason of an increased price to quality ratio, and of course on external demand by increased competitiveness. All these sectoral evolutions are articulated by the input-output tables of the model, and by the knowledge spillovers matrices. The result of sectoral interdependencies impulse a movement that is partially 'bottom-up'.

The pure macroeconomic feedbacks pass by the decrease in unemployment that enhances wages, consumption, and, at the end, the prices that will lower the competitiveness gains. These pure macroeconomic feedbacks are combined with the preceding bottom-up dynamic, to give a macroeconomic track of which characteristics are 'hybrid', combining macro and bottom-up forces.

Objectives and activities mentioned in Decision concerning the Seventh Framework Programme

Objectives and activities mentioned in DECISION No 1982/2006/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 18 December 2006 concerning the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007-2013)

Objectives and activities

1. The Seventh Framework Programme shall support the activities set out in points (i) to (iv). The objectives and the broad lines of those activities are set out in Annex I.

(i) Cooperation: supporting the whole range of research actions carried out in trans-national cooperation in the following thematic areas:

(a) Health;

(b) Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology;

(c) Information and Communication Technologies;

(d) Nano-sciences, Nano-technologies, Materials and New Production Technologies;

(e) Energy;

(f) Environment (including Climate Change);

(g) Transport (including Aeronautics);

(h) Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities;

(i) Space;

(j) Security.

(ii) Ideas: supporting ‘investigator-driven’ research carried out across all fields by individual national or transnational teams in competition at the European level.

(iii) People: strengthening, quantitatively and qualitatively, the human potential in research and technological development in Europe, as well as encouraging mobility.

(iv) Capacities: supporting key aspects of European research and innovation capacities such as research infrastructures; regional research driven clusters; the development of a full research potential in the Community's convergence and outermost regions; research for the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs’) (11); ‘Science in Society’ issues; support to coherent development of policies; horizontal activities of international cooperation.

2. The Seventh Framework Programme shall also support the non-nuclear direct scientific and technical actions carried out by the Joint Research Centre (‘JRC’) as defined in Annex I.

  

24.FP7 publication data

24.1.Basic information

OpenAIRE has identified 171,258 publications linked to 12,680 FP7 projects
[89](#footnote89)
. Note that each publication can be attributed to more than one programme, which is why the total publication

per programme is higher, than the total number of publications.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
|  | Publication pr. programme |
| - Cooperation: | 81,993 publications (47.83% of total); 37,948 Open Access |
| - Ideas: | 63,417 publications (36.99% of total); 38,577 Open Access |
| - People: | 21,867 publications (12.76% of total); 14,769 Open Access |
| - Capacities: | 11,598 publications (6.75% of total); 7,260 Open Access |
| - Euratom: | 631 publications (0.37% of total); 198 Open Access |

24.2.How did we identify them?

-Through our extensive network of National Open Access Desks in 33 European countries that advocate for Green OA so researchers deposit print/post print publications in institutional or thematic repositories, and for Gold OA so that they use FP7 funds to publish in OA journals. Fully OpenAIRE compliant repositories automatically identify and report these publications.

-Integration of EC’s reporting databases (SESAM) into OpenAIRE data, after this is cross checked with existing OpenAIRE data and CrossRef.

-Claims on the portal from researchers or project coordinators: 5,254 publications claimed by 323 users over a period of 2+ years.

-Text mining for FP7 grants in the full text of publications which mostly come from thematic repositories (arXiv, PMC Europe), IRs with which OpenAIRE has bilateral agreements (CNR-PUMA, Fraunhofer, etc.), and one scholarly society (ACM).

24.3.Where did this data come from?

OpenAIRE retrieves its data from a variety of data sources: institutional and thematic repositories, OA journals, EC databases from project reporting, claims by researchers or project coordinators on the OpenAIRE portal, and various publishers databases. Some of this metadata is ingested into the system in a periodic manner (e.g., harvesting) and some in a once-off manner (e.g., delivery of EC databases). Once we retrieve the metadata we apply an intensive and continuous cycle of cleaning, enriching, de-duplication and re-cleaning processes in order to increase the quality that leads to meaningful statistics.

Table 1. Publications from OpenAIRE data sources.

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Data source type | Total publications | OA publications |
| Publication Repository | 140798 | 64317 |
| Publication Catalogue | 89947 | 55868 |
| Information Space | 65512 | 40475 |
| Thematic Publication Repository | 55936 | 35842 |
| Institutional Publication Repository | 40971 | 29865 |
| Journal Platform | 9060 | 8988 |
| Aggregator/Publisher of Journals | 8473 | 8473 |
| Other Source | 2615 | 1322 |
| Aggregator of Publication Repositories | 1276 | 956 |
| Data Repository | 388 | 195 |
| Scholarly Communication Infrastructure | 129 | 124 |
| Entity Registry | 53 | 46 |
| Aggregator of Data Repositories | 5 | 5 |

We have noticed a clear upward trend in institutional and thematic repository deposition. 
[Figure 1](#_Ref301345083)
 shows the figures for institutional repositories with data recorded from the past two years of OpenAIRE operation, while 
[Figure](#_Ref301345685)
1 shows the most “active” repositories.

 

Figure 1. FP7 publications in institutional repositories over time.

24.4.What type of publications?

The typology in 
[Table 2](#_Ref302036581)
 is based on the OpenAIRE guidelines vocabulary
[90](#footnote90)
. A new vocabulary for publication/resource types is under discussion under the umbrella of COAR
[91](#footnote91)
.

Table 2. FP7 publications by type

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Type | Publications |
| Article | 151751 |
| Conference object | 7024 |
| Unknown | 3315 |
| Review | 2843 |
| Part of book or chapter of book | 1608 |
| Report | 1290 |
| Research | 976 |
| Preprint | 975 |
| Other | 437 |
| Doctoral thesis | 413 |
| Book | 343 |
| Master thesis | 122 |
| Software | 39 |
| Contribution for newspaper or weekly magazine | 34 |
| Lecture | 33 |
| Dataset | 22 |
| External research report | 15 |
| Data Paper | 11 |
| Bachelor thesis | 3 |
| Annotation | 1 |
| Patent | 1 |

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15022.jpg)

Figure 2. FP7 publications by type.

24.5.Overall observations and statistics

171,258 FP7 publications have 126,159 a DOI and 112,416
[92](#footnote92)
 have links to the Scimago (
<http://www.scimagojr.com>
) database. Even though these numbers can be further increased and refined via queries to CrossRef, we need to pay special attention and do further processing (disambiguation, de-duplication) as CrossRef’s generic APIs does not allow for specialized/advanced queries.

[Table 3](#_Ref302042195)
 and 
[Figure 4](#_Ref302042212)
 show the FP7 publications over the years. 16,282 publications do not have a valid publication date.

Table 3. FP7 publication timeline

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Year | Publications |
| 2007 | 164 |
| 2008 | 1,130 |
| 2009 | 5,319 |
| 2010 | 12,400 |
| 2011 | 21,438 |
| 2012 | 32,237 |
| 2013 | 42,019 |
| 2014 | 32,797 |
| 2015 | 7,254 |
| N/A | 16,500 |
| Total | 171,258 |

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15023.jpg)

Figure 3. FP7 timeline diagram.

24.5.1.Publications during-after the lifetime of projects

Most publications were published within the project lifetime (136,872), but an overall 13,74% (21,810 publications) were published after the project ended (published from 4,759 projects out of 11,571 completed projects).

The average number of publications per project within the project lifetime is 11,8 publications per project, while the average number of publications per project after the project ends is 1,88+ publications per project.

Table 4. Post grant publication rate.

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year after end of project | Publications | % from total post grant publications |
| +1 | 12,881 | 69% |
| +2 | 4,243 | 23% |
| +3 | 1,145 | 6% |
| +4 | 272 | 1% |
| +5 | 45 | 0% |
| +6 | 4 | 0% |
| Total | 18,590 |  |

   

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15024.jpg)

Figure 4. Schematic view of post grant publication rate.

24.6.Open Access Evaluation

From the total of 171,258 FP7 publications 92,826 are OA, 3,216 are restricted (i.e., OA but with a more restrictive license or restricted to specific groups), while 315 are still in embargo. This translates to a 54,2% success rate.

FP7 with SC39 clause (OA pilot) - 1,907 projects – 1,533 (80,3%) of them have ended.

21,535 publications from 1,203 projects - 12,740 are OA which is about 59% success rate.

Figure 5. Overall FP7 OA evaluation

Figure 5. FP7 OA pilot (SC39) evaluation.

[Table](#_Ref301170572)
5 shows the breakdown of FP7 publications from 2007-2015 broken down by their access state. The overall data is somewhat biased to closed access as a) we cannot easily define OA articles in hybrid journals, and b) there is still a large number of not fully OpenAIRE compliant repositories (i.e., no funding information attached to the publication metadata) so FP7 publications may have been deposited but not yet identified.

Table 5. FP7 publications 2007-2015 by access status

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Year | | Open Access | Closed Access | Embargo | Restricted | Total | OA success rate |
| 2007 | 142 | | 14 |  | 8 | 164 | 87% |
| 2008 | 783 | | 295 |  | 52 | 1,130 | 69% |
| 2009 | 3,179 | | 1,992 | 1 | 147 | 5,319 | 60% |
| 2010 | 7,039 | | 5,063 | 3 | 291 | 12,400 | 57% |
| 2011 | 11,385 | | 9,534 | 14 | 502 | 21,438 | 53% |
| 2012 | 17,271 | | 14,345 | 37 | 567 | 32,237 | 54% |
| 2013 | 23,035 | | 18,245 | 49 | 673 | 42,019 | 55% |
| 2014 | 21,911 | | 10,276 | 106 | 478 | 32,797 | 67% |
| 2015 | 5,871 | | 952 | 102 | 239 | 7,319 | 80% |
| Total | 90,616 | | 60,716 | 312 | 2,957 | 154,823 | 59% |

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15019.jpg)

Figure 6. FP7 timeline, including OA status.

Advanced statistics

24.6.1.Impact

After we cross-matched the OpenAIRE data to Scimago’s latest web files, we were able to come up with the data in 
[Table 6](#_Ref301530120)
. “High impact” journals are statistically computed for each thematic area by retrieving journals with the top 25% higher citation factors.

Table 6. Impact of FP7 articles from Scimago citation factors.

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Funding Area | Articles in 'peer-reviewed journals' | | Articles in 'peer-reviewed high impact journal' | High impact success rate | OA articles in 'peer-reviewed journals' | OA articles in 'peer-reviewed high impact journal' | Overall OA success rate |
| ENERGY | | 1,505 | 1,050 | 70% | 477 | 309 | 32% |
| ENV | | 5,794 | 4,213 | 73% | 2,638 | 1984 | 46% |
| ERC | | 39,788 | 26,858 | 68% | 27,077 | 17,857 | 68% |
| Fission | | 507 | 222 | 44% | 128 | 62 | 25% |
| Fusion | | 7 | 2 | 29% | 3 | 2 | 43% |
| GA | | 258 | 94 | 36% | 97 | 41 | 38% |
| HEALTH | | 18,601 | 15,579 | 84% | 10,277 | 8,785 | 55% |
| ICT | | 14,347 | 6,988 | 49% | 6,732 | 3,279 | 47% |
| INCO | | 74 | 24 | 32% | 21 | 10 | 28% |
| INFRA | | 6,025 | 3,052 | 51% | 3,723 | 1,791 | 62% |
| KBBE | | 5,209 | 3,812 | 73% | 2,524 | 2,003 | 48% |
| NMP | | 5,436 | 3,839 | 71% | 1,577 | 1,026 | 29% |
| PEOPLE | | 17,136 | 10,463 | 61% | 11,171 | 6,302 | 65% |
| REGIONS | | 14 | 7 | 50% | 9 | 6 | 64% |
| REGPOT | | 1,488 | 864 | 58% | 748 | 450 | 50% |
| SEC | | 371 | 217 | 58% | 112 | 66 | 30% |
| SME | | 423 | 263 | 62% | 138 | 86 | 33% |
| SPA | | 1,398 | 961 | 69% | 828 | 620 | 59% |
| SSH | | 242 | 178 | 74% | 170 | 123 | 70% |
| SiS | | 62 | 31 | 50% | 33 | 17 | 53% |
| TPT | | 688 | 374 | 54% | 167 | 92 | 24% |
| Total FP7 | | 119,373 | 79,091 | 66% | 68,650 | 44,919 | 58% |

24.6.2.Author statistics. Author networks.

Table 7. Statistics on authors of FP7 publications.

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Number of Authors | | |
| Scientific area | Average | Min | Median [93](#footnote93) |
| COH | 1.67 | 1 | 2 |
| ENERGY | 5.16 | 1 | 5 |
| ENV | 6.85 | 1 | 5 |
| ERC | 5.78 | 1 | 4 |
| Fission | 6.66 | 1 | 5 |
| Fusion | 9.00 | 5 | 6 |
| GA | 5.48 | 1 | 5 |
| HEALTH | 11.46 | 1 | 7 |
| ICT | 4.43 | 1 | 4 |
| INCO | 6.90 | 1 | 6 |
| INFRA | 8.47 | 1 | 5 |
| KBBE | 7.03 | 1 | 6 |
| NMP | 6.18 | 1 | 6 |
| PEOPLE | 12.64 | 1 | 4 |
| REGIONS | 4.28 | 1 | 4 |
| REGPOT | 8.06 | 1 | 5 |
| SEC | 5.30 | 1 | 4 |
| FP7 | 7.05 | 1 | 4 |

In addition we did some calculations and comparisons (simple network analysis) to see how authors collaborated during FP7 and whether these collaborations existed before and how they continued after (structuring and network effects). 
[Table](#_Ref301515966)
7 shows the values of author collaborations (in pairs) before the beginning, during the FP7 project, and after the a project for all projects that have finished by 31/12/2014. The overall numbers indicate that there is a clear increase in collaborations after the end of the corresponding FP7 projects: 158K author pairs having collaborated before and after they have co-authored at least one FP7 publication; 204K author pairs had collaborated before they co-authored at least one FP7 publications and have not collaborated (yet) afterwards, whereas 524K author pairs have collaborated for a publication after their initial collaboration for an FP7 publication.

Column explanation in 
[Table 8](#_Ref301515966)
:

Author pairs during: number of author pairs that collaborated for an FP7 paper

Author pairs before: author pairs that have collaborated before an FP7 paper

Author pairs after: author pairs that have collaborated after an FP7 paper

Author pairs before only: author pairs that have collaborated before an FP7 paper, but not afterwards

Author pairs after only: author pairs that have collaborated after an FP7 paper, but not before

Author pairs before and after: author pairs that have collaborated before and after an FP7 paper

Table 8. Author networks before, during, after FP7.
[94](#footnote94)
 

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Author pairs | | | | | |
| Scientific Area | During | Before | Before only | After | After only | Before & after |
| ENERGY | 2,571 | 727 | 461 | 1,926 | 1,660 | 266 |
| ENV | 35,466 | 9,284 | 6,541 | 27,528 | 24,785 | 2,743 |
| ERC | 234,905 | 67,247 | 39,572 | 87,971 | 60,296 | 27,675 |
| Fission | 14,218 | 6,922 | 2,911 | 11,106 | 7,095 | 4,011 |
| Fusion | 21 | 1 | 1 | 20 | 20 | 0 |
| GA | 516 | 98 | 47 | 469 | 418 | 51 |
| HEALTH | 194,918 | 36,308 | 22,581 | 156,128 | 142,401 | 13,727 |
| ICT | 33,541 | 8,927 | 5,543 | 23,544 | 20,160 | 3,384 |
| INCO | 354 | 229 | 187 | 166 | 124 | 42 |
| INFRA | 176,203 | 70,014 | 22,936 | 134,655 | 87,577 | 47,078 |
| KBBE | 28,222 | 14,273 | 11,467 | 12,478 | 9,672 | 2,806 |
| NMP | 14,971 | 4,441 | 3,103 | 9,942 | 8,604 | 1,338 |
| PEOPLE | 292,002 | 131,843 | 82,627 | 177,865 | 128,649 | 49,216 |
| REGIONS | 15 | 8 | 4 | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| REGPOT | 36,065 | 8,596 | 3,778 | 31,537 | 26,719 | 4,818 |
| SEC | 801 | 231 | 169 | 483 | 421 | 62 |
| SME | 1,153 | 288 | 165 | 908 | 785 | 123 |
| SPA | 16,005 | 3,305 | 1,946 | 6,038 | 4,679 | 1,359 |
| SSH | 780 | 81 | 50 | 177 | 146 | 31 |
| SiS | 358 | 23 | 17 | 180 | 174 | 6 |
| TPT | 681 | 295 | 207 | 390 | 302 | 88 |
| Total FP7 | 1,083,766 | 363,141 | 204,313 | 683,522 | 524,694 | 158,828 |

[Figure 7](#_Ref301515988)
 illustrates the results to show the trends in a schematic form. 
[95](#footnote95)

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15025.jpg)

Figure 7. Author collaborations affected by FP7.

Classifications

Bubble diagrams of classifications of all FP7 and broken down by FP7 scientific area. Select most fitting classification schemes.

Analysis details:

We applied a multi view probabilistic topic modeling based on:

Full text publications, project descriptions and SESAM Health related project reports related to FP7

o76.422 (total publications & reports)

oAlphabet count: 224.274 (distinct words)

oMax tokens per entity: 12.542

oTotal tokens: 136.978.231

Grants per publication

o64.771 links to 2.874 distinct grant ids

Research Areas per publication (based on above mentioned Grants)

o85.665 links to 20 distinct FP7 scientific areas

Venues / Journals (whenever available)

o59.931 references (links) to 797 distinct journals

Parameters:

We identified 320 topics based on 4 modalities over 1200 iterations.

ExportTopics\_FULLText.csv: 

Describes top (max 20) Phrases, words, related grants, related research areas & Venues per topic. Also contains related counts.

ResearchAreasPerTopic.csv: Describes related research areas per topic giving related weight (topic activation). Category1 is related to FET/NON\_FET projects, and Category2 is related to FP7 research area. Thus, one can see, order or filter topics per research area, research areas per topic, topics per FET areas etc.

Topic evolution (per scientific area) over time (snapshot from 2000-today) with focus on 2007-today – Sept 2015

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15026.jpg)

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.15027.jpg)

Figure 8. Interconnection of FP7 scientific areas based on common topics.

  

25.The Community Innovation Survey and FP7 innovation performance

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS)

The CIS is a survey of innovation activity in enterprises, carried-out by Eurostat and the national statistical institutes in a harmonised way. It provides information on the innovativeness of sectors by type of enterprises, on the different types of innovation and on various aspects of the development of an innovation, such as the objectives, the sources of information, the public funding, the innovation expenditures etc. The CIS provides statistics broken down by countries, type of innovators, economic activities and size classes
[96](#footnote96)
.

The CIS is carried-out every two years. It covers most Member States and Norway, with very large samples (more than 160,000 enterprises interviewed in the 2008 and 2010 editions, more than 140,000 in CIS 2012).

The CIS questionnaire includes a question that allows the identification of innovative enterprises that received financial support from the EU, and more specifically from the Framework Programmes. Therefore the CIS data permits to compare the innovation performance of companies that were involved in FP7 with those that did not receive such funding (i.e. counterfactual analysis). This requires analysing the results of the CIS raw data for its editions 2008, 2010 and 2012, in the Eurostat's Safe Centre in Luxembourg.

CIS caveats

The CIS' design presents some caveats:

– Geographical coverage: Neither all FP7 associated countries, nor all EU member states are covered by the CIS 2008, 2010 and 2012. Amongst member states, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Croatia, Austria, Poland and the UK did not participate in CIS 2008 or their data are not available. There are no data for the CIS 2010 for Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Malta, Austria and the UK, and Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Netherlands, Austria, Poland and the UK are absent for CIS 2012. Amongst associated countries, only Norway is present in all three editions.

– Time coverage: The CIS 2008 covered the years 2006-2008; the CIS 2010, 2008-2010; and the CIS 2012, 2010-2012. This implies three kinds of issues:

(i) The CIS 2008 data include one year before the start of FP7 (2007-2013);

(ii) the CIS 2012 data include one year after the end of FP7; and

(iii) there is an overlap of one year between one CIS edition and the next.

– Identification of enterprises that participated in FP7: The CIS questionnaire includes a question about "public financial support for innovation activities" from the EU, and notably from the Framework Programme. However, due to the filters of the questionnaire, this question is asked to enterprises that declared having introduced product, service or process innovations. This means that:

(i) The CIS allows to identify FP7-supported product, service and process innovators, i.e. companies involved in FP7 that introduced such kinds of innovations. FP7-supported enterprises that developed organisational and/or marketing innovations cannot be identified.

(ii) It is not possible to identify enterprises that received financial support from FP7 and did not introduce any product, service or process innovation. This is the main issue of the CIS; it does not allow to analyse to what extent FP7-supported enterprises introduced more or less innovations than those not financed by the framework programme. The analysis can only compare the performance (i.e. products, services or processes new to the market or new to the firm, and the turnover obtained) of innovators, with or without FP7 support.

The data from the different editions of the CIS cannot be aggregated in a single file, because of the time overlaps mentioned above, and because some enterprises (especially, large ones) are surveyed in each edition. Such aggregation would imply a double-counting. Each CIS dataset has to be analysed independently.

Despite these caveats, the CIS data provides very reliable information about the performance of FP7-supported innovators.

Innovation results

Comparing the performance of innovative enterprises financially supported by FP7 (and one year of FP6, for CIS 2008) with those not funded by the Framework Programme. They show that:

– Innovative companies supported by FP7 are more likely to introduced product or service innovations new to the market or the firm, and processes new to the market.

– Those FP7-supported innovative enterprises obtain on average higher proportions of their total turnover from such exploited innovations.

It is important to clarify that the correlations does not imply causality. Statistics do not demonstrate that the better innovation performance is due to FP7 participation. For example, it is also possible that FP7 attracted the best players in terms of innovation, which expected results are logically better. In any case, the results from the CIS analysis a better efficiency of innovators, in terms of market innovation, when they have been supported by FP7.

26.Contribution of FP7 themes and actions to overarching and specific objectives

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Objectives (what did we want to achieve)/ expected impacts | How did we want to achieve it? | What happened? (output/ real impact) |
| Overarching objectives | | |
| To contribute to the Union becoming the world's leading research area | Implementation of the whole FP7 | FP7 has generated large number of publications and patents:  - Number of patents per million inhabitants increased in the EU bridging the gap in the ratio in the US;  - filled weighted citation impact of FP7 publication is above EU average and in most cases above US average |
| To support progress towards the target of spending 3 percent of Europe's GDP on R&D by 2010, two-thirds of it financed by the private sector | Implementation of the whole FP7 | Considering the fact that FP7 represented 6,4 % of GBAORD, its influence on EU research spending was limited.    Despite the economic crisis, FP7 contribution has helped maintaining research activities at national level. |
| To support the creation of the European Research Area | Implementation of the whole FP7 | FP7 supported the completion of ERA in 2004 |
| To contribute to the development of a knowledge-based economy and society of Europe. | Implementation of the whole FP7 | FP7 resulted in a probable cumulative increase in GDP of € 398,000 million until 2030, an extra 0.12% annual growth in GDP.    The probable cumulative job creation of FP7 would be of 2,900,000 jobs.    The probable increase in extra-European exports will be by up to an extra 0.19 percent by the year 2030, and imports to be reduced by up to 0.03 percent. |
| Specific objectives | | |
| To enhance the competitiveness of European industry by the common technology initiatives; | Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation Programme, notably by:  thematic research, also benefitting SMEs;  launching Joint Technology Initiatives.    Implementation of the FP7 Capacities Programme, notably the  Risk Sharing Finance Facility  Research for the Benefits of SME Programmes    Implementation of the FP7 Ideas Programme, notably the  European Research Council (ERC) to foster frontier research      After the economic crisis, launching contractual Public-Private Partnerships.    Implementation of the People Programmes, notably the Marie Curie Actions (MCAs) and after the economic crisis the support to the European Industrial Doctorates and Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways. | Overall,€ 1 of FP7 contribution mobilised a direct contribution of € 0.85 by the private sector (co-funding)FP7    70% of FP7 participants reported improved competitiveness.    17% of the FP7 Cooperation Programme contribution was allocated to SMEs    5 JTIs launched which reached a critical mass of financial, organisational and human resources in areas critical for the EU competitiveness.    The RSFF mobilised € 16.2 billion in total loan volume.    SMEs participating in FP7 increased employment and operating revenue (38% higher than the control group).    Frontier research is expected to generate radical breakthroughs.    cPPPs have leveraged private investment, engaging top industrial companies, SMEs and research organisations securing overall funding. |
| To increase European wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs; | Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation programme, notably through:  Collaborative projects  ERANETs; ERANET+  Art. 185 initiatives    Implementation of the FP7 People, MCA network | FP7 created durable, inter-disciplinary, cross-sectoral networks.    Number of participating organisations in FP7 grew compared to FP6. 72% of the organisations were new to FP7.    FP7 mobilised 600,000 collaborations of which 450,000 were new.    FP7 fostered inter-disciplinary knowledge generation. In most thematic areas, FP7 co-publications between private sector and academia are higher than EU average.    More than 60% of co-publication patterns in FP7 continued after the project ended. |
| To contribute to an increase in the level of research investment (contribute to the realisation of the 3% Barcelona objective by more than doubling Community investment in R&D); | Implementation for whole FP, notably the JTIs, cPPPs and the RSFF    Implementation of the Capacities Programme – Research Potential | The overall FP7 leverage effect was 0.42.    The leverage effect of cPPPs was 0.5.    The RSFF had a leverage effect of 6.6 and multiplier effect of 28. |
| To improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies; | Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation Programme, in particular the ERANETs, ERANET+ and the Article 185 initiatives.    Implementation of the FP7 Capacities, Regions of Knowledge Programme (RoK)    Implementation of the FP7- Ideas – ERC programme    Implementation of FP7 – People- MCAs | FP7 effectively improved the coordination of European, national and regional research policies.    ERANETs mobilised € 2 billion national funding.    Art. 185 initiatives had a leverage effect 1:1.5    MCAs leverage effect was 1:2.5    ERC model adopted by 11 Member States |
| To strengthen the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe through increasing coordination and competition at the European level; | Implementation of the FP7- Ideas – ERC programme    Implementation of FP7 – People- MCAs    Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation Programme – thematic actions on collaborative research | FP7 publications in top 1 and 5% journals were above EU average.    FP7 cross-border co-publication patterns were above average of the EU, US, and world.    Increased participation in FP7 is highly correlated with patent applications, publications and number of PhD graduates employed.  FP7 attracted a high number of Nobel prize and Fields Medallists winners.    MCA mobilised the 100 best ranked EU universities. |
| To promote the development of European research careers and to make Europe more attractive to the best researchers; | Implementation of FP7 – People- MCAs    Implementation of the FP7- Ideas – ERC programme    Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation Programme – thematic actions on collaborative research    Implementation of the Capacities Programme – Research Potential | FP7 – People - MCA supported the development of scientific careers of 50,000 researchers (including 10,000 PhD candidates), representing over 140 different nationalities, located in more than 80 countries.    46% of researchers from industrialised countries stayed in Europe after the end of their fellowship.    FP fostered long term mobility (39% in FP7 vs 26% among non-participants).    FP7 contributed to more transparent and merit-based recruitment (30 – 40% of beneficiaries).    FP7 contributed to more long-term researchers recruitment (43% of researchers stayed in the team after the end of the project). |
| To provide the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies | Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation Programme thematic actions on collaborative research    Implementation of the FP7 Capacities, Coherent Development of Research Policies (COH) and Regions of Knowledge Programme (RoK);    Implementation of the FP7 Cooperation Programme – INCO    Implementation of the FP7 Capacities – activities of international cooperation | FP7 Cooperation Programme supported key Community policies.    FP7 Capacities Programme RoK contributed to smart specialisation strategies. INCO contributed to a broad range of Community instruments. |
| To increase availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure. | Implementation of the FP7 Capacities – research infrastructures | FP7 fostered the integration of around 900 research infrastructures in networks, which provided access and services to more than 20000 users so far and another 20000 potential users in the next years. |

27.FP7 Achievements according to the High Level Expert Group on the ex-post evaluation of FP7

1.
   Encouraged scientific excellence on individual and institutional level. FP7-IDEAS demonstrated its ability to attract excellent researchers and become a benchmark of individual excellence. FP7-PEOPLE has set a European standard for doctoral training of a new generation of excellent scientists. FP7-COOPERATION facilitated transnational collaboration and thus provided a platform for the best minds to work together in order to contribute to solving major societal challenges. FP7-CAPACITIES supported the involvement of excellent organizations from the SME sector, civil society, new EU Member States and developing countries in European research.

2.
   Promoted ground-breaking research through a novel programme FP7-IDEAS (ERC). The focus on supporting frontier research which, by definition, can be a risky endeavour, was enhanced. The number of publications in top rated scientific journals that acknowledge ERC funding, Nobel Prizes and Fields medals received by ERC grantees all attest to ERC grants becoming a mark of scientific excellence.

3.
   Engaged industry and SMEs strategically. Both, large corporations and SMEs have been involved extensively through increased public-private-partnerships, in particular the development of JTIs, and through a range of SME specific programmes. This has underlined FP7’s intended role of fostering Europe’s innovation-based competitiveness.

4.
   Reinforced a new mode of collaboration and an open innovation framework. This was achieved through a more decentralized approach to the design, structure and direction of projects across the ERC, JTIs and the EIT. During the FP7 period, the European Commission has adapted the programme to the economic crisis and has responded to the a more generalised pursuit of open innovation.

5.
   Strengthened the European Research Area by catalysing a culture of cooperation and constructing comprehensive networks fit to address thematic challenges. A unique capability of cross-border and cross-sector cooperation was promoted, with organisations from on average of 6 countries collaborating in projects funded by FP7-COOPERATION and FP7-CAPACITIES.

6.
   Addressed certain societal challenges through research, technology and innovation. FP7-COOPERATION included society-relevant themes, such as Health, Energy, Transport and Security, whilst FP7-CAPACITIES included a specific sub-programme that was dedicated to "Science in Society". Furthermore, the focus on gender equality evolved from exclusively promoting individual female scientists to facilitating structural change in institutions.

7.
   Encouraged harmonisation of national research and innovation systems and policies. In most EU Member States FP7 contributed to scientific excellence, focused on addressing societal challenges, and set standards for research funding mechanisms and selection processes. Through the sub-programme FP7-ERA-NET the cooperation and coordination of research activities carried out at national or regional level in the Member States and Associated States were intensified through networking of research activities, and the efforts to coordinate research programmes.

8.
   Stimulated mobility of researchers across Europe. FP7-PEOPLE has created the necessary conditions for an open labour market of researchers and supported their geographical mobility. Achievements during the FP7 period included fellowships gaining recognition as the best practice of doctoral training and the creation of attractive working conditions for geographically mobile researchers.

9.
   Promoted investment in European research infrastructures. A combination of the support for the European Strategy Forum Initiatives for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and FP7-CAPACITIES helped to achieve a more coherent and coordinated development and use of European research infrastructures.

10.
   Reached a critical mass of research across the European landscape and worldwide. Human and financial resources were made available to attract many organizations and individuals to collaborate with or work at European research institutions. Furthermore, a research programme of such scale has helped to put research on the public agenda and to show that research can be an instrument for economic and social development.

  

28.List of Acronyms

COFUND: Co-funding of Regional, National and International Programmes

COST: Scientific and Technological Cooperation

EIB: European Investment Bank

EIT: European Institute of Technology

EIF: European Investment Fund

ERA: European Research Area

ERC: European Research Council

ETP: European Technology Platform

EU: European Union

EURATOM: European Atomic Energy Community

FP: Framework Programme

GHG: Greenhouse Gases

GMES: Global Monitoring for Environment and Security

IA: Impact Assessment

IAPP: Industry-Academia partnerships and pathways

IMI: Innovative Medicines Initiative

INCO: International Cooperation

IPR: Intellectual Property Rights

JTI: Joint Technology Initiative

KBBE: Knowledge Based Bio-Economy

MCA: Marie Curie Actions

MPC: Mediterranean Partner Countries

NCP: National Contact Point

RI: Research Infrastructures

R&D: Research and Development

R&I: Research and Innovation

RTO: Research and Technological Organisation

RSFF: Risk-Sharing Finance Facility

SESAM: On-line Submission Tool

SME: Small and Medium-sized Enterprise

SP: Specific Programme

SPP: Strategic Planning and Programming

SSH: Social Sciences and Humanities

WP: Work Programme

:   [(1)](#footnoteref1)
     This analysis looked at 263 projects in the LS and PE domains from 314 completed projects from the first two calls (StG 2007 and AdG 2008). It counted only those reported patents which ERC was able to validate in the database of the European Patent Office. There were no reported patents from the SH projects in this sample.
:   [(2)](#footnoteref2)
     RR-1221-ERC, July 2015 by RAND Europe and Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST)
:   [(3)](#footnoteref3)
     After one call in 2013.
:   [(4)](#footnoteref4)
     CZ, DK, EE, FI, HR, HU, IE, LU, SE, SI, SK, UK.
:   [(5)](#footnoteref5)
     All EU countries except CY, EL, ES, IT and MT.
:   [(6)](#footnoteref6)
     All EU countries except CY, EL, ES, IT and MT. In BG, PT and RO the scientific councils have an advisory role.
:   [(7)](#footnoteref7)
     The “Fundamental Research Projects” launched by CY in 2009 and 2011, the “Researcher teams’ projects” of the LT Research Council and the ANR non-thematic schemes (FR) were most probably not inspired by ERC’s funding schemes.
:   [(8)](#footnoteref8)
     At their request NCN was able on several occasions to receive support and advice from the ERC including training and observing the ERC procedures.
:   [(9)](#footnoteref9)
     The Web of Science database maintained by Thomson Reuters covers around 12,000 peer-reviewed journals in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities going back in some areas to the 19th Century.
:   [(10)](#footnoteref10)
     January to September 2014.
:   [(11)](#footnoteref11)
:   [(12)](#footnoteref12)
     Out of the 10,796 publications reported by the 314 completed projects, 7003 (or 64 %) were indexed in Scopus.
:   [(13)](#footnoteref13)
     For publication window 2008-2010 and cited in 2012. Using full counting method.
:   [(14)](#footnoteref14)
     Lotka, A. 1926. The frequency distribution of scientific productivity. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 16(12), pp.317–324.
:   [(15)](#footnoteref15)

     
       May-Britt Moser AdG 2010 (Physiology or Medicine 2014); Edvard Moser AdG 2008 and AdG 2013 (Physiology or Medicine 2014); Jean Tirole AdG 2009 (Economics 2014); Serge Haroche AdG 2009 (Physics 2012); Konstantin Novoselov StG 2007 and SyG 2012 (Physics 2010); as well as Ada Yonath AdG 2012 (Chemistry 2009); Andre Geim AdG 2012 (Physics 2010); Christopher Pissarides AdG 2012 (Economics 2010); Jean-Marie Lehn AdG 2011 (Chemistry 1987) James Heckman AdG 2010 (Economics 2000); Theodor Hänsch AdG 2010 (Physics 2005).
:   [(16)](#footnoteref16)
     “Two Fields Medals 2014 awarded to ERC laureates”, August 2014: 
    <http://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/press_release/files/ERC_Press_Release_ICM_2014.pdf>
:   [(17)](#footnoteref17)
     MERCI - monitoring ERC's implementation of excellence.
    <http://www.research-information.de/Projekte/Merci/projekte_merci_lang.asp>
:   [(18)](#footnoteref18)
     Based on a survey which took place on average around four years into the ERC grant of each respondent.
:   [(19)](#footnoteref19)
     EURECIA - understanding and assessing the impact and outcomes of the ERC funding schemes. 
    [www.eurecia-erc.net](http://www.eurecia-erc.net)
:   [(20)](#footnoteref20)
     See the ERC Scientific Council Statement on Open Access of December 2006, and the Open Access Guidelines for researchers funded by the ERC (latest version: December 2014). Starting with the WP 2012 a Special Clause on Open Access has been systematically included in all Grant Agreements for ERC Frontier Research Grants.
:   [(21)](#footnoteref21)

     
       
    [Review of the European Research Council’s Structures and Mechanisms](http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/final_report_230709.pdf)
     (July 2009).
:   [(22)](#footnoteref22)
     Based on survey of StG 2007 grantees by EURECIA project (understanding and assessing the impact and outcomes of the ERC funding schemes). 
    [www.eurecia-erc.net](http://www.eurecia-erc.net)
:   [(23)](#footnoteref23)

     
       Final report Evaluation of Pertinence and Impact of Research Infrastructure Activity in FP7 EPIRIA
:   [(24)](#footnoteref24)
:   [(25)](#footnoteref25)
     Please also see eInfrastructure Policy Forum (http://www.euroris-net.eu/e-IPF) and Digital ERA forum (http://e-irg.eu/documents/10920/239416/RelatedPolicyGroups.pdf)
:   [(26)](#footnoteref26)

    Was established in 2002, bringing together representatives of the EU Member States and associated countries, appointed by Ministers in charge of Research, and a representative of the European Commission. The ESFRI roadmap – published in 2006 and updated in 2008 and 2010 – set out a list of RIs of pan-European importance, representing the outcome of systematic consultations with scientists and users. It provided a list of 48 new or significantly upgraded RIs to be developed by 2015-2020. A conservative estimate of the total development cost of the RI projects included in the ESFRI roadmap amounts to nearly 20 B€, and, on average, 2M€ will be required annually for their efficient operation. All the ESFRI projects are funded by various groups of EU Member States and Associated Countries. The Commission plays an active role in supporting the work of ESFRI by ensuring the secretariat of the forum. In 2012, the EU Council of Research Ministers enlarged the mandate of ESFRI in order to adequately address the existing challenges and to ensure the follow-up of implementation of already ongoing ESFRI projects after a comprehensive assessment, as well as the prioritisation of the infrastructure projects listed in the ESFRI roadmap. A list of priority projects has been agreed by ESFRI in April 2014. On this basis, the Commission further defined the Horizon 2020 support for the development of new world-class research infrastructures. https://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index\_en.cfm?pg=esfri-membership
:   [(27)](#footnoteref27)
     Assessment of the impact of the ‘Regions of Knowledge’ programme, Techopolis, 2011.
:   [(28)](#footnoteref28)
     The relationships with public authorities, universities and public research institutes have increased most significantly. SMEs represent almost 30% of participations in networks and there remains scope for higher involvement of SMEs and the private sector in general.
:   [(29)](#footnoteref29)

     
       The role of clusters in smart specialisation strategies, 2013.
:   [(30)](#footnoteref30)
     Average of 7 partnering organisations per project
:   [(31)](#footnoteref31)
     Final Evaluation’s (COWI, 2014) questionnaire survey
:   [(32)](#footnoteref32)
     Table 3 (p. 18 of the COWI’s Final Evaluation)
:   [(33)](#footnoteref33)
     Many proposals scored 14 and above and were rejected
:   [(34)](#footnoteref34)
     Impact Assessment of the Research Potential Programme, Expert Group 2011.
:   [(35)](#footnoteref35)

     
       Interim Evaluation and Assessment of Future Options for Science in Society Actions Technopolis Group, in collaboration with Fraunhofer ISI and Science-Metrix.
:   [(36)](#footnoteref36)
     The data exclude participations in ERC proposals (n=51,628) and ERC projects as these are not categorised by organisation type.
:   [(37)](#footnoteref37)
     
    [www.transitionproject.eu](http://www.transitionproject.eu)
:   [(38)](#footnoteref38)
     
    [www.benisi.eu](http://www.benisi.eu)
:   [(39)](#footnoteref39)
     evaluation of the CDRP programme
:   [(40)](#footnoteref40)
     The EU has signed ten strategic partnerships – Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, US.
:   [(41)](#footnoteref41)
     For the report by a group of independent experts on the first interim evaluation of the RSFF, see 
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/evaluations/pdf/archive/other_reports_studies_and_documents/mid-term_evaluation_of_the_risk-sharing_financial_facility_(rsff)_-_expert_group_report.pdf>
:   [(42)](#footnoteref42)
     In the PFLP approach, the EU contribution is used first to cover any losses in a portfolio of loans, but only up to a pre-defined percentage of losses (the so-called 'first-loss piece' or cushion). If losses exceed the EU contribution, the EIB covers all further losses.
:   [(43)](#footnoteref43)
     For the report by a group of independent experts on the second interim evaluation of the RSFF, see 
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/evaluations/pdf/archive/other_reports_studies_and_documents/interim_evaluation_report_rsff.pdf>
:   [(44)](#footnoteref44)
     COM(2011) 500, 29.6.2011, p. 9 and p. 11 of Part I.
:   [(45)](#footnoteref45)
     See A framework for the next generation of innovative financial instruments — the EU debt and equity platforms, COM(2011) 662, 19.10.2011.
:   [(46)](#footnoteref46)

     
       Decision 2006/970/Euratom, OJ L54/21, 22.02.2007
:   [(47)](#footnoteref47)

     
       Decision 2012/93/Euratom, OJ L 47/25, 18.02.2012
:   [(48)](#footnoteref48)
     “R&D Needs and Required Facilities for the Development of Fusion as an Energy Source”; Report of the Fusion Facilities Review Panel October 2008; ISBN 978-92-79-10057-4.
:   [(49)](#footnoteref49)
     “Potential Contributions of the JET Facility to Fusion Research in Relation to Support for ITER”, 11 July 2011; “Strategic Orientation of the EU Fusion Programme (with emphasis on Horizon 2020)”, 1 September 2011.
:   [(50)](#footnoteref50)

     
       Source: report on Ex-post Evaluation of R&D Actions in Nuclear Systems carried out under the Euratom 7th Framework Programme (2007-2011) and the Euratom Framework Programme (2012-2013) by Konstantin Foskolos and János Gadó, September 2014.
:   [(51)](#footnoteref51)
:   [(52)](#footnoteref52)
     J Roth et al, Jour. Nuc. Mat. 390-391, 1, (2009)
:   [(53)](#footnoteref53)
     Y Liang et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 265004 (2007); T E Evans et al, Nuc. Fus. 48, 024002 (2008) ; A Kirk et al, Plas. Phys. Cont. Fus. 55, 124003 (2013)
:   [(54)](#footnoteref54)
     High impact journals are defined to be the top 10% (in terms of SJR index) of all journals within a given scientific category. Data retrieved on 14 September 2015
:   [(55)](#footnoteref55)
     SJR - Journal Rank Indicator, it is a measure of journal's impact, influence or prestige. It expresses the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the journal in the three previous years (2011)
:   [(56)](#footnoteref56)
     Preliminary draft data from 2015 survey carried out by EUROfusion.
:   [(57)](#footnoteref57)
     Accelerator Driven Systems
:   [(58)](#footnoteref58)
     
    <http://myrrha.sckcen.be/>
:   [(59)](#footnoteref59)
     Commission Staff Working Document, Joint Technology Initiatives: Background, State-of-Play and Main Features, SEC(2007) 692, 15.05.2007. See the rationale in the Commission Staff Working Document, Report on European Technology Platforms and Joint Technology Initiatives: Fostering Public-Private R&D Partnerships to Boost Europe’s Industrial Competitiveness, SEC(2005) 800, 10.6.2005.
:   [(60)](#footnoteref60)
     The Cooperation Specific Programme identified six Joint Technology Initiatives, including apart from the five which were launched, the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) under the Space research theme. However GMES has been implemented not as a JTI but through an agreement with ESA and research grants, on the basis of a decision taken after the launch of the FP.
:   [(61)](#footnoteref61)

     
       COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 73/2008 of 20 December 2007 setting up the Joint Undertaking for the implementation of the Joint Technology Initiative on Innovative Medicines, Official Journal of the European Union, 4.2.2008
:   [(62)](#footnoteref62)
     European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
:   [(63)](#footnoteref63)

     
       The findings are extracted from the Second Interim Evaluation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, 2013.
:   [(64)](#footnoteref64)

     
       Another example illustrates IM's impact: EU-AIMS is currently the largest world study on autism spectrum disorders. It has developed an animal model replicating a form of autism and demonstrated that the condition can be reversed with specific therapy. This is crucial for clinical development of new treatments for autism. It has also demonstrated the 'father's age effect' as a risk factor for autism.
:   [(65)](#footnoteref65)
:   [(66)](#footnoteref66)
:   [(67)](#footnoteref67)
     Data taken from the FCH JU Annual Report 2013
:   [(68)](#footnoteref68)
     The survey was carried out by the FCH JU in March 2013 among 458 companies that are liaised to the FCH JU (154 people responded). The results of the survey are presented in the report “Trends in investments, jobs and turnover in the Fuel cells and Hydrogen sector”
:   [(69)](#footnoteref69)
     It should be born in mind that hydrogen and fuel cells are a disruptive technology that works with novel devices requiring new manufacturing lines and infrastructure. Penetration is inevitably slow as is the build-up of jobs that can be clearly identified with the sector.
:   [(70)](#footnoteref70)

     
       Interim Evaluation of the European Metrology Research Programme, 2011.
:   [(71)](#footnoteref71)
     Busquin, P., Aarts, E., Dózsa, C., Mollenkopf, H., Uusikylä , P., & Sharpe, M. (2013). Final Evaluation of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme. Brussels: European Commission.
:   [(72)](#footnoteref72)

     
       COM(2015) 34 final: REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL: Interim Evaluation of the Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme. BONUS
:   [(73)](#footnoteref73)
     Energy, Environment, Health, Information & Communication Technologies [only cognitive systems, interaction & robotics], Research Infrastructures [only e-Infrastructures], Science in Society, Socioeconomic Sciences & Humanities – see also other relevant annexes
:   [(74)](#footnoteref74)
     This green open access mandate was implemented through special clause 39 in the Grant Agreement.
:   [(75)](#footnoteref75)
      European Commission (2012) Survey on open access in FP7.
:   [(76)](#footnoteref76)
    <https://www.openaire.eu/postgrant/fp7-post-grant/pilot>
     . Central Application portal at https://postgrantoapilot.openaire.eu/#home
:   [(77)](#footnoteref77)
     See https://zenodo.org/collection/user-fp7postgrantoapilotoutputs
:   [(78)](#footnoteref78)
     http://www.vinnova.se/upload/EPiStorePDF/va-08-11.pdf
:   [(79)](#footnoteref79)
     http://www.technopolis-group.com/?report=evaluation-austrian-support-structures-fp-7-eureka-impact-analysis-eu-research-initiatives-austrian-research-innovation-system
:   [(80)](#footnoteref80)
     https://ec.europa.eu/research/evaluations/pdf/archive/fp7-evidence-base/national\_impact\_studies/evaluation\_of\_danish\_participation\_in\_fp6\_and\_fp7\_-\_main\_report.pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none
:   [(81)](#footnoteref81)
    http://www.tc.cz/cs/storage/52d3b3922fa7db203f933bea1b168c36f55e3912?uid=52d3b3922fa7db203f933bea1b168c36f55e3912
:   [(82)](#footnoteref82)
    https://ec.europa.eu/research/evaluations/pdf/archive/fp7-evidence-base/national\_impact\_studies/impact\_of\_the\_eu\_rtd\_framework\_programme\_on\_the\_uk.pdf
:   [(83)](#footnoteref83)
     http://www.arhiv.mvzt.gov.si/fileadmin/mvzt.gov.si/pageuploads/pdf/7OP/UNDERREPRESENT-STUDIJA.pdf
:   [(84)](#footnoteref84)

     
       www.sbfi.admin.ch/impakt-en
:   [(85)](#footnoteref85)
    https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/kd/kampanjer/forskningsbarometeret/2013/research-barometer-2013.pdf
:   [(86)](#footnoteref86)
    https://ec.europa.eu/research/evaluations/pdf/archive/fp7-evidence-base/national\_impact\_studies/evaluation\_of\_the\_norwegian\_participation\_in\_the\_eu\_6th\_framework\_programme\_(2003-2006)\_and\_the\_first\_part\_of\_the\_eu\_7th\_framework\_programme\_(2007-2008).pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none
:   [(87)](#footnoteref87)
     http://www.technopolis-group.com/?report=motives-participation-framework-programme
:   [(88)](#footnoteref88)
     This amount does not include the expenditures by ERC.
:   [(89)](#footnoteref89)
     OpenAIRE report DEC 2015
:   [(90)](#footnoteref90)
    <https://guidelines.openaire.eu/en/latest/literature/field_publicationtype.html>
:   [(91)](#footnoteref91)
    <http://purl.org/coar/igcv/deliverables>
:   [(92)](#footnoteref92)
     There are some cases that even if a DOI is not present, the journal is known.
:   [(93)](#footnoteref93)
:   [(94)](#footnoteref94)
     The data in this table is based on OpenAIRE July data and should not skew the conclusions, as i) it was calculated as an estimate based on full text, and ii) calculated distinct authors (by-passed deduplication).
:   [(95)](#footnoteref95)
     The data in this table is based on OpenAIRE July data and should not skew the conclusions, as i) it was calculated as an estimate based on full text, and ii) calculated distinct authors (by-passed deduplication).
:   [(96)](#footnoteref96)
     See: 
    <http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata/community-innovation-survey>
     and

[Top](#document2)

![european flag](./../../../images/eclogo.jpg)EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 19.1.2016

SWD(2016) 2 final

Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

Accompanying the document

Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions

On the Response to the High Level Expert Group on the Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

Accompanying the document

Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions

On the Response to the High Level Expert Group on the Ex-Post Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme

Contents

1.Introduction

2.Background to the initiative

2.1.Context and baseline scenario

2.2.Objectives and intervention logic

3.Evaluation Questions

4.Methodology

5.Implementation state of play

5.1.FP7 themes and activities

5.2.Budget, funding instruments and implementation

5.3.Impact of the economic crisis on the FP7 implementation

5.4.Situation for different stakeholders

5.5.Results from finished FP7 projects

6.Answers to the evaluation questions

6.1.How effective has FP7 been?

6.1.1.Has FP7 been effective in terms of enhancing the competitiveness of European industry through the joint technology initiatives?

6.1.2.Has FP7 been effective in increasing European wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

6.1.3.Has FP7 been effective in contributing to an increase in the level of research investment?

6.1.4.Has FP7 been effective in improving the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

6.1.5.Has FP7 been effective in strengthening the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe through increasing coordination and competition at the European level?

6.1.6.Has FP7 been effective in promoting the development of European research careers and in making Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

6.1.7.Has FP7 been effective in providing the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

6.1.8.Has FP7 been effective in increasing availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructures?

6.2.How efficient has FP7 been?

6.2.1.Has FP7 been cost-effective?

6.2.2.What are the benefits of FP7 so far?

6.2.3.Has FP7 been effective in reducing administrative burden?

6.3.How relevant was FP7?

6.4.How coherent was FP7 internally and with other (EU) actions?

6.4.1.Internal coherence of FP7

6.4.2.Coherence with other interventions

6.4.3.Coherence with wider EU policies and international obligations

6.5.What is the EU added value of FP7?

6.5.1.Additional value resulting from the EU intervention

6.5.2.Extent to which the issues addressed continue to require action and consequences of stopping EU intervention

7.Lessons Learnt from the Evaluation

7.1 Implementation Issues

7.2 Evaluation Process

8.Conclusions

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Intervention logic of FP7
   

Figure 2: Connectivity across Specific Programmes between disciplines, as reflected by publication contents.
   

Table of Tables

Table 1: FP7 EC Contribution allocated in open calls in EUR million
   

Table 2: Distribution of committed EC Contribution
   

Table of Graphs

Graph 1: Distribution of EC Contribution by type of organisation
   

Graph 2: FP7 EC Contribution, million EUR , Member States and top 3 Associated Countries
   

Graph 3: EC Contribution EUR million, top 20 third countries
   

Graph 4: Number of publications per EUR 10 million of EC contribution in FP7
   

Graph 5: Amount and share of commercial exploitations reported by finished projects, by priority
   

Graph 6: Number of finalised projects, number of projects with reported intellectual Property Rights and IPR projects reported as patent applications
   

Graph 7: Share of answers provided to the question "Based on your experience has the implementation of FP7been effective?" in the Stakeholder consultation, by type of respondent.
   

Graph 8: Average number of patent applications per 1,000 R&D personnel, Comparing FP participating and non-FP participating research performing organisations (2013)
   

Graph 9: Share (%) of co-publications Academia-Corporate by priority (2007-2015).
   

Graph 10: Share of pairs of researchers which published jointly in FP7 and continued doing so after the completion of the project.
   

Graph 11: Share of R&D (both public and private) as % of GDP

Graph 12: Share of the priorities' publications in top 1% and top 5% highly cited publications (2007-2015)
   

Graph 13: Field weighted citation impact of publications (2007-2015)
   

Graph 14: Patent applications and publication quotations by researcher in different scientific fields
   

Graph 15: Annual FP7 EC Contribution EUR per inhabitant pr. year
   

Graph 16: FP7 Annual EC Contribution per EUR million national RTD expenditure
   

Graph 17: Share of projects and of EC contribution to project contributing to at least one of the 78 EU SDS operational objectives in the FP7 - Cooperation 2007-2013.
   

Graph 18: Number of topics related to the 17 SDGs in FP7 "Cooperation" and "Capacities" Programmes
   

1.Introduction

According to the legal base of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities (FP7), an independent expert group (hereafter referred to as HLEG) should carry out an external evaluation of the rationale for, and implementation and achievements of, FP7 within two years of the end of the Programme, i.e. by the end of 2015.
[1](#footnote1)
 The Commission shall report on the findings of the HLEG report, its recommendations and the Commission's observations in a Communication.

This Staff Working Document of the Commission Services (SWD) accompanies the Commission Communication.
[2](#footnote2)
 The purpose of the ex-post evaluation of FP7 is to inform the European Parliament, the Council, Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee and Member States, the research community, the general public and other stakeholders about the achievements of FP7. It will also contribute to improving the implementation of Horizon 2020 and the Euratom Research and Training Programme 2014-2018, and provide input into the design of future Framework Programmes. 

[3](#footnote3)
The evaluations of the SWD cover FP7 and the combined Euratom Framework Programmes 2007-2011 and 2012-2013. JRC direct actions are part of the EC and Euratom FPs, but are evaluated separately from both programmes, as requested by Council and thus not covered by this SWD. It covers the seven years of implementation of FP7 from 2007 to 2013. It takes into account the objectives of FP7 at the time of its adoption as well as the effects of the changing context, which increased the focus on FP7 as a driver of growth with increased emphasis on industrial participation and innovation.

2.Background to the initiative

2.1.Context and baseline scenario

The Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) stated that EU action on research and technological development has as objectives: strengthening of the scientific and technological basis with the EU, promoting the free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technologies and encouraging competitiveness
[4](#footnote4)
. These objectives were replaced by the Lisbon Strategy in 2009 with: strengthening the EU's scientific and technological bases by achieving a European Research Area (ERA) in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely, and encouraging it to become more competitive, including in its industry. This emphasises a shift in focus toward jobs and growth.
[5](#footnote5)
 

When FP7 was designed, the EU was facing general challenges such as decelerating economic growth, increasingly fierce international competition supported by rapid advances of new technologies such as ICT, significant environmental degradation caused by global warming and climate change, as well as three specific challenges in the area of R&D: a low level of investment in R&D (1.97% of GDP in 2005 – both public and private),
[6](#footnote6)
 a "brain drain" effect leading the best researchers to move abroad, and a weak capacity to transform basic research results into marketable innovations.

A continuation of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6)
[7](#footnote7)
 as baseline scenario would have led to the persistence of specific and systemic weaknesses in the ERA and the attractiveness of the ERA would have continued to decline. It would also have sent a discouraging message to Member States who were committed to increasing their investment in R&D. Finally, it would have become more difficult to achieve cohesion in the area of research and innovation.
[8](#footnote8)

2.2.Objectives and intervention logic

The four overarching objectives of FP7 were: (1) to contribute to the EU becoming the world's leading research area
[9](#footnote9)
; (2) to support progress towards the target of spending 3% of Europe's GDP on R&D by 2010
[10](#footnote10)
 
[11](#footnote11)
; (3) to support the creation of the ERA; and (4) to contribute to the development of a knowledge-based economy and society in Europe.

The main focus of FP7 was on science, especially the promotion of collaborative research and excellence.

The ex-ante Impact Assessment of FP7 identified the following eight specific policy objectives for FP7: (1) enhancing the competitiveness of European industry through joint technology initiatives; (2) increasing European-wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs; (3) contributing to an increase in the level of research investment
[12](#footnote12)
; (4) improving the coordination of European, national and regional research policies; (5) strengthening the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe through increasing coordination and competition at European level; (6) promoting the development of European research careers and making Europe more attractive to the best researchers; (7) providing the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies; and (8) increasing availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructure.

Figure 1 shows that the intervention logic of FP7 was designed to maximize its impacts.

![](./../../../resource.html?uri=comnat:SWD_2016_0002_FIN.ENG.xhtml.13002.jpg)

Figure 1: Intervention logic of FP7

3.Evaluation Questions

In line with the 'Better Regulation' Guidelines, this SWD addresses the five evaluation questions of effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence and EU added value. The evaluation of effectiveness is organised around the eight specific policy objectives of FP7 used in the ex-ante Impact Assessment of FP7, as outlined in section 2.2.
[13](#footnote13)

4.Methodology

This evaluation has been coordinated by the Evaluation Unit of the Commission's Directorate-General for Research & Innovation
[14](#footnote14)
 with the support of an Inter-Service Group comprising other Commission services
[15](#footnote15)
. The evaluation is based on a wide range of sources comprising internal assessments by Commission services (based mainly on data from CORDA
[16](#footnote16)
, Eurostat, and other sources such as SciVal, OpenAIRE, Annual Monitoring Reports, ERA and other surveys) as well as external horizontal and thematic evaluation studies
[17](#footnote17)
, including the results of the interim evaluation of FP7 carried out in 2010
[18](#footnote18)
. It also includes the factual evidence stemming from the HLEG report.
[19](#footnote19)

The evaluation presents qualitative and quantitative results using a variety of methods
[20](#footnote20)
: surveys and interviews with FP participants; social network analysis; patent and bibliometric analysis; and microeconomic and macroeconomic modelling. Finally, the evaluation includes the results of the online stakeholders' consultation.
[21](#footnote21)

It deserves emphasis that this evaluation cannot and does not present a complete picture of FP7 results and impacts. The main reason is that this evaluation builds to an important extent on final projects reports and that so far
[22](#footnote22)
 only 12,149 FP7 projects
[23](#footnote23)
 (accounting for about 50% of the total number of FP7 projects) have finished. 

In addition, there is the well-known 'time-lag' issue, i.e. the fact that research projects take time to produce societal impacts: it takes years before the new knowledge generated within the scope of a single project or a portfolio of projects is valorised in the form of new products, processes, services and economic, social and environmental impacts.
[24](#footnote24)
 FP7 also accounts for a mere 7% of total public budgets and outlays for R&D (GBAORD) in Europe and, apart from FP7, a variety of other factors (economic growth, other policies) influence the uptake of research results
[25](#footnote25)
.

This is a significant point. There are indications that the increased emphasis in the later stages of FP7 on innovation and industry participation in order to respond to the economic-financial crisis is beginning to generate positive micro-economic effects. Participating organisations are reporting innovative product, process and service development, higher Technology Readiness Levels, and increased productivity and competitiveness. However, it is too soon to make a final assessment of the impact of FP7 on EU competitiveness.

It is not easy to compare and benchmark the performance of FP7 with that of other programmes. No comparable (in terms of scale and scope) single research and innovation programme exists anywhere in the world. With the exception of SME participation and gender, no performance indicators or targets were defined at the start of FP7. In addition, and as already mentioned, at the outset, FP7 was considered a programme, with each sub-programme and thematic area developing its approach to evaluation on a bottom-up basis, focussed on direct achievements. This was not fruitful as a basis for measuring impact at the level of the entire Programme.

To overcome these challenges, whenever possible (e.g. in the case of the analysis of participation patterns), FP6 was used as a benchmark. Where FP7 differed from FP6, assessments were based on counterfactual analyses or (partial) comparison with similar programmes elsewhere in the world.

5.Implementation state of play

5.1.FP7 themes and activities

In order to realise the objectives outlined in section 2.2, FP7 supported six types of activities through four Specific Programmes, JRC actions and Euratom actions:

–The 'Cooperation' Specific Programme supported trans-national cooperation on policy-defined key scientific and technological themes. It included 10 thematic areas
[26](#footnote26)
 and across all these themes, support for trans-national cooperation was implemented through collaborative research; Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs); coordination of non-Community research programmes; and international cooperation.

–The 'Ideas' Specific Programme supported investigator-driven research based on the initiative of the research community, implemented by the European Research Council (ERC), an independent scientific council.

–The 'People' Specific Programme supported individual researchers' career development, training and mobility through Marie Curie Actions (MCAs) and policy actions.

–The 'Capacities' Specific Programme supported research capacities through the following programmes: Research Infrastructures including eInfrastructures; Research for the benefit of SMEs; Regions of Knowledge; Research Potential; Science in Society; Coherent Development of Research Policies; and International Cooperation activities.

–The Joint Research Centre (JRC) actions provided customer-driven scientific and technical support to the Community policy-making process;
[27](#footnote27)

–The Euratom programme funded indirect research actions in fusion energy as well as nuclear fission and radiation protection, and JRC direct actions in the field of nuclear waste management, environmental impact, safety and security.

Each of the FP7 Specific Programmes had more detailed objectives
[28](#footnote28)
 and a dedicated Work Programme. The implementation of the Work Programmes involved a more integrated approach compared to previous FPs addressing all aspects, including horizontal priorities such as international cooperation, dissemination, SME activities and cross-cutting issues, with a strong central coordination across themes.

A detailed analysis of which FP7 themes and actions were expected to contribute to the FP7 overarching and specific objectives is included in Annex 26.

5.2.Budget, funding instruments and implementation

It is important to distinguish between the budget for FP7 and the amount committed in open calls, which covers the scope of the FP7 Ex Post Evaluation. FP7 had a voted budget of EUR 55 billion over its seven-year lifespan, almost three times higher than FP6. The FP7 EC contribution committed in open calls amounts to EUR 45 billion. The breakdown per Specific Programme is shown in Table 1. The differences between the budget and the EC contribution committed in open calls is explained by the JRC, ITER, EC administrative cost, and other non-competitive activities, which are not part of the open calls.

|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| All Countries, FP7 Signed Grant Agreements: Participation and Contribution by Priority Area  (committed funds) | | | |
| Specific Programme | Priority Area | Signed grant agreements | EU financial contribution to grant agreements (EUR ) |
| COOPERATION | Health | 1008 | 4.791.666.619 |
|  | Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology | 516 | 1.850.804.919 |
|  | Information and Communication Technologies | 2328 | 7.875.038.393 |
|  | Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies - NMP | 804 | 3.236.447.326 |
|  | Energy | 374 | 1.851.309.964 |
|  | Environment (including Climate Change) | 494 | 1.719.305.065 |
|  | Transport (including Aeronautics) | 701 | 2.272.243.197 |
|  | Socio-economic sciences and Humanities | 253 | 579.553.418 |
|  | Space | 267 | 713.287.662 |
|  | Security | 319 | 1.331.371.746 |
|  | General Activities | 26 | 312.687.984 |
| Subtotal: COOPERATION excluding JTI (59% of total funding) | | 7090 | 26.533.716.293 |
| COOPERATION | JTI-IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) | 56 | 930.895.602 |
|  | JTI-ARTEMIS (Embedded Computing Systems) | 38 | 142.246.025 |
|  | JTI-CLEAN SKY (Aeronautics and Air Transport) | 474 | 198.090.904 |
|  | JTI-ENIAC (Nanoelectronics Technologies 2020) | 63 | 468.962.267 |
|  | JTI-FCH European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform) | 152 | 443.791.407 |
| Subtotal: COOPERATION JTI (5% of total funding) | | 783 | 2.183.986.206 |
| Total: COOPERATION (63% of total funding) | | 7873 | 28.717.702.498 |
| IDEAS | European Research Council (17% of total funding) | 4539 | 7.710.443.822 |
| PEOPLE | Marie-Curie Actions (11% of total funding) | 10705 | 4.777.221.466 |
| CAPACITIES | Research Infrastructures including eInfrastructures | 341 | 1.528.321.724 |
|  | Research for the benefit of SMEs | 1029 | 1.249.585.007 |
|  | Regions of Knowledge | 84 | 126.689.334 |
|  | Research Potential | 206 | 377.734.056 |
|  | Science in Society | 183 | 288.397.372 |
|  | Support for the coherent development of research policies | 27 | 28.213.463 |
|  | Activities of International Cooperation | 157 | 173.417.040 |
| Total: CAPACITIES (8% of total funding) | | 2027 | 3.772.357.995 |
| EURATOM | Fusion Energy | 4 | 5.248.981 |
|  | Nuclear Fission and Radiation Protection | 134 | 352.824.123 |
| Total: EURATOM (1% of total funding) | | 138 | 358.073.104 |
|  | Total | 25282 | 45.335.798.885 |
| Table 1: FP7 EC Contribution allocated in open calls in EUR million  Source: CORDA 26/11/2015. | | | |

   

Commission services implemented the 'Cooperation' and 'Capacities' Programmes whilst Executive Agencies – notably the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) and the Research Executive Agency (REA) – implemented the 'Ideas' and 'People' Specific Programmes. The implementation of FP7 was monitored on an annual basis.
[29](#footnote29)
 Performance indicators were not included in the legal basis of FP7, but identified within the framework of the Strategic Planning and Programming Cycle (Management Plan).
[30](#footnote30)
 FP7 used different funding instruments including support actions implemented on the basis of calls for proposals and contributions to the joint implementation of national research programmes, such as the Joint Programming Initiative and ERA-NETs.

The Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) were novel instruments in FP7 and the first experience in setting up public-private partnerships in research at European level. Projects were funded jointly by the Commission and industry; Members States also joined as funding partners in the case of JTIs in the information and communication technologies sector.

In addition to providing direct financial support, FP7 improved access to the European Investment Bank (EIB) debt finance for participants through the ‘Risk-Sharing Finance Facility’.

5.3.Impact of the economic crisis on the FP7 implementation

The context in which FP7 was implemented changed significantly during the lifetime of the programme. In 2008, a global economic-financial crisis started that not only affected the priority given by Member States to R&I but also had an impact on the implementation of the FP. In order to help combat the crisis, the Commission launched in 2008 a 'European Economic Recovery Plan' (EERP) and adopted in 2010 the 'Europe 2020' Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. As part of the Europe 2020 strategy, the Innovation Union flagship initiative had a significant impact on FP7.

As part of the EERP, three contractual research Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)
[31](#footnote31)
 were launched in sectors particularly affected by the crisis and implemented directly under the rules of the FP7
[32](#footnote32)
.

Stronger emphasis was also put on the development of ERA, notably to improve researchers career and mobility, align research agendas, develop research infrastructures including eInfrastructures, and support international cooperation. Finally, more attention was paid in the last years of implementation to innovation aspects, and notably to increasing the participation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Accordingly, the EC contribution to SMEs increased from 10% in 2007 to 17% in 2012.

Important developments also influenced the implementation of the Euratom programme, e.g. the signature of the ITER international agreement in November 2006 and the nuclear accident following the great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami (Fukushima accident) in March 2011. To facilitate the award and management of grants, the Commission implemented various measures to reduce the administrative burden for applicants and participants.
[33](#footnote33)

5.4.Situation for different stakeholders

During the seven years of FP7, 489 calls were concluded that gave rise to nearly 136,000 proposals involving more than 601,000 applications. More than 25,000 proposals (19% of evaluated proposals) were funded, involving more than 130,000 participations from about 29,000 participants (22% of the participants in evaluated proposals). The participations came from 170 countries, of which 86% were from EU Member States, 8% from Associated Countries and 6% from Third Countries.

All types of stakeholders benefited from FP7 financial contributions, as illustrated in Table 2. The HLEG report states that FP7 was an open system that allowed more than 21,000 organisations that had not participated in previous FPs to receive EU funding, which means that about 72% of the participants were new to the programme. At the same time, it notes that concentration effects in the RTD centres of Europe occurred, as is illustrated by the fact that the top 500 organisations in FP7 obtained 60% of the total FP7 financial contribution. FP7 participation involved a number of different actors. Universities and research organisations together accounted for more than 60% of participations, and 30% of participations were from the private sector
[34](#footnote34)
, of which more than half were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Organisation | Committed EC Contribution in FP7 EUR billion | Number of Participations |
| Higher and Secondary Education Institutions - HES | 19,678 | 50,239 |
| Non-profit Research organisations - REC | 12,235 | 33,256 |
| Private for profit – PRC | 11,162 | 40,834 |
| Public body - PUB | 1,193 | 6,193 |
| OTH - Other | 1,067 | 4,215 |
| Total | 45,335 | 134,737 |
| Table 2: Distribution of committed EC Contribution  Source: CORDA 25/11/2015 | | |

The highest proportion of funding was allocated to Higher and Secondary Education (HES) institutions and research organisations (REC). The private institutions received a 25% of the funding. The overall funding to SME's in FP7 was EUR 6.4 billion, where EUR 4.8 billion came from the Cooperation programme. Graph 1 illustrates the distribution of EC Contribution by type of organisation. The FP7 financial contribution going to SMEs reached 17% of the total 'Cooperation' Specific Programme (accounting for about EUR 4,898 million), which is above the 15% target adopted by the Commission. The HLEG reports that from FP6 to FP7 the Higher Education Institutions increased 75% in total EC contribution; Research Organisations increased 42% and Private Companies increased 61%. Lastly Public Organisations increased 91%, but from a very low level.

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 1: Distribution of EC Contribution by type of organisation  Source: CORDA 25/11/2015 |

According to a study on University participation in the Framework Programmes (FPs)
[35](#footnote35)
 the three most important motives for participating for the top 25 European universities were: 

I.the positive effects on the quality and quantity of scientific outputs;

II.the enhancement of institutional reputation and international competitiveness
[36](#footnote36)
; and 

III.the positive effects on collaboration opportunities.

This result differs significantly from that for other universities in the same study, which highlighted the importance of satisfying funding needs among motives, and ranked the effects on scientific outputs only third. According to a study on Research-performing Organisations (RPOs) in the FPs,
[37](#footnote37)
 the most important objectives of participation relate to economic benefits, networking and reputation. The strategic alignment of both RPOs and national research agendas with the key objectives of FPs is a very important enhancer of RPOs success in participation.

The reactions to the online stakeholder consultation describe the situation from the perspective of different groups of stakeholders
[38](#footnote38)
. Overall, 68% of respondents
[39](#footnote39)
 were satisfied or very satisfied with FP7, whereas 17% were moderately or very dissatisfied (15% didn't know). Ministries and funding agencies were most often very satisfied, whereas individual respondents tended to respond "Moderately or very dissatisfied" more often than other groups of respondents.

5.4.1. Country Participation in FP7

On average, each Member State received 3.2% of the FP7 financial contribution. The HLEG reports that:

85% of FP7 funding was allocated to organisations located in the EU-15

4% to organisations in the EU-13

9% to organisations in Associated Countries

2% to organisations in other countries outside Europe.

Graph 2 shows the total amount of EC Contribution to Member States and top 3 Associated Countries. The table underlines the findings of the HLEG report, and also shows that the three associated countries are receiving substantial parts of the FP7 funding compared to many Member States.

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 2: FP7 EC Contribution, million EUR, Member States and top 3 Associated Countries  Source: CORDA 25/11/2015 |

The HLEG calculated that the average annual EC contribution per researcher across recipient country in EU-15 was about EUR 3,900 and about EUR 1,300 for the EU-13 specifically.
[40](#footnote40)
 Based on a comparison of the FP7 funding received with the number of inhabitants, the HLEG concluded that the annual FP7 financial contribution per inhabitant is on average EUR 14 across EU-15 countries and less than a quarter of that for EU-13 countries. However, when comparing the FP7 funding received with total annual national RTD expenditures, the HLEG found that the FP7 financial contribution per million EUR of national RTD expenditures is 30% higher in the EU-13 than in the EU-15. Overall, the HLEG concludes that the low shares of the EU-13 in FP7 is not caused by a bias against the new Member States but rather by a comparably high number of weak proposals submitted by, or with partners from, the EU-13 countries.

Given that the goal of FP7 funding was to achieve scientific excellence, it did not have a geographic objective. At the same time, two actions under the Capacities Specific Programme were aimed at facilitating cohesion: the 'Regions of Knowledge' Programme (RoK) and the 'Regional Potential' Programme (REGPOT).

5.4.2. Participation of third countries

FP7 was open to international cooperation. On average, 6 countries (Member State, Associated Countries and Third Countries) participated in each FP7 project. Graph 3 illustrates the 20 countries that received the highest EC Contribution in FP7.

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 3: EC Contribution EUR million, top 20 third countries  Source: CORDA 25/11/2015 |

The FP7 contribution to non-European partners was relatively moderate overall (1.4% of the FP7 financial contribution). It was higher in collaborative projects (4.7% of the FP7 financial contribution), notably in the fields of health, food, climate actions, earth observation and security issues. 20.5% of collaborative projects had at least one partner from third countries. The success rate of proposals that had two or more research partners from third countries was about 25% higher than that of proposals without such partners.
[41](#footnote41)
 Third countries also participated in ERA-NETs: by the end of FP7, thirty non-ERA countries contributed to research funding in 22 ERA-NETs.

Nearly a quarter of the Marie Curie Actions projects have at least one non-European organisation involved. The FP7 Marie Curie Actions supported some 50,000 mobile researchers representing over 140 different nationalities and carrying out their research projects in more than 80 countries worldwide.

The FP7 – Capacities programme on international cooperation (INCO) launched 31 coordinated research calls leading to 90 coordinated or parallel projects with targeted third countries. The FP7 - Capacities - INCO activities supported policy dialogues with third countries and regions and capacity-building, and aimed at raising awareness of FP7 and dissemination. INCO-NET and INCO-LAB projects capitalised on existing collaboration initiatives with third countries and gave them a European dimension, paving the way for continued future collaboration and science diplomacy.

5.4.3. Gender Balance

For FP7, a target of 40% of the under-represented sex was set for evaluators, advisory bodies and other groups. The main gender balance numbers are:

Overall proportion of women evaluators was slightly higher than the target (40.4%).

The proportion in the European Research Area Board (ERAB) reached 45.5%.

The proportion of women in Advisory Groups was 33% overall, while four Advisory Groups reached percentages from 40% to 43%, three from 37 to 39%, and three less than 30% (Space, NMP and ICT).

The participation of women in Programme Committees increased from 2009 and almost reached the target (38%). 
[42](#footnote42)

Data
[43](#footnote43)
 on finalised projects shows the amount of women participants in FP7 projects:

Total Workforce: 38%

PhD Students: 44%

Scientific Managers: 30%

Work Package Leaders: 29%

The HLEG report furthermore found that, the share of women project coordinators in FP7 was 19.2%, showing that while progress has been made, 'glass ceiling effects' persist meaning that the more senior the researcher, the less likely it is a woman. The HLEG reports that the importance of family support measures in the FP7 – MCA programme is demonstrated by the fact that 42% of individual fellows, and 44% of industry-academia partnerships and pathways apply for them.

5.5.Results from finished FP7 projects

This section assesses the results from finished FP7 projects on publications, open access, commercial exploitation and IPRs such as patent applications.

Most publications are produced after the project has ended. In FP7 the Commission only registered publication until the end of the project leaving out many publications. ERC and a number of other programmes used other ways of monitoring FP7 publications. For this reason the best tool for identifying number of publications related to FP7 is using the data mining tool (openAIRE) that enabled the identification of a total of 171,258 publications that can be attributed to FP7
[44](#footnote44)
. This averages 6.8 publications per funded project – a number that is expected to increase as more projects are finalised. In the analysis it was found that
[45](#footnote45)
:

'Cooperation' can be attributed 81,993 publications (47.8% of total)

'Ideas' Specific Programmes can be attributed 63,417 publications (34.5%)

'People' can be attributed 21,867 publications (10,8% of total)

'Capacities' can be attributed 11,598 publications (6.6% of total)

'Euratom' can be attributed 631 (0.3% of total)

To be able to compare them across the programmes an analysis was done on how many publications can be attributed per 10 million EUR in EC contribution. This shows differences across programmes, with very high numbers of publications in the 'Ideas' Specific Programmes, half of that in 'People', less in 'Capacities' and 'Cooperation' and least in Euratom (Graph 4).

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 4: Number of publications per EUR 10 million of EC contribution in FP7  Source: OpenAire and CORDA 01/12/2015, and survey of project coordinators for ICT |

Open access to publications is a powerful tool to improve access to knowledge. Through FP7 support, out of the total of 171,258 FP7 scientific peer-reviewed publications, 92,826 are open access
[46](#footnote46)
 (OA), 3,216 are restricted access (i.e. OA but with a more restrictive license), and 315 are still under embargo. This translates into an OA rate of 54% for all scientific peer-reviewed publications created during the lifetime of FP7 so far.

Completed projects have produced more than 7428 commercial exploitation
[47](#footnote47)
 such as developing new products and services, mainly in four fields: Nanotechnologies Materials Production, Research in and/or for SMEs, Information and Communication Technologies, and Transport. Graph 5 illustrates the distribution and lists the amount of commercial exploitation per programme in FP7.
[48](#footnote48)

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 5: Amount and share of commercial exploitations reported by finished projects, by priority  Source: CORDA-SESAM-RESPIR (information extracted from final reports for ICT) |

The Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) attained by individual projects can be used as proxies for the assessment of their innovation thrust. Survey results show that compared to FP6, projects supported under FP7 have finished at higher TRL levels.
[49](#footnote49)
 

In addition, out of the 10,038 completed projects
[50](#footnote50)
 there are reported 2,266 intellectual property rights (IPR)
[51](#footnote51)
 and 1742 patent applications. This means that looking at the reports of finished projects in FP7 just under 22% of the projects reports IPR and about 17% of the finished project report patent application. These numbers only reflects those innovative new commercial products or profitable services reported by FP7 beneficiaries during the FP7 project life time. In reality, they are expected to be higher since they could also emerge after the project funding phase. Graph 6 shows the number of finalised projects with reported IPR and IPRs reported as patent applications, in the sub-programmes.
[52](#footnote52)

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 6: Number of finalised projects, number of projects with reported intellectual Property Rights and IPR projects reported as patent applications  Source: CORDA-SESAM-RESPIR (01-12-2015) |

Survey results for various thematic areas of the FP7 'Cooperation' Specific Programme:

Surveys suggest that the commercial exploitation of results is envisaged by 20-40% of companies involved in completed FP7 projects, possibly increasing the turn-over in companies. There are, however, differences across the thematic areas.

FP7 – Cooperation - Energy: 73% participants reported a concrete marketable outcome as a result of the project, 20% specified the marketable outcome as a new product or process or service and 7% a new business model as the outcome.

FP7 – Cooperation –Health: 87.5% of R&D SME respondents
[54](#footnote54)
 indicated that their FP7 funding project contributed to advancing their product(s) development pipeline.

FP7 – Cooperation – NMP: About 60% of participants developed a new or significantly improved product, 34% reported new and improved products already introduced in the market. 13% expects that their product will be in the market within two years after project end and 26% within more than two years after the project end
[55](#footnote55)
.

FP7 – Cooperation – Environment: Between 32.4% and 48.6% of FP7 Environment projects are expected to produce innovative outputs 
[56](#footnote56)

In FP7 – Cooperation – Transport, more than 60% of the projects promoted testing activities (validations and verifications) linked to the development of new products or services
[57](#footnote57)
. The Galileo Sub-theme has had a considerably positive impact on the satellite navigation market, produced a number of new commercial products or services, realised and tested prototypes, and registered patents/trademarks. 

FP7 – Cooperation – SSH: Several projects have created spin-off companies
[58](#footnote58)
. This is the case for IKNOW, which created Futures Diamond, which provides services of Foresight & Horizon Scanning (FHS) processes to users from 112 countries, including the UK Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) at the Department of Health.

FP7 – Cooperation - ICT: In the area of ICT for ageing well, 25% of projects had secured financing beyond the project for going to the market. In the area of ICT for Health, achievements include successful demonstrator projects with particular practical impact on personalised cardiovascular care
[59](#footnote59)
.

FP7 – Cooperation – Space helped underpinning the innovation capacity and international competitiveness of Europe’s space businesses. Around 25% of industrial respondents stated that the programme has had a medium to high impact on their international competitiveness, whereas 15-20% reported improvements in turnover, productivity, profitability and employment. Analysis of results for SMEs reveals stronger figures (+10-20 percentage points) across all performance dimensions from networking to competitiveness.

According to the HLEG, there is indeed evidence of positive impacts in terms of micro-economic effects with participating enterprises reporting innovative product developments, increased turnover, improved productivity and competitiveness but it is too early to make a final assessment of the market impact of FP7 projects.

  

6.Answers to the evaluation questions

6.1.How effective has FP7 been?

The respondents to the online stakeholder consultation provided a positive assessment of the effectiveness of FP7 (Graph 7), even if a majority indicated that there were still issues to solve.

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 7: Share of answers provided to the question "Based on your experience has the implementation of FP7been effective?" in the Stakeholder consultation, by type of respondent.  Source: DG RTD analysis |

6.1.1.Has FP7 been effective in terms of enhancing the competitiveness of European industry through the joint technology initiatives?

Whether FP7 has been effective in terms of enhancing the competitiveness of European industry depends on whether FP7 enhanced the transfer of knowledge from research to market, and on the propensity of projects to introduce innovations in the form of new products, processes and services. Several FP7 instruments, such as the Public-private Partnerships (including both JTIs and contractual PPPs) and the Risk-sharing Finance Facility, significantly increased the presence of SMEs and (other) private partners, which could be an indication of FP7's contribution to EU competitiveness.
[60](#footnote60)

Five JTIs
[61](#footnote61)
 were set up in the following areas: Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI JU), Aeronautics and air transport (Clean Sky JU), Embedded computing systems (ARTEMIS JU), Nano-electronics (ENIAC JU) and Fuel cells and hydrogen (FCH JU). These JTIs involved the commitment of massive financial, organisational and human resources and led to a large-scale mobilisation of resources (one-third from the public sector and two-thirds from the private sector). The HLEG concurred that JTIs have been instrumental and effective in terms of bringing together a critical mass of relevant companies, addressing the most important industry needs, and delivering on the high ambitions in terms of both content as well as leveraging additional private funding in a coordinated way.

The IMI JU helped establish public-private consortia, opening up routes to commercialisation for SMEs. IMI acted as a "one stop shop" for biomedical research and development. In FP7 a total 56 projects were funded in with EUR 930 million.

The Clean Sky JU successfully deployed novel technology and high quality research into running demonstrators (two new engine designs were tested) for the industry to turn into products. In FP7 a total 38 projects were funded in with EUR 142 million.

The ARTEMIS JU advanced in technology areas joining industry and academia in embedded computing technologies. In FP7 a total 474 projects were funded in with EUR 198 million.

The ENIAC JU played a kick-starting role in nano-electronics innovation in areas like electric cars and energy efficiency. In FP7 a total 63 projects were funded in with EUR 468 million.

The FCH JU contributed to placing Europe at the forefront of fuel cell and hydrogen technologies worldwide
[62](#footnote62)
 in the areas of mobility as well as hydrogen production and storage. In the period 2008-2013, FCH projects deployed 150 cars and 45 buses. At least 20 hydrogen refuelling stations will be realized through FCH JU-funded projects. In FP7 a total 152 projects were funded in with EUR 443 million. It increased the number of patents granted in the EU to European companies in the field of fuel cells and hydrogen with 16% annually compared to the average annual growth for all EU industries of 1.5%; the annual turnover increased by 10% per year, R&D expenditures by 8% and market deployment expenditures by 6% since 2007. It is expected that turnover would increase on average by 35% per year and research expenditures by 12% per year towards 2020.

Launched in November 2008, the research Contractual Public-Private Partnerships (cPPPs) were set up as a response to the economic crisis with a view to supporting research, development and innovation in the manufacturing, construction and automobile industries, which had seen demand, plummet. Throughout FP7 three Contractual Public-Private Partnerships were set up to boost industry and SME participation in the FP7:

Factory of the Future (FoF) PPP: FoF is focussing on helping EU manufacturing enterprises, in particular SMEs, to adapt to global competitive pressures by developing the necessary key enabling technologies across a broad range of sectors. About 13% of the projects and of EC contribution are devoted to this PPP. Funding by NMP theme is EUR 400 million out of EUR 600 million EC funding; industry and EC each contribute 50%.

Energy efficient Building (EEB) PPP: The purpose of EEB is to create and integrate technologies and solutions enabling to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions, to turn the building industry into a knowledge-driven sustainable business, with higher productivity and higher skilled employees. This PPP accounts for about 7% of the projects and for 8% of total EC funding in NMP. Funding by NMP Theme is EUR 250 million out of total of EUR 500 million EC funding; industry and EC each contribute 50%.

Green Car (GC) PPP: Evolved into a lean, fast and efficient instrument for the funding of research, development and innovation in the field of sustainable mobility. It has delivered innovative solutions in the areas of electro-mobility, long distance trucks and logistics, contributing to increased energy efficiency of road transport and lower CO2 emissions and pollution. In total, it has supported 107 research and innovation projects with an EU financial contribution of EUR 420 million in strategic areas such as advance electric energy storage systems, advanced electric propulsion, vehicles grid integration, safety, low emissions, long distance trucks and logistics. 
[63](#footnote63)

The final evaluation of the three research 'contractual Public-Private Partnerships' (cPPPs) set up under FP7 concluded that:

–They have strong potential to achieve a good overall leverage effect for private investment and have boosted industrial participation (57% in cPPPs);

–They have proved useful in terms of strengthening European value chains and in particular giving a role to SMEs. The cPPPs have all been successful in terms of engaging top industrial companies, SMEs and research organisations within Europe, increasing significantly the large industry and SME participation;

–The research cPPPs provided stability and confidence to industry to invest in participating in projects;

–Research cPPPs have enlarged in the latest calls their coverage of the innovation chain closer to the market
[64](#footnote64)
.

The Risk-Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF) was effective in terms of providing loan finance to R&I companies, meeting its loan volume targets, achieving wide geographic coverage and enabling the EIB to increase its capacity to make riskier loans. It achieved a broad sectoral diversification and the instrument was implemented in 25 countries. As of the end of 2013, a total loan volume of EUR 16.2 billion had been approved by the EIB, which had signed loan agreements with 114 R&I promoters for active loans of EUR 11.3 billion.

The participation of SMEs
[65](#footnote65)
 increased since the launch of the Programme. Evidence shows that the transfer of knowledge from research to the market and the propensity of projects to introduce innovations in the form of new products, processes or services were both significantly increased when SMEs were involved in projects. Moreover, results of econometric analyses
[66](#footnote66)
 show that SMEs participating in the FPs scored 38% higher than the control group with regard to employment growth and operating revenue for FP7 as well as for FP6
[67](#footnote67)
.

The HLEG concurred that the JTIs, the cPPPs, and the SME-oriented elements of FP7 demonstrate leverage, impact and the development of globally competitive discoveries and outcomes and concluded that "engaging industry and SMEs strategically" was one of the ten key achievements of FP7.

There is some evidence that the different FP Specific Programmes promoted innovative product, process and service development, increased turnover, and improved productivity and competitiveness.

By funding frontier research, the FP7 'Ideas' Specific Programme (European Research Council) provided researchers with the freedom to explore ideas at the frontiers of knowledge, a proven way to generate radical breakthroughs.
[68](#footnote68)
 Surveys launched on the different thematic areas of the FP7 'Cooperation' Specific Programme confirm that participants consider that FP7 had a positive impact on competitiveness. For example, in a survey launched in the Security area, around 70% of respondents judged that FP7 security research had a high or medium impact on improving the global competitiveness of the EU’s security industry and on supporting its expansion.
[69](#footnote69)

The FP7 'People' Specific Programme, and notably the Marie Curie Actions, supported research that could lead to improved products or processes in the future (acknowledged by 61% of beneficiaries), helped beneficiaries to become more aware/confident of the commercial potential of their research (45%), and helped gain new commercial contacts in the project network/partnership (including industry) (41%).

Through the creation of Fusion for Energy (F4E) and an increasing focus on technology, Euratom supported the first steps in the design of a fusion industrial policy in Europe, including the appropriate management of intellectual property assets across the domain and a growing focus on spin-off potential from fusion to other high-tech areas.

Finally, an analysis of the Community Innovation Survey shows that innovative companies supported by FP7 were more likely to introduce product, process or service innovations new to the market. FP7 thus supported innovative enterprises obtaining on average a higher proportion of turnover from innovation than those not supported.
[70](#footnote70)
 Similarly, a counter-factual analysis assessing the 'average number of patent applications per researcher' showed that, on average, researchers in organisations participating in FP7 tend to apply for patents more than researchers in organisations, which do not take part in the EU FP (Graph 8).

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|  |
| Graph 8: Average number of patent applications per 1,000 R&D personnel, Comparing FP participating and non-FP participating research performing organisations (2013)   Source: RTD-A5 based on the ERA survey 2013. |

6.1.2.Has FP7 been effective in increasing European wide S&T collaboration and networking for sharing R&D risks and costs?

Several Member States assessing the impacts of FP7 have highlighted the increased networking and international cooperation as well as the continuation of work activities after project finalisation as some of the most important FP7 outcomes.

A study analysing the networks of FP7 shows that, when analysing the network effect of FPs, both new participants and repeat participants are important. New participants in FP7 projects will generate new knowledge and innovations. Continuity is important because FP7 projects drawing on results from FP6 projects involve a better transfer of research results.
[71](#footnote71)
 As regards new participations, the study shows that out of the organisations that participated in FP7 72% were new. The contractors found that out of the 525,000 FP7 collaborations between pairs of organisations,
[72](#footnote72)
 86% were new.

FP7 supported international collaboration and networks. On average about 11 organisations, six countries and nine regions participated in each collaborative FP7 project.
[73](#footnote73)
 

FP7 Cooperation - Health had high structuring effect on the development of a single ERA by creating a closely interconnected network of organisations and thereby facilitating knowledge flow in the ERA and beyond
[74](#footnote74)
 

FP7 People – MCA provided attractive opportunities to create new, or join existing, international research networks for 91% of beneficiaries.

Euratom supported extensive (international) collaboration under the umbrella of bilateral agreements between the European Commission and third countries and through multilateral international agreements such as the ITER Agreement and the Generation-IV International Forum (GIF) Charter and Framework Agreement. It supported the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform (SNETP).

FP7 performed well in terms of fostering interdisciplinary research linking researchers and projects from fields of science that do not otherwise frequently exchange knowledge. Research generated in each specific field also contributed to knowledge generation in several other fields, as demonstrated by the results of the analysis of FP7-related publications by Specific Programme and/or priority (Figure 2).

The share of researchers participating in projects from different priorities increased throughout FP7, from 5.6% by 2010 to 9.8% in 2011-2014
[75](#footnote75)
.

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Figure 2: Connectivity across Specific Programmes between disciplines, as reflected by publication contents. [76](#footnote76)    Source: OpenAIRE |

The launch of European Industrial Doctorates under the FP7-People Programme promoted durable inter-sectoral collaboration. There is as yet no clear evidence on the ideal number of sectors involved in a project. However, too extensive inter-sectoral links could have adverse effects on innovation.

In certain areas of FP7 collaboration between academia and the private sector was above EU, US and World averages e.g. with 6% of publications in the ICT area being published in collaboration between academia and industry (Graph 9).

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 9: Share (%) of co-publications Academia-Corporate by priority (2007-2015).  Source: SciVal based on Corda-Sesam-Respir |

According to a study on the participation of research-performing organisations (RPOs) in the FPs
[77](#footnote77)
 the RPOs maintained a high level of collaboration with universities and private sector. RPOs in a narrow sense tend to support the mobility of staff towards both industry and academia to widen their network in a structural manner. FPs allowed RPOs "to play an important role as a link between the universities and industry" by translating basic research results into relevant industrial applications. According to a study on the participation of universities in the FP,
[78](#footnote78)
 across the full sample of FP7 university projects, more than 60% involve collaboration with at least one private company. These data reflect well the growing involvement of European universities in technology transfer activities and the important impact of FPs in terms of supporting the creation of university-industry links.  FP7 also increased linkages and stronger cooperation between the public and private sectors. An analysis involving a control group shows that RPOs taking part in FP7 have more collaborative agreements with the private sector (+15%) than such organisations not taking part in FP7.
[79](#footnote79)
 According to a study on FP7 network effects,
[80](#footnote80)
 direct and measurable effects of FP7’s network and collaboration approach include:

Increased integration of Member States, Candidate Countries and Associated Countries

Increased cross-sector integration

Inclusion of new participants in research projects with potentially beneficial effects on innovation

Increased multi-disciplinarity, especially in the FP7 'Capacities' and 'Cooperation' Programmes

Development of new methods, technologies, concepts, S&T tools, products, and new lines of research that may eventually lead to new disciplines or fields of research.

The durability of FP7 networks is demonstrated by the share of FP7 participants that started publishing jointly due to their participation in an FP7 project and continued doing so after the end of the project. As shown by the following graph almost half of FP7 participants kept publishing jointly after the completion of the project (Graph 10).

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 10: Share of pairs of researchers which published jointly in FP7 and continued doing so after the completion of the project.  Source; DG RTD based on OpenAire data. |

Surveys among FP7 participants in different thematic areas of the 'Cooperation' Programme confirm that FP7 has been effective in establishing collaboration and networks.

FP7 – Cooperation - Health 60% of participants declare that their research network(s) formally continued to operate after the end of the project.

FP7 – Cooperation – Space: strengthened networking between public and private actors with a view to establishing GMES/Copernicus services for land, marine, atmospheric, climate monitoring and in support of emergency response and security.

FP7 – Cooperation – Security the survey showed that participants had strengthened their international partnerships, improved their ability and capacity to conduct R&D, had improved academic links, and improved international visibility/reputation
[81](#footnote81)
.

FP7 – Cooperation - ICT had strong networking effects, especially in terms of the creation of new partnerships and improved R&D linkages with universities and research centres
[82](#footnote82)
.

FP7 – Cooperation - Transport: more than one third of projects were successful in creating a formal network during the project; more than 86% of project partners continued cooperating after completion; and 75% of the respondents developed contacts with external organisations
[83](#footnote83)
.

FP7 – Cooperation - SSH: 46% of the projects that reported achieving impact on ERA have collaborated with other FP projects, with an average of 2.9 collaborations per project. 20.8% of the projects collaborated with non-FP projects, with an average of 2.5 collaborations per project.
[84](#footnote84)
.

FP7 – People - MCA strengthened research collaborations (90% of beneficiaries), the development of new project applications and/or projects among MCA partners (87%), new collaborations with academic organisations or business enterprises (86%), increased the exchange of knowledge in the organisations or benefitted research and technical staff through the exchange of knowledge (84%).

6.1.3.Has FP7 been effective in contributing to an increase in the level of research investment?

FP7 mobilised both public and private funding. The HLEG estimated "the leverage effect at 0.74, indicating that for each euro the EC contributed to FP7 funded research, the other organizations involved (such as universities, industries, SME, research organisations) contributed in average 0.74 EUR". On top of this is added a GDP multiplier effect of 6.5. The HLEG calculates a total leverage effect of EUR 11 estimated direct and indirect economic effects through innovations, new technologies and products for each EUR contributed by FP7, whilst indicating that these figures are based on a conservative estimate and real effects may be even higher.
[85](#footnote85)
 

As mentioned above, the FP7 contribution represents only a small share of total public expenditure on R&D. Overall, the direct leverage effect on private investment of FP7 was 0.85 EUR for each EUR of EC contribution
[86](#footnote86)
; the leverage effect of 0.28 EUR on public investment. These figures exclude the indirect leverage effect, which occurs mostly after project finalisation and through accompanying projects, and which cannot be estimated yet.

Case studies reveal that from the perspective of firms and research organisations, FP7 provided the continuity and predictability needed to secure private investments. Article 185 Initiatives, as well as ERA-NET and ERA-NET Plus actions, provided added value through the structuring effect on the European research landscape and by leveraging private and national public funds. The ERA-NET instrument, for example, was found to have an average leverage effect of 10. Differences across themes are significant, with some individual ERA-NETs reaching leverage effects of 50.

In FP7 – Health - Joint Programming Initiatives, a EUR 2 million EU financial contribution for neurodegenerative disease research (JPND) leveraged EUR 75 million. The Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR JPI) leveraged EUR 13.8 million via a EUR 1.9 million EU contribution. Six Era-NETs leveraged EUR 119 million via an EU contribution of EUR 15 million. Around 56% of participants, regardless of their affiliation, indicate that FP7 funding helped access other funding to expand or continue their research with up to 64% of their current research funding being derived from this leverage effect. As a further indicator of the importance of FP7 funding, 75% of participants acknowledge that FP7 funding represents up to 50% of their total research budget.
[87](#footnote87)

FP7 – People - MCA set standards for research training, attractive employment conditions and open recruitment for all EU researchers and achieved leverage. The co-fund mechanism aligned national resources and each euro of FP funding achieved a leverage of 2.4 euros) and influenced programmes at regional and national level. This allowed for co-financing some 167 programmes and support over 9 700 post-doctoral researchers.

RSFF leveraged private funding to increase the contribution to achieving EU objectives. It mobilised a large range of public and private resources notably from the EIB and multiplied the effect of the EU budget, financial intermediaries such as banks, and final beneficiaries. Given its leverage (6.6)
[88](#footnote88)
 and multiplier effect (28)
[89](#footnote89)
, the Court of Auditors
[90](#footnote90)
 concluded that the RSFF had exceeded its initial expectations. The availability of debt financing for riskier R&I projects was also particularly valuable in times of financial crisis, as it was one of the few financial instruments remaining available for companies to help maintain their R&I activities.

During FP7, the share of GDP dedicated to R&D increased, with a slight decrease in 2010 due to the crisis (Graph 11). While it is not possible to identify the direct impact of FP7 funding on the evolution of total R&D expenditure as a share of GDP, FP7 has compensated the sharp decline in public funding for research after the crisis in some Member States.
[91](#footnote91)
 

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 11: Share of R&D (both public and private) as % of GDP  Source: Eurostat: 04/12/2015 |

6.1.4.Has FP7 been effective in improving the coordination of European, national and regional research policies?

FP7 made a significant effort to align Member State activities by developing common strategic research agendas, aligning national plans, defining and implementing joint calls, using instruments such as the ERA Networks (ERA-NETs and ERA-NET plus actions) and Article 185 initiatives, which set common agendas and achieve the funding scale required for tackling important societal challenges. The importance of the coordination of the national programmes is obvious when one considers the amount of funding concerned. FP7 accounts for only 7% of the total public R&D expenditure in the EU, while, for example, the annual budget of DFG in Germany is over EUR 1,000 million and that of CNRS in France is over EUR 2,000 million. According to Eurostat data, 1,47% of GBOARD is transnationally coordinated funding financed by Member States without FP7.

During FP7, 83 ERA-NET and 23 ERA-NET Plus actions mobilised about EUR 2 billion Member State funding. The four Article 185 initiatives
[92](#footnote92)
 launched during FP7 received a total contribution of EUR 500 million from the FP and an estimated EUR 772 million from national authorities. ERA-NETs and Article 185 initiatives received positive feedback from national stakeholders as well as from policy-makers as regards the value of coordinating national research activities.

Since the introduction of the ERA-NET scheme, around EUR 2,300 million have been mobilised for joint calls by Member States. During FP7, and in spite of the crisis, the amounts dedicated to joint calls increased: EUR 371 million in 2013, compared to EUR 197 million in 2008
[93](#footnote93)
. ERA-NETs have had considerable impact on domestic programmes. In a conducted survey on FP7 ERA-NETs 32% of respondents highlighted that aligned new programmes with ERA-NETs. 37% reported a larger programme budget for the ERA-NET theme compared to what that area would have been available in national funding. In many cases, participation in ERA-NETs led to participation in other forms of transnational research programming (ranging from other ERA-NETs to JPIs and bi/trilateral cooperation)
[94](#footnote94)
.

Article 185 initiatives have strongly helped structure research in selected fields. About 50% of total dedicated metrology funding in Europe is coordinated through EMRP, contributing to the creation of a "metrology ERA"
[95](#footnote95)
 through the integration of some smaller or "newer" EU Member States via collaborative schemes. Eurostars has accelerated the development and roll-out of new and improved products, processes and services, showing a positive impact on the patent portfolio of funded firms
[96](#footnote96)
. BONUS is closely aligned with the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, in addition to supporting the objectives of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), Common Fisheries Policy, the Helsinki Convention (HELCOM) and facilitating cooperation with Russia.

FP7 – Capacities - Regions of Knowledge played an effective role in creating clusters at regional level and fostering regional investment in research and innovation in areas of strategic importance. This "sets the fundaments for future impacts to occur in terms of an enhanced regional economic competitiveness through R&D activities"
[97](#footnote97)
.

FP7 – Cooperation - ICT contributed to setting national agendas on specific themes pioneered at EU level. Networks as cloud and areas such as e-health, independent living and robotics were pioneered by the Commission before they were developed nationally. In the case of Ageing and Healthy Living, AAL has had a catalytic effect on national initiatives and activities, including leveraging of national funding and a strong commitment by Participating Countries
[98](#footnote98)
.

FP7 – Cooperation - Security helped expand capacity and shape the research landscape, with several pan-EU networks as well as national groups established. It also had a positive impact on Member State investment in security research, e.g. the Tekes Safety and Security programme in Finland and the collaboration and mutual opening up of the French and German national civil security research programmes.
[99](#footnote99)

FP7 – Ideas –ERC: Since 2007, 11 Member States have launched new funding schemes inspired by the ERC. ERC also enhanced or consolidated the priority given to basic/frontier research in some national strategies. Increasing competition between EU countries and institutions to host ERC grantees is leading to major reforms in the way research funding is allocated and to more attractive conditions for the best researchers.

Member States, as well as some Associated and Third Countries, put in place incentives at national level to foster the participation of their researchers in the FP. Some Member States also aligned the priorities of their national Research Strategies with the ones in FP7.

53% of National Contact Points
[100](#footnote100)
 rate the importance of FP7 for shaping national/regional research and innovation policies as high or very high while 27% rate it as average. Only 2.8% rate it as very low. Stakeholders indicated that one of the key achievements of FP7 was the joint agenda-setting through joining forces in solving the grand challenges together.
[101](#footnote101)

6.1.5.Has FP7 been effective in strengthening the scientific excellence of basic research in Europe through increasing coordination and competition at the European level?

The results of the online stakeholder consultation concluded that the greatest impact of FP7 was on scientific excellence and impact on technological or social innovations
[102](#footnote102)
. For the HLEG, encouraging scientific excellence on individual and institutional level was also one of the ten key achievements of FP7.

Scientific excellence was an overarching aim of FP7. The most frequently used indicators for scientific excellence include the number and citations of scientific publications to indicate quality.

FP7 involved top researchers and organisations in high-quality research. Several indicators could be used to underscore the excellence of FP7. First, an important share of FP7 publications are among the top 1% and top 5% highly cited publications in their disciplines, in most cases well above the overall EU average and the US average (Graph 12). Moreover, the HLEG reported that among the most cited publications arising from FP7 and notably with ERC funding, a significant number have been recognised as highly influential on science. For publications in the Ideas programmes 30% of the publications were cited in top 5 highly cited publications and 8% in top 1 highly cited; above EU average (1.5% and world average 6.4%). The ICT part of the Cooperation Programme of FP7 has up to 3.6 points field weighted citation impact, which is above EU average (1.2 points) and US average (1.5 points). Parts of the Cooperation Programme have up to 75% co-publications with authors from other countries which is well above EU average (35%), US average (30%) and world average (15%).

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 12: Share of the priorities' publications in top 1% and top 5% highly cited publications (2007-2015)  Source: SciVal based on Corda-Sesam-Respir |

Second, field-weighted-citation impacts
[103](#footnote103)
 of FP7 publications are above the EU average and in most cases above the US average (Graph 13).

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 13: Field weighted citation impact of publications (2007-2015)  Source: SciVal based on Corda-Sesam-Respir |

In FP7 – Cooperation – ICT, the relative citation impact
[104](#footnote104)
 is above the world average. FP7 research results published in conference proceedings were also found to be of higher quality than the control group
[105](#footnote105)
.

The HLEG report concurs that, between 2002 and 2012, EU-authored articles have become more influential on average and that research output during FP7 increased, particularly publications in highly ranked journals, illustrating the high quality of research.

The findings of a study on university participation in the FPs
[106](#footnote106)
 point to the remarkable, above-average scientific standing of the publications stemming from FP-funded projects as captured by the number of citations received and the impact factor of the scientific journal in which they have been published. The data also indicate that publications from projects with larger size (EUR 5 million) are on average of higher quality. Another indication of excellence is that researchers in institutions participating in the FPs produce more publications and patent applications than researchers in non-participating institutions (Graph 15). The comparison between FP7 and overall EU patterns regarding co-publications between different countries show similar results. The share of cross-border co-publications in all publications is higher for FP7 than for the EU, the US and the world. 

|  |
| --- |
|  |
| Graph 14: Patent applications and publication quotations by researcher in different scientific fields  Source: A5 analysis based on ERA survey |

FP7 – Ideas – ERC: over 29,000 publications acknowledging ERC support appeared in international peer-reviewed journals indexed by the Web of Science database
[107](#footnote107)
. The 314 completed projects reported 10,796 publications
[108](#footnote108)
, with an overall average of 34 publications and a substantial share ranking among the most highly cited publications worldwide, including in the top 1% category,
[109](#footnote109)
 with marked differences between fields and projects
[110](#footnote110)
.

FP7 – People –MCA involved all 100 best-ranked European universities in the Shanghai ranking. 65% of the outgoing European MCA researchers carried out part of their research in the top 50 world universities. 30 scientists supported by the MCA have actively contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson (or so-called 'God Particle') by CERN.

FP7 – Cooperation – Health: IMI JU projects have produced over 320 publications in more than 150 peer-reviewed journals including high impact factor journals such as Nature and Science. Another example is the ADITEC high quality vaccine project, where 148 publications can be attributed to one project. 88% of the papers were published in journals with impact factors in the top 25% of their subject category.

Almost 80% of FP7 – Cooperation - SSH projects
[111](#footnote111)
 have published articles in peer reviewed journals, on average 16 articles per project. 72% of the articles are published by one third of the projects, indicating the existence of a group of highly productive research teams.

FP7 – Cooperation – Space: About 90% of 545 respondents stated that FP7 space had had a medium to high impact on the EU’s technological capabilities and international scientific standing
[112](#footnote112)
.

With Euratom support,
[113](#footnote113)
 Europe became world leader in fusion R&D, and was largely responsible for the success in bringing ITER
[114](#footnote114)
 to Europe. The fusion programme resulted in 4,496 publications in peer-reviewed journals while fission projects produced 563 articles, of which 128 were published in high impact journals.

FP7 also funded a large number of award-winning researchers, which is another indication that FP7 attracted excellence.

FP7 - Cooperation - Health: over 300 leading researchers participating in research teams were laureates of prestigious national and international scientific prizes (i.e. Lasker Award, Leibniz Prize, Spinoza Award, Louis-Jeantet Prize). At least four laureates of the Nobel Prize participated in the programme among which the laureate of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, prof. Stefan Hell, who was awarded the prize for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy
[115](#footnote115)
.

FP7 Cooperation – ICT, FET: Overall, 9 Nobel prize laureates are/were involved in FET research
[116](#footnote116)
. 

ERC so far supported 11 Nobel laureates
[117](#footnote117)
, five Fields Medallists
[118](#footnote118)
 and the winners of many more internationally recognised prizes. Five of the Nobel laureates were funded by the ERC before receiving the Nobel Prize. The ERC has also received four proposals from Nobel Prize winners that were not funded.

FP7 – People - MCAs: In 2014 alone, 3 Nobel Prize winners were involved in MCA projects.

6.1.6.Has FP7 been effective in promoting the development of European research careers and in making Europe more attractive to the best researchers?

The FP7 – People - MCA programme contributed in attracting international talent:

Fellowships were granted to more than 50,000 researchers evaluated for excellence.

10,000 PhD candidates, representing over 140 different nationalities located in more than 80 countries between 2007 and 2013.

Nearly 34% of the fellows were nationals of third countries.
[119](#footnote119)
 MCAs also contributed to retaining the best researchers in Europe:

46% of researchers coming to the EU from industrialised countries stayed in Europe after the end of their MCA fellowship.

MCAs supported the development of scientific careers. Survey results show that some 80% of the MCA fellows estimated that their fellowship experience improved their career prospects. 95.4% of MCA fellows were in employment positions two years after the end of their fellowship. FP7 contributed to training and to the development of individual skills and expertise
[120](#footnote120)
 and enhanced the mid- to long-term international mobility of the researchers involved. FP7 participation had a positive impact on the composition of beneficiary research teams, particularly by increasing the share of women and international researchers. FP7 contributed to permanent researcher recruitment as a large share (43%) of temporary researchers hired by projects stayed in the beneficiary research teams after the end of the project.

The HLEG found that FP7 'People'-funded researchers showed EU wide mobility patterns and results and confirmed that FP7 'People' contributed significantly to intra-European mobility. The HLEG lists the stimulation of mobility of researchers across Europe as one of the ten key achievements of FP7. The HLEG found that whilst FP7 also contributed to attracting researchers from outside Europe, this was limited due to the design of FP7 (FP7 'People' was only open for countries with an STI agreement with the EU and associated countries. This means that only 80 countries are represented compared to 170 countries for FP7 as a whole). Finally, it reported that the monitoring of MCA fellows on strengthening the human research potential only provides a fragmented view of the impact of the FP7 'People' programme and that the surveys conducted have very low response rates.

FP7 – Ideas – ERC researchers reported better working conditions across the board and in particular more time for research as a result of FP support. ERC success is unanimously seen as a new quality marker for research organisations across Europe, which in turn feeds back into actions by the research and university leaders. 7.1% of ERC grantees are non-ERA nationals. Around 17% of the PhDs and post-docs in ERC teams (around 2,700) were from outside Europe, of whom the largest number were from China, the USA and India.

FP7 – People –MCA: 76% of beneficiaries indicated that MCA provided more opportunities to attract non-national researchers to their organisation
[121](#footnote121)
. The European Charter and Code for researchers was embedded in MCAs and implemented during the proposal evaluation process. MCAs strongly promoted and encouraged employment contracts with full social coverage instead of fixed-amount fellowships, inducing organisational behaviour in participating institutions
[122](#footnote122)
, with a positive impact on non-MCA grantees.

6.1.7.Has FP7 been effective in providing the knowledge-base needed to support key Community policies?

FP7 contributed to the development and/or implementation of EU policies. The different Work Programmes
[123](#footnote123)
 were generally designed to accompany EU policies such as Climate Change, Environment, Energy, Health, Common Agricultural Policy, Common Fisheries Policies, etc. So far, in 10.540 finished FP7 projects the final reports has stated that results has been used in 374 cases by EU policies, produced 588 standards.
[124](#footnote124)

FP7 – Cooperation – INCO encouraged coordination with a broad range of community instruments, including these with a defined geographical focus: the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IP), the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), the Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation Instrument (DCECI), the Instrument for cooperation with industrialised and other high-income countries and territories (ICI), Asia and Latin America (ALA), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the European Development Fund (EDF).

FP7 – Cooperation – ICT projects have directly or indirectly contributed to policy-making and supported policy objectives beyond research. For instance, in the field of radio spectrum, EU projects have pioneered the operational usability of TV white spaces, supporting actions in future spectrum regulations
[125](#footnote125)
 and in the field of cloud computing. Other projects supported the preparation of legislation on shadow banking.
[126](#footnote126)

FP7 – Cooperation – SSH projects have informed European policies in different fields such as Common Agricultural Policy or security and defence policies.
[127](#footnote127)

FP7 – Cooperation – Space contributed to the development of the GMES/Copernicus programme which provides information services in support of policy areas such as environment, energy, climate action, civil protection, external relations and blue growth.

FP7 – Cooperation - Security contributed to the implementation of EU external policies, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (i.e. in support of border control, conflict prevention and crisis management), the creation of an EU-wide area of justice, freedom and security, and policy areas such as transport, health, civil protection, energy, development, and environment.

In FP7 – Cooperation - KBBE, more than one third of the development and demonstration research contributed to standardisation and legislation (Common Agricultural Policy
[128](#footnote128)
, Common Fisheries Policies).

For FP7 – Cooperation - Health, around half of finalized research projects reported on engagement with civil society actors or policy-makers. Around 25% of these were identified as having had an impact on EU policy.
[129](#footnote129)
,
[130](#footnote130)

FP7 – Cooperation - Energy has been the most important instrument for implementing the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan, the technology pillar of the EU’s Energy and Climate policy.

FP7 – Cooperation - Transport made a substantial contribution to the European transport policy making process
[131](#footnote131)
. It also contributed to the EU space policy through support given to the preparation for the use of European satellite navigation systems (Galileo and EGNOS) in particular in the areas of road transport, aviation, professional applications and location-based services.
[132](#footnote132)

FP7 – Cooperation - Environment projects are extensively quoted in the IPCC report
[133](#footnote133)
 and in EU climate-related impact assessments.

The RSFF improved access to risk finance, an element of the EU’s policy outlined in the Commission Communication “A Budget for Europe 2020”
[134](#footnote134)
.

Based on the survey results, policy impact at the national and regional level is perceived as moderate, 18% and 15% respectively. Policy impact is difficult to estimate for participants, as it is often only an indirect consequence of the project activities and it is not easy traceable unless a proper follow up is made, which is not the case for most project financed. 
[135](#footnote135)

6.1.8.Has FP7 been effective in increasing availability, coordination and access in relation to top-level European scientific and technological infrastructures?

EU Research Infrastructures (RIs) including eInfrastructures funded by FP7 reflected the new opportunities that digital and communication technologies offer in terms of designing science research and included world-leading infrastructures and eInfrastructures. They included centralised, as well as physically distributed resources for research, covering major equipment or sets of instruments, in addition to knowledge-containing resources such as collections, archives and data banks, and ‘facilities that facilitate research facilities’. E.g. the European Spallation Source (ESS), was designed to be the world's most intense source of pulsed neutrons and the Pan-European Infrastructure for Clinical trials and Biotherapy (ECRIN), which will help to shape scientific communities and build a critical mass at the global level.
[136](#footnote136)
 FP7 funded eInfrastructures give access to innovative infrastructures that offer high capacity services not matched by any commercial or national offer
[137](#footnote137)
. 

FP7 RI projects resulted in improved transnational access (~80% of respondents); new or improved simulation and visualisation facilities and techniques (~80% of respondents); the extension of the RI users base, from a scientific and/or research community perspective (~75% of the respondents); and new or improved RI services in general (~75% of respondents)
[138](#footnote138)
.

An external evaluation study highlighted the potential of RIs producing impact on society. E.g. close to 20% of the funding was allocated to the environmental sciences, providing support to networks of RIs and development of new distributed RIs in atmospheric research, arctic, ocean and marine research, and biodiversity. The programme also supported the development of the European life sciences ecosystem of facilities and resources, from biological resource centres to medical research facilities and food and agriculture facilities. Moreover, FP7 fostered the integration of around 900 RIs in networks providing access and services to more than 20,000 researchers worldwide so far and to another 20,000 potential users in the next years. The RIs were strengthened through the adoption of a Council regulation on the Community legal framework for a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)
[139](#footnote139)
.

The HLEG concluded that the combination of support for the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and FP7 'Capacities' helped to achieve a more coherent and coordinated development and use of European RIs.

6.2.How efficient has FP7 been?

6.2.1.Has FP7 been cost-effective?

It is difficult to assess whether FP7 has been cost-effective,
[140](#footnote140)
 since many projects are still on-going and there are no similar programmes in the world to which the degree of effectiveness can be compared. Several Member States studies have found the benefits of participating in FP7 outweighed the cost
[141](#footnote141)
.

An independent retroactive CBA of FP7 implementation for the period of 2009-2012 by the Executive Agencies showed that for ERCEA, the ratio of actual administrative budget to actual operational budget was within a range of 1.59-2.34%, well below the overall target of 5% and that the expected savings for the EU budget were achieved
[142](#footnote142)
. The creation of the Research Executive Agency (REA)
[143](#footnote143)
 led to total savings for the EU Budget of EUR 106.4 million. Finally, the new management modes implemented by the REA and the ERCEA improved proximity to beneficiaries, and produced better service delivery and cost savings
[144](#footnote144)
.

6.2.2.What are the benefits of FP7 so far?

6.2.2.1.Impact on participation

This section focusses in particular on the benefits of FP7 for individual participants and SMEs and benefits for countries less advanced in terms of R&I.

Benefits for countries less advanced on R&I

To contribute to cohesion, the FP7 – Capacities - Region of Knowledge programme was designed to respond to needs in European regions
[145](#footnote145)
. It contributed inter alia to the development of regional ‘smart specialisation’ strategies, in which Member States and regions were invited to draw upon, improve and link existing cluster initiatives, innovation strategies, R&D capabilities and industry needs and market strengths. EC contribution per million EUR invested in national R&D was higher for regions with the least research and innovation capacity compared to other regions. In less developed regions, the FP7 - Capacities - Research Potential activity contributed to enhancing the exchange and mobility of staff, along with support in terms of equipment, which helped overcome the lack of national and, in particular, regional funding and resources to hire high-level staff.

Moreover, FP7 participation from countries less advanced in terms of R&I provided an opportunity to enhance the level of excellence through co-publications with partners from more scientifically advanced countries. Assessing who benefits most from the programme it seems as illustrated in Graph 15 that smaller older EU Member States benefits most per inhabitant, whereas the picture is less clear when analysing the numbers in terms of EC contribution in relations to national RTD expenditure of how much funding the older Member States gets compared to the younger.

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| Graph 15: Annual FP7 EC Contribution EUR per inhabitant pr. year  Source: HLEG Report p. 33 |

Graph 16 shows the annual contribution per EUR million in national RTD expenditure. The HLEG found that the new Member States
[146](#footnote146)
 had an average annual FP7 contribution of EUR 29,094 per million EUR invested nationally in RTD, and this number for old Member States was EUR 22,436.

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| Graph 16: FP7 Annual EC Contribution per EUR million national RTD expenditure  Source: HLEG Report p. 33 |

Benefits for individual participants

According to a study on the impact of FP7 on research capacity, FP7 participation helped beneficiaries to strengthen their strategic orientation towards EU priorities (68%). Teams experienced a significant leverage effect in terms of their ability to attract additional funding, particularly at EU level (83%, and 72% at national/regional level). Regional and institutional attractiveness are positively influenced by FP7 participation and the overall FP7 participation ‘track record’ leads to increased ‘recognition’ of researchers, institutions and regions.

FP7 participation had a significant positive effect on the development of individual skills and expertise, contributed to further enhancing the mobility of researchers and offered mid- and longer-term career perspectives to researchers. Almost half of the researchers perceived positive effects of FP participation on their research career (survey data).
[147](#footnote147)

Benefits for SMEs

FP7 helped SMEs cover their R&D development costs and foster innovation. According to the HLEG, the strategic engagement of industry and SMEs is one of the ten key achievements of FP7. They found that this underlined FP7's intended role of fostering innovation. In the 'Cooperation' Specific Programme, 64% of participating SMEs
[148](#footnote148)
 stated that the benefits already outweigh the costs (and another 27% expected this to happen in future); for the Research for the Benefit of SME's scheme (RSME), the current figure is lower: 43% now and an additional 42% expecting the benefits to outweigh costs eventually. The overall funding to SME's in FP7 was EUR 6.4 billion, where EUR 4.8 billion came from the Cooperation programme.

53% of SMEs in FP7 'Cooperation' and 62% of SMEs in the RSME scheme stated that they would not have been able to undertake the project at all without FP7 funding. SMEs also benefited from international partnerships that provided access to specialised knowledge and equipment.

FP7 – Cooperation - Health: Supported the key role of SMEs in the health innovation process. Under FP7 Health, one billion EUR was invested on SMEs (including in IMI), 1,200 SMEs received EU funding. The average EU contribution per SME has doubled from EUR 300,000 to EUR 600,000 throughout FP7 Health. For example, the NABATIVI project helped a small biotech company to develop a promising new antibiotic compound that was recently licensed to a multinational pharmaceutical in a deal worth hundreds of millions of Euros.

In “Biotechnologies”, more than 500 SMEs (i.e. 38% of project participants) played a crucial role in bringing research results closer to market (46% of the SMEs were involved in the commercial exploitation of results, knowledge transfer and intellectual property rights management) and in promoting innovative solutions (71% of the research and technological tasks relied on SMEs' specialist profiles, expertise and know-how), helping meet "customers’ specific and unique needs".

FP7 - Cooperation - ICT helped SMEs to acquire new skills and expertise, allowing them access to facilities and know-how e.g. through Competence Centres that were established to enable access of SMEs to technology and equipment.

Eurostars-funded R&D-performing SMEs showed twice as much employment growth than unfunded SMEs.

6.2.3.Has FP7 been effective in reducing administrative burden?

Several measures were implemented in FP7 in order to simplify the management of proposals and grants compared to FP6 and reduce the administrative burden. These included the unique organisation register; clearer guidance; the introduction of a web-based electronic system for collecting financial reports ("forms C"); the extension of reporting and payment periods from 12 months (in FP6) to 18 months; and a certain reduction of ex-ante controls, made possible due to the introduction of the participants’ guarantee fund: a reduced number of certificates on financial statements and fewer ex-ante financial capacity checks.

A recent study provides a quantitative estimation of the budgetary impact of the changes in the cost calculation regime in FP7 as compared to FP6 and its effects on the administrative burden for participants. Based on a survey of 124 FP coordinators and an adapted version of the Standard Cost Model, the study estimates that four main simplification measures adopted in FP7 and related to cost reporting i.e. introduction of web-based electronic system for collecting financial reports ("Forms C"); extension of average reporting and payment periods from 12 to 18 months; decreased number of certificates on financial statements; clearer guidance) produced savings in terms of administrative effort and related costs of EUR 551 million in FP7 (compared with FP6) at the whole programme level and EUR 14 million in FP7 Euratom.
[149](#footnote149)

As stated in the Interim Evaluation Expert Group Report, the perception of the impacts of simplification measures varied
[150](#footnote150)
. FP7 participants were satisfied with some changes such as:

The introduction of a unique registration facility (URF)

The reduction in the number of certificates related to financial statements,

The reduction of ex-ante financial capacity checks controls.

However, participants identified the still excessive time-to-grant, the overly demanding reporting obligations, and the inconsistency between different Commission services in the application of rules or implementation of procedures as major obstacles.

Most importantly, the European Court of Auditors, in its 2014 annual report, states: "The persistently high level of error in research and innovation spending reflects risks inherent in the design and implementation of the Seventh Research Framework Programme. Eligibility rules are complex and the programme has multiple funding rates."

The above findings provided important input for the design of the rules, processes and IT tools for Horizon 2020 that resulted in large-scale simplification of the funding rules, processes and IT.

6.3.How relevant was FP7?

The intervention logic implemented in FP7 contributed to achieving the objectives and to increase the relevance of the Programme. It also adapted its focus to address the global economic-financial crisis and contribute to the Europe 2020 Strategy.

Citizens agreed that FP7 was relevant, with some caveats. According to a survey, FP7 met the expectations of EU citizens, although some respondents indicated that certain changes in the priorities could be envisaged
[151](#footnote151)
. In terms of themes, ‘health and medical care’ were prioritised, followed by ‘protection of the environment’ and ‘energy supply, and ‘availability of quality food’. The HLEG assessed the FP7 impacts on citizens and society and found that citizens and civil society organisations were not very involved in relevant FP7 programming decision-making bodies; that dissemination and outreach activities lacked in terms of the targeting and tailoring of these activities for different audiences with different purposes of communicating scientific outputs; that civil society organisations' involvement as partners in research projects was limited (5% of unique participating organisations); and that the budget of the sub-programmes addressing issues of high importance for citizens and society (SSH and SiS) was comparatively small.

6.4.How coherent was FP7 internally and with other (EU) actions?

6.4.1.Internal coherence of FP7

FP7 was made up of four Specific Programmes. By definition, each had specific objectives with regard to the area of European research that it supported: collaborative research, frontier research, human resources and mobility, as well as capacity-building in research. As each of the four Specific Programmes had relatively similar success rates (Cooperation 19%, Ideas 12%, People 21% and Capacities 20%), this would suggest that a different financial allocation within FP7 between the four Specific Programmes would not have generated more research.

The HLEG stated that "FP7 created compartmentalization and duplication of themes. Furthermore it expressed that some successful elements of FP7 were provided through certain sub‐programmes, even though they would be equally useful in other sub-programmes".
[152](#footnote152)
 

FP7 – Cooperation – Health is an example of complementarity and synergies with other 'Cooperation' themes, as well as with the 'Capacities' (esp. Infrastructures, Science in Society) and 'People' Specific Programmes. These programmes have both implemented research projects of common interest, and indirectly targeted similar research topics. The most interrelated programmes were ERC (207 relations based on the scientific topics of the publications produced with Health’s projects), People (65 project relations), ICT (45 project relations), INFRA (24 project relations), NMP (22 project relations) and KBBE (16 project relations)
[153](#footnote153)

6.4.2.Coherence with other interventions

In the period 2007-2013, two other initiatives should be mentioned in this context: the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) (with an overall budget of EUR 3.621 million) and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) (with a budget of EUR 308.7 million).

The CIP was designed specifically to offer new possibilities for synergies with FP7 and the Structural Funds, creating a continuum of EU support for technologies of strategic importance developed through FP7. In some areas of the CIP, such as eco-innovation, research previously funded under research FPs was picked up and taken towards the market. Many CIP coordinators of projects were involved in EU-funded research. A clear progression was commonly seen through each of the two Framework Programmes – from research through to applications on the ground. Each programme had a common reference point in the overall EU Strategy as established formerly in the revised Lisbon Strategy and more recently in the Europe 2020 Strategy
[154](#footnote154)
.

The EIT contributed to overcoming the fragmentation of the research and innovation landscape via its Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). The EIT invested in fostering entrepreneurship and innovation competences and in making education more responsive to business and societal demands. It has been acting as an 'innovation catalyst' by accelerating the take-up and exploitation of technologies and research outcomes. The 2009 KICs working in the fields of climate change, sustainable energy and ICT have been closely involved in several FP7-funded projects.

Cohesion policy
[155](#footnote155)
 allocated almost 25% (around EUR 86 billion) of its Funds (European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Cohesion Fund (CF) and European Social Fund (ESF)) to “investment in research and innovation" during the period 2007-2013. According to external experts, the linkages of CIP with other programmes could have been better exploited and institutionalised
[156](#footnote156)
.

The FP7 – Capacities - Research Potential programme was a pioneer in promoting the coordinated use of funding of FP7 and regional policy
[157](#footnote157)
. It helped build capacities in terms of infrastructure and human resources for research organisations in less favoured regions. Often, this prepared the ground for significant investments from the structural funds. FP7 - People also created synergies with the structural funds.

The SoMoPro project in the South Moravian Region (Czech Republic) combined MCA-co-funded fellowships with other programmes funded by structural funds in order to successfully develop a knowledge-based strategy for the region.

Some Research Infrastructures projects under the ESFRI Roadmap were supported by FP7 and ESF, illustrating concrete synergies: The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project, which aims to create the latest laser equipment in the world as a distributed infrastructure in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania; the European Spallation Source (ESS) project, which aims to build a powerful neutron facility of the next generation in Sweden.

The interim evaluation of F7 concluded that a strategic shift is needed to establish stronger and better connections between research, innovation and education (the so-called knowledge triangle). The HLEG concurred that FP7 was a key element of the Union's efforts to achieve policy coherence, horizontally and vertically, in the European research and innovation systems. At the same time, in their view, the initiatives often appear loosely coordinated.
[158](#footnote158)

6.4.3.Coherence with wider EU policies and international obligations

FP7 contributed with its results to the development and implementation of EU policies (see above) and contributed to important international commitments such as the Kyoto Convention, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Biosafety Protocol, the Plan of Implementation adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals. Such contribution came from different channels, like:

-Knowledge creation, through projects that were funded by FP7. This evidence and analytical tools were then used to design policies, either directly or indirectly (i.e. "translated" to policy by knowledge brokers such as the European Environmental Agency, the JRC or consultancies).

-Creation of international scientific communities/networks that provided the relevant evidence, expertise and scientific consensus for those policies and international commitments.

-Through the involvement of the own European Commission staff in international negotiations, based on the knowledge created by FP7 projects. This is the case of the recently approved SDGs and their references to Science, Technology and Innovation based on co-creation, i.e. beyond the tradition technology transfer approach.

Another example is the active role played by FP7 in implementing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). GEO is an intergovernmental organisation of 89 governments and around 80 international organisations, which together develop projects and coordinate their strategies on earth observation. GEOSS is critical to tackle global challenges such as climate change, energy and food security, or health. The European Commission is one of the four co-chairs of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO), and FP7 contributed through projects and coordination (see also the example below, of the IPCC – it is a similar case, less known). 

One important milestone in the development of international climate policy is the adoption of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Results from at least 728 FP7 Environment projects were quoted in the 5th IPCC Report. FP7 - Cooperation - Environment facilitated the international co-development of climate change models, ensuring the completeness of systems. It helped create a process of mutual learning and efficient knowledge creation and international standards to avoid fragmentation of research and funding. Similar progress is apparent in areas such as greenhouse gases (GHG) measurement and ocean acidification and carbon sequestration. FP7 strongly contributed to the sustainable development strategy
[159](#footnote159)
. Overall, about 75% of the topics, 69% of the projects and 76% of the funding (i.e. EUR 19.6 billion) contributed to sustainable development (measured by the EU Sustainable Development Strategy - EU SDS). 
[Graph 17](#_Ref428539490)
 shows how this contribution was made by the different priorities.

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Graph 17: Share of projects and of EC contribution to project contributing to at least one of the 78 EU SDS operational objectives in the FP7 - Cooperation 2007-2013.

Source: R4SD study

Furthermore, FP7 ('Cooperation' and 'Capacities' Specific Programmes) was already in line with the targets of the "Sustainable Development Goals"
[160](#footnote160)
 (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 (Graph 18). Overall, about 2,500 topics from 2007 to 2013 were related to one or more of the 17 SDGs. In particular, projects contributed to ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), promoting health and well-being (SDG 3), improving cities and human settlements (SDG 13), promoting access to energy (SDG 7) and building peaceful and inclusive societies (SDG 16). This corresponds to a share of 70% of all topics. The 4,980 projects received an FP7 contribution of about EUR 20 billion, corresponding to 72% of the financial contribution in these Specific Programmes
[161](#footnote161)
.

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| Graph 18: Number of topics related to the 17 SDGs in FP7 "Cooperation" and "Capacities" Programmes  Source: R4SD study |

6.5.What is the EU added value of FP7?

6.5.1.Additional value resulting from the EU intervention

As regards EU Added Value, the HLEG endorsed the conclusion that FP7 has demonstrated improvements in the areas of developing a culture of networking and cooperation; facilitating European excellence and capacity building; developing critical mass; fostering mutual learning and harmonisation in Europe; avoiding redundancies and acting economically and effectively; fostering the strategic orientation of participants' research and innovation activities; and enhancing a culture of competition capability and excellence in Europe.
[162](#footnote162)
According to the respondents to the online stakeholder consultation, the three most important areas of FP7 added value
[163](#footnote163)
 are: tackling pan-European challenges; increasing competition in research; and enhancing researchers’ mobility.

6.5.1.1.Economic Impact

An ex-post simulation indicates that the probable cumulative direct job creation effect of FP7 (researchers supported) amounts to 950,000 full time equivalents until 2030. The indirect job creation effect is difficult to calculate, but the same ex-post simulation indicates that the probable cumulative indirect job creation effect of FP7 amounts to 2,900,000 full time equivalents until 2030.
[164](#footnote164)

The HLEG estimated that FP7 directly created 130,000 jobs per year over a 10 year period in total 1.3 million jobs per year, and indirectly 160,000 jobs per year, which amounts to 4 million over a period of 25 years. They considered that the results seem modest, but that it has to be considered that FP7 was an instrument of research and innovation policy addressing excellence, competitiveness and societal challenges and not an instrument of job policy.

In terms of contribution to GDP, the ex-post simulation indicates that FP7 resulted in a probable cumulative increase in GDP of EUR 398 billion until 2030, i.e. an extra 0.12% annual GDP growth.
[165](#footnote165)
 The HLEG estimated an additional annual EU GDP of EUR 20 billion for the next 25 years totalling EUR 500 billion.

6.5.1.2.Societal Impact

According to the HLEG, FP7 has strongly reinforced the commitment of the EU to funding research that is of relevance to solving societal challenges. Despite the fact that the evidence on impacts of FP7 on society in general is still very limited, addressing certain societal challenges through research, technology and innovation was found to be one of the ten key achievements of FP7.

Societal benefits can be illustrated by the following examples:

FP7 – Cooperation - Health research provided solutions and best practices for improvement of health care. Achievements include new screening methodologies in diabetes and Alzheimer's disease; a portable PET scan that was brought to market in three years; an oral test for the diagnostic of breast cancer; and more rapid identification of new therapeutic targets in areas of autism and schizophrenia. This will contribute to speeding up the development of new medicines in Europe. A total of 1,008 projects were funded with EUR 4.8 billion.

FP7 – Cooperation - ICT promoted for instance photonics and robotics.
[166](#footnote166)
 Independent experts pointed out that the scientific impact is particularly strong for the ICT programme. Academic areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Media, and Quantum Computingwere cited as good examples for advancing the state of the art of knowledge areas
[167](#footnote167)
. A total of 2328 projects were funded with EUR 7.9 billion.

FP7 – Cooperation - Energy research in renewable energies such as wind, solar and biomass, addressing the performance of materials and hydrogen storage, in order to improve energy efficiency and the security of supply and to reduce pollution. A total of 374 projects were funded with EUR 1.9 billion.

FP7 – Cooperation - Environment addressed environmental, climate change and resource efficiency issues e.g. with projects on earth observation, assessment tools for sustainable development and environmental technologies. A total of 494 projects were funded with €1.7 billion.

FP7 – Cooperation – SSH research contributed to creating jobs and improving the employability of people at risk (minorities, youth, older people) and to stimulating local economies, for instance, increasing tourism as a result of excavations. Other achievements include the development of services for corruption reporting, which have effectively increased citizens’ co-responsibility in different EU countries. A total of 253 projects were funded with EUR 579 million.

FP7 – Cooperation - Security stimulated European security research and contributed to reducing the fragmentation of the research community. In addition to the direct benefits resulting from projects, i.e. in the fields of disaster management or societal impacts, FP7 Security Research engaged more end-users in projects, created end-user communities and contributed to standardisation activities. A total of 319 projects were funded with EUR 1.3 billion.

The Clean Sky JU stimulated developments towards the environmental targets for reducing emissions and noise in air transport in Europe defined by the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) in Vision 2020. For instance, technologies developed within the Green RotorCraft demonstrator (integration of technologies and demonstration on rotorcraft platforms - helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft) have resulted in a reduction of 30% for CO2 and 47% for noise compared to the targets of -25% CO2 and -50% noise respectively . A total of 474 projects were funded with EUR 1.9 billion.

In the area of Space, GMES/Copernicus delivered pre-operational services for environment and security. The GMES/Copernicus Emergency Management Service emergency response management service helped the EU and non EU citizens in dealing with emergency situations through rapid mapping during the response phase of natural hazards. As an example, the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) has been delivering early warnings of possible major flooding events to national services since 2012 across the EU. The GMES/Copernicus land monitoring service contributed to environmental challenges such as deforestation and forest degradation. The GMES/Copernicus marine and atmospheric monitoring pre-operational services produced observations and forecast on the state of the Earth's environment addressing both Europe but also the global aspects. A total of 276 projects were funded with EUR 713 million.

FP7 – Cooperation – Transport – Galileo. The programme brings societal benefits in various areas, for example EGNOS in aviation permits safer flight operations in low visibility conditions (like demonstrated by the HEDGE project). 120 M€ (3 times €40M: 2007, 2008 and 2011) was spent on grants for satellite navigation (Galileo and EGNOS). In the area of location-based services, the INCLUSION project introduced the first sat-nav solution specifically designed to support motor impaired people, aimed at improving their mobility in safe conditions. In the same areas, the LIVELINE project accomplished the objective of developing a secure location sharing service based on EGNOS for vulnerable people such as children and the elderly. A total of 701 projects funded with EUR 2.3 billion.

New developments realised through nanotechnology in the fields of medicine, electronics and materials. A study on Industrial technologies points out the positive impacts of FP7 NMP Theme on the Grand Challenges in EU Member States. A total of 804 projects were funded with EUR 3.2 billion.

A network analysis study found that FP7 contributed to the realisation of ERA by increasing the integration of ERA countries; by increasing cross-sector integration; by including new participants in research projects with potentially effects on innovation; and by increasing multi-disciplinarity, especially in 'Capacities' and 'Cooperation'. 
[168](#footnote168)
 According to the HLEG, one of the ten key achievements of FP7 was that it "strengthened ERA by catalysing a culture of cooperation and constructing comprehensive networks fit to address thematic challenges". It concluded that "a unique capability of cross-border and cross-sector cooperation was promoted, with organisations from on average 6 countries collaborating in projects funded by FP7 'Cooperation' and 'Capacities'.
[169](#footnote169)
 

6.5.1.3.Tackling pan European challenges

FP7 addressed transnational pan-European challenges (e.g. environment, health, food safety, climate change, security, employment, poverty and exclusion) and facilitated the establishment of a common scientific base in these areas, which could not have been achieved by Member States alone.

FP7 – Cooperation – Security was the first Framework Programme with such a theme. It helped create a true European Security Research Community, reducing fragmentation. There is considerable added value given that the Commission contribution made available through FP7 Security Research represents more than 50% of the EU-wide public financing for security research.

FP7 – Cooperation - Environment enabled the worldwide development and implementation of climate change models, ensuring the completeness of the systems. The global coordination of Member States earth observation systems was attained through the implementation of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO), in which the Commission is one of the four co-chairs
[170](#footnote170)
.

FP7 – Cooperation – SSH contributed to Europe 2020 targets such as increasing employment, reducing poverty, and reducing early school-leaving. TENLAW is an example of a FP7 contribution to successful housing policies for low income households. This project e.g. provided the first large-scale comparative and European law survey of tenancy law.

6.5.1.4.Additionality

The EU added value of FP7 is illustrated by the fact that only a small proportion of FP7 funded projects would have gone ahead without FP7 funding. The HLEG underlined that "additionality was very largely demonstrated" for SME participation.

In FP7 – Cooperation - Energy, 70% of survey participants indicated that their project would not have been carried out without EU funding. 40% of unsuccessful participants reported that proposal preparation helped establish business contacts leading to another FP proposal or cooperation activities. Since the percentage of unsuccessful participants seeking other forms of financing was not very high (21%), it can be assumed that project participants tend to develop research projects and ideas that are aligned with FP programmes priorities
[171](#footnote171)
.

In FP7 – Cooperation - NMP, without FP funding, 46% would have dropped the project; 46% would have looked for other sources of funding, e.g. national programmes; and 8% of survey participants indicated that they would have undertaken the activities in any case. In the case of PPPs, 37% of participants would pursue the project in the absence of FP7 funding as project developments are closer to the markets (i.e. higher TRL).

In FP7 – Cooperation – Transport, half the projects would not have been launched in the absence of FP funding or would have been launched on a more reduced scale and scope. This is reported to be particularly true for aviation and shipping, which are by nature international.
[172](#footnote172)

In FP7 – Cooperation – Space, 58.2% of respondents suggested that their projects could not have been supported by a national scheme or ESA, whereas 34.8% reported that only some of the projects could have been supported under these two possibilities. Only 7.1% of the survey respondents thought that their projects could have been funded by alternative sources.

In FP7 – Cooperation - Security, more than 80% of survey respondents indicated that the project would not have been carried out without FP7 funding.

As regards the FP7 – People –MCAs, evidence shows that only 1% of projects rejected by MCAs due to budgetary reasons were subsequently implemented as originally planned. Some 17% went ahead with the projects after some changes to the original design. 82% of non-successful applicants abandoned the projects.

FP7 - Capacities: 70% of the projects surveyed stated that their project would not have been possible without FP7 funding; the remaining 30% considered that it would have been possible to find alternative funding, but in almost all cases on a reduced scale or more slowly.

6.5.1.5.Pooling of resources and critical mass

Many societal challenges are of such a scale and complexity, requiring different types of knowledge and skills from different sectors and disciplines to resolve them, that no single Member State can provide the necessary resources. Activities addressing them need to be carried out at EU level to achieve the required critical mass. According to the HLEG, one of the ten key achievements of FP7 is that it reached a critical mass of research across the European landscape and worldwide. The HLEG highlighted in particular the critical mass achieved by the JTIs.

FP7 – Cooperation – ICT-funded eInfrastructures provided access to innovative infrastructures offering high-capacity services not matched by any commercial or national offer. Similarly, for the two FET Flagships (Human Brain Project and Graphene), there was the need to create critical mass (e.g. quantum computing), to reduce costs (e.g. photonics), and to unify resources on a scale that no Member State alone could have afforded, in terms of both financial support and cooperation among multi-disciplinary teams. In the area of "Future Internet", the EU set the research agenda, helping the industry coordinate the various streams of research,
[173](#footnote173)
 and facilitated cooperation in standardisation
[174](#footnote174)
.

FP7 – Cooperation – NMP: Respondents considered the ability to reach critical mass a reason to participate in FP7
[175](#footnote175)
 as it facilitated access to additional funding (54%) and to external knowledge (44%), and provided the opportunity to work with strategically relevant research units/enterprises, access to networks (36%), and access to R&D networks or research organisations (35%).

FP7 – Cooperation – Transport - Galileo. The projects on satellite navigation drew partners from 48 different countries. There were a total of 425 organisations involved. Three to six partners was the most common format, while groups of up to 13 were occasionally seen, which demonstrate an unprecedented (in the area) approach for developing common technologic solutions across countries.

FP7 – Ideas generated economies of scale. Increased competition led to a higher overall quality of research and promoted specialisation. By deciding centrally what proposals to support, the risk of duplication of research was limited; and it was less costly to employ the experts needed for the high-quality assessment of the project proposals. The quality of the ERC's peer review has already been widely recognised by the research community
[176](#footnote176)
.

FP7 – Capacities - Research Infrastructures including eInfrastructures actions fostered the creation and increase of critical mass in research, including by funding transnational access for small and newer Member States.

FP7 – People - MCA also made a significant contribution to structuring the European research landscape by promoting transnational and inter-sectoral mobility as well as opening research careers at European and international level.

In Euratom, FP7 optimised investments from several Member States as they operated collectively to reach a scale beyond individual possibilities in fission and fusion research.

Cohesion policy investments in 2007-2013 focused in particular on the development of research infrastructures, where some 11.4 billion EUR from ERDF have been invested.

6.5.1.6.Creating networks and increasing the EU's attractiveness as a place to carry out research

FP7 helped to create durable cross-border, cross-sectoral, inter-disciplinary networks. The implementation of R&I projects induced well-structured and sustainable teams, well-integrated into global innovation networks (see section 6.1.2). The HLEG concurred that FP7's collaborative approach constructed comprehensive networks fit to address thematic challenges and lists this among the ten key FP7 achievements.

FP7 – Cooperation - NMP: more than three-quarters of participants confirmed that the primary advantage of European level funding is the opportunity to participate in international networks and wider consortia.

FP7 – Cooperation - FAFB: participating public research organisations tend to have more cooperation agreements with the private sector than non-participating ones (+15%).

The Euratom fusion programme: Through its focus on education, training, mobility and the exploitation of key infrastructures such as the Joint European Torus (JET), enabled researchers from across Europe to participate in a cutting-edge and well-integrated research programme.

FP7 – Cooperation – ICT: In areas such as high-performance computing, collaboration across the EU helped minimise internal disparities, allowing smaller and less-resourced countries to afford advanced systems. Fostering collaboration between universities and industry players was seen as a crucial benefit, encouraging in some cases longer-term thinking and riskier investment, notably by SMEs.

FP7 – People – MCA: Research organisations in EU-15 Member States and large third countries (i.e. US and Japan) acted as gateways for weaker Member States to access excellence networks.

FP7 - Cooperation - SSH: As a result of European cooperation guidelines, 95% of the projects have engaged with citizens or civil society organizations and 92% with governments or policy-makers, enhancing the social and political impacts of research.

FP7 enhanced researcher mobility across borders. FP7 – People - MCA supported about 50,000 researchers (including approximately 10,000 PhD candidates) of over 140 different nationalities working in more than 80 countries between 2007 and 2013. MCA have facilitated industry-academic collaborations on risky and innovative research projects on a European scale, which otherwise would not have been supported.

The findings of a study on university participation in the FPs
[177](#footnote177)
 show that participation in the FPs improved the reputation of the university and increased the frequency of external collaboration. At the same time, the study indicated that participation in the FP had limited effects on the number of students and visiting researchers.

6.5.2.Extent to which the issues addressed continue to require action and consequences of stopping EU intervention

As assessed in detail in the Impact Assessment accompanying the Commission proposal for Horizon 2020, European challenges remained and others appeared after the conclusion of FP7, which continues to justify EU intervention in the field of research and innovation. Stopping EU intervention in the field of Research and Innovation - discontinuation of the FP - is a hypothetical option since the Treaty contains specific obligations to carry out Community research. However, the amount of funding provided at EU level and the content and range of projects financed could vary significantly.

The risks of limiting EU intervention are that it would stop in its tracks the process of building an integrated ERA, and would lead to greater fragmentation and inefficiency of research efforts in the EU. Research teams would carry out far fewer projects on a European scale and would become more dependent on the resources and knowledge available in their own country. Reduced cooperation would have a weakening effect on the transfer of knowledge in the EU. Some important fields of S&T could therefore advance more slowly, while some countries may find that their capabilities in particular research fields are declining due to inadequate interaction with top teams located elsewhere. There would be fewer assurances of coherence and critical mass in research activities contributing to overall EU objectives. In terms of the coordination of national programmes, the EU would return to the uncoordinated pre-ERA period, with 28 Member States and numerous regions defining their research priorities independently from each other and from the EU.

7.Lessons Learnt from the Evaluation

7.1 Implementation Issues

The evaluation has highlighted a number of significant shortcomings in the implementation of FP7. Notwithstanding the measures that were introduced in the course of the Programme, FP7 did not involve large-scale simplification of rules for applicants and beneficiaries. Overall, the level of complexity and the lack of consistency between different parts of the Programme meant that the rules remained too complex. This explains, at least in part, the relatively high error rate associated with FP7 and is a point that the Court of Auditors has highlighted in its reports.

While FP7 as a whole proved adaptable to changing economic circumstances and the Programme was structured in a transparent way into four Specific Programmes with explicit priorities, the different components of FP7 operated too much in a rigid and isolated manner. This led to overlaps between objectives of different parts of individual Specific Programmes.

FP7 sought to ensure complementarity with other programmes such as the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme and the European Institute of Technology, as well as the Structural Funds. However, the separate legal bases and differences in implementation rules meant that progress was more limited than required to ensure effective synergies between FP7 and other programmes.

7.2 Evaluation Process

Taking stock of the process of carrying out the evaluation also allows us to draw a number of lessons.

Firstly, an impressive evidence base has been compiled as a basis for the evaluation, comprising more than 120 evaluation studies as well as data from Programme implementation, survey information, and stakeholder views.

Accordingly, the evaluation strategy has remained overly bottom-up in approach, with no common methodology for evaluating the different parts of the programme, inadequate co-ordination of the evaluation process from the outset and no common database. For the future, it is essential to apply harmonised evaluation methodologies in order to achieve common and comparable evaluation results. This is a prerequisite for rigorous analysis and comparison across themes, as well as for the assessment of the adequacy of funding instruments.

Secondly, and related to this, the absence in the majority of areas of counterfactual studies has hindered the evaluation of the effects of FP7 funding on participants. Appropriate methodologies for gathering counterfactual evidence must be an integral part of Framework Programme evaluation henceforth.

Thirdly the current approach to Framework Programme evaluation, developed with the aim of demonstrating the direct achievements, is inadequate to demonstrate the contribution of the Framework Programme to the wider economy and society. Accordingly, new data and text-mining techniques and evaluation methodologies are needed in order to be able to evaluate the longer-term socio-economic impact of the Framework Programme.

8.Conclusions

FP7 was the largest consolidated effort and investment in EU research and innovation history. It was effective in promoting excellence in research and competitiveness, in contributing to solving societal challenges, in strengthening human potential and researcher mobility, and in fostering transnational research cooperation.

FP7 contributed to fostering excellence by attracting excellent EU and non-EU researchers in more than 25,000 projects carrying out excellent, inter-disciplinary, collaborative research and producing excellent knowledge. FP7 publications had a larger than average share among the top 1% and 5% cited publications, more than 1,700 patent applications and more than 7,400 commercial exploitations. Total number of publications that can be attributed to FP7 is more than 170,000.

Given that FP7 only account for a small proportion of total public R&D expenditure in Europe, its economic impacts are substantial, through the leverage effect of various instruments, its impact on GDP and its effects on employment. It is estimated that FP7 will increase GDP by approximately EUR 20 billion per year over the next 25 years in total EUR 500 billion through its indirect economic effects and create over 130,000 research jobs per year and 160,000 additional jobs per year indirectly. There is also evidence of positive impacts in terms of micro-economic effects with participating enterprises reporting innovative product developments, increased turnover, improved productivity and competitiveness. It is, however, too early to make a final assessment of the market impact of FP7 projects.

FP7 created durable, inter-disciplinary, cross-sectoral networks, with organisations from on average six countries collaborating in FP7 funded projects.

The new initiatives launched to engage industry and SMEs (e.g. JTIs and other PPPs) have proven effective in exploiting cross-thematic links and engaging private and public partners. The focus on fostering the participation of SMEs to encourage their growth through new technologies, products and processes paid off at an increasing rate as FP7 progressed. The Risk-Sharing Finance Facility proved effective in providing loan finance to R&I companies, achieving a wide geographic spread and sectoral distribution and enabling the EIB to increase its capacity to make higher-risk loans.

FP7 enhanced the training and long-term mobility of researchers, enhanced the quality of doctoral training, and helped improve working conditions for researchers in the EU. FP7 also supported the development of scientific careers and reinforced the attractiveness of the EU as a place to carry out research.

FP7 helped improve the coordination of European, national and regional research policies. FP7 contributed to smart specialisation strategies, to a broad range of Community instruments and to meeting the international obligations of the EU. FP7 was open to the world with participants from 170 countries. It had a positive effect on widening participation and building ERA.

The simplification measures introduced during FP7 contributed to reducing the overall administrative burden, notably in terms of access to information and application procedures, including ex-ante controls, when compared to FP6. However, further room for improvement remains as confirmed by various stakeholders.

While FP7 as a whole had a clear structure around four Specific Programmes with explicit objectives, this structure led to a silo approach to implementation that proved an obstacle to its optimum functioning. FP7 could have provided for greater flexibility across its individual Specific Programmes.

Although there was a commitment to capitalising on complementarity with related programmes, differences in legal bases and implementation rules hindered the achievement of the necessary synergies between FP7 and programmes such as LIFE, the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme and the European Institute of Technology, as well as the Structural Funds.

Finally it should be noted that this evaluation cannot and does not present a complete picture of FP7 results and impacts. The main reason is that this evaluation builds to an important extent on project final reports and that so far only 12,149 FP7 projects (accounting for about 50% of the total number of FP7 projects) have finished.

In addition, there is the well-known 'time-lag' issue, i.e. the fact that research projects take time to produce societal impacts: it takes years before the new knowledge generated within the scope of a single project or a portfolio of projects is valorised in the form of new products, processes and services and economic, social and environmental impacts. FP7 also accounts for a mere 7% of total public budgets and outlays for R&D (GBAORD) in Europe and, apart from FP7, a variety of other factors (economic growth, other policies) influence the uptake of research results.

This is a significant point. There are indications that the increased emphasis in the later stages of FP7 on innovation and industry participation in order to respond to the economic-financial crisis is beginning to generate positive micro-economic effects. Participating organisations are reporting innovative product, process and service development, higher Technology Readiness Levels, and increased productivity and competitiveness. However, it is too soon to make a final assessment of the impact of FP7 on EU competitiveness.

:   [(1)](#footnoteref1)
    Decision No 1982/2006/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 concerning the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007-2013). Similar text also in: Council Decision 2012/93/Euratom of 19 December 2011 concerning the Framework Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community for nuclear research and training activities (2012 to 2013).
:   [(2)](#footnoteref2)
     This is in accordance with the new 'Better Regulation' Guidelines adopted in May 2015, according to which SWDs must be prepared for evaluations.
:   [(3)](#footnoteref3)
     In assessing the EC Commitment also calls implemented later have been included.
:   [(4)](#footnoteref4)
    Art 179 (TFEU).
:   [(5)](#footnoteref5)
    Recital 4 of Decision 1982/2006/EC, O.J. 412/1 of 30.12.2006.
:   [(6)](#footnoteref6)
    Notably as compared with the USA (2.59%).
:   [(7)](#footnoteref7)
    See Ex Ante Impact Assessment of FP7; SEC(2005) 430 for the description of the Baseline scenario.
:   [(8)](#footnoteref8)
    Further details about the background including the detailed intervention logic to FP7 and the baseline scenario can be found in Annex 6.
:   [(9)](#footnoteref9)
    Recital 4 of Decision 1982/2006/EC, O.J. 412/1 of 30.12.2006.
:   [(10)](#footnoteref10)
    Two-thirds of it financed by the private sector.
:   [(11)](#footnoteref11)
    Recital 3 of Decision 1982/2006/EC, O.J. 412/1 of 30.12.2006. Target established by the Barcelona European Council in March 2002.
:   [(12)](#footnoteref12)
    Contribute to the realisation of the 3% Barcelona objective by more than doubling Community investment in R&D.
:   [(13)](#footnoteref13)
    More information about how the evaluation questions were identified can be found in Annex 5.
:   [(14)](#footnoteref14)
    The evaluation was carried out from June to September 2015, with additional review in November and December 2015.
:   [(15)](#footnoteref15)
     European Commission Services involved: SEC GEN, DG AGRI, DG CNET, DG EAC, JRC, DG GROW, DG HOME, DG MOVE, DG ENV, DG CLIMA and DG RTD.
:   [(16)](#footnoteref16)
    Corda, the common research data warehouse, is the Framework Programmes' (FP) central repository of data collected and/or derived during the course of FP implementation. See Annex 3.
:   [(17)](#footnoteref17)
    The first evaluation studies feeding into the exercise were launched in 2010 and the last study results will become available in 2017. The list of evaluation studies feeding into this meta-evaluation is presented in Annex 4. It should be noted that all studies were subject to a quality assessment, providing robustness to the overall assessment.
:   [(18)](#footnoteref18)
    Interim Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Programme - Report of the Expert Group, 2010. This did not cover Euratom, which was subject to a separate evaluation: Interim Evaluation of the indirect actions of the FP7 of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for nuclear research and training activities (2007 to 2011), 2010. Annex 20 provides an overview of the key findings of this interim evaluation and the follow-up given to them.
:   [(19)](#footnoteref19)
     The HLEG identified 10 key achievements of FP7 which can be found in Annex 27.
:   [(20)](#footnoteref20)
    Further details on the methodologies can be found in Annex 3.
:   [(21)](#footnoteref21)
    The results of the consultation which ran from February to May 2015 can be found in Annex 2.
:   [(22)](#footnoteref22)
     As of 1/12-2015
:   [(23)](#footnoteref23)
     CORDA 1/12/2015: 9927 finalised projects with 1,279 ICT projects added from DG Connect and 949 from ERC.
:   [(24)](#footnoteref24)
    Considering the time needed for the uptake to ensure impacts, most of the impacts of FP7 will happen in the next 15 to 20 years.
:   [(25)](#footnoteref25)
    EC/Regional Policy (2012), Evaluation of innovation activities. Guidance on methods and practices, Brussels; Thomas E. Vass (2008), The three year time lag between innovation collaboration and new product innovation, The Private Capital Market Working Paper Series No. 2008-02-02; Edwin Mansfield (1991), Academic research and industrial innovation, Research Policy, 20, 1-12; Holger Ernst (2001), Patent applications and subsequent changes of performance: evidence from time-series cross-section analyses on the firm level, Research Policy, 30, 143-157.
:   [(26)](#footnoteref26)
    The Cooperation thematic areas were: health; food, agriculture and fisheries, and biotechnology; information and communications technologies; nanoscience, nanotechnologies, materials and new production technologies; energy; environment (including climate change); transport (including aeronautics); socio-economic sciences and the humanities; space; and security.
:   [(27)](#footnoteref27)
     See footnote 1.
:   [(28)](#footnoteref28)
    Annex 24
:   [(29)](#footnoteref29)
    This was requested by the Decision n° 1982/2006, Articles 7(1) and Council Decision 2006/970/Euratom, Art 6(1).
:   [(30)](#footnoteref30)
    The list of indicators is presented in Annex 7.
:   [(31)](#footnoteref31)
     PPPs had similar objectives to the JTIs. Research agendas were identified in cooperation with private partners and managed by the Commission. In the case of JTIs, calls, projects and dissemination of results were managed by the JTIs.
:   [(32)](#footnoteref32)
     Factories of the Future, Energy Efficient Buildings and Green Cars.
:   [(33)](#footnoteref33)
    COM(2010) 187, 29.04.2010.
:   [(34)](#footnoteref34)
    The highest business sector participation in absolute numbers was recorded in the ICT thematic area, where the business sector takes just over one-third of participations and budget.
:   [(35)](#footnoteref35)
    An analysis of the role and engagement of universities with regard to participation in the Framework Programmes, to be published in 2016.
:   [(36)](#footnoteref36)
     83% of universities believe that participation in EU programmes had a positive effect on the capacity of the organisations to provide services for the commercialisation of knowledge. This is because the FP7, and in particular the Cooperation and Capacities programmes in particular, facilitated, as it is implicit in their mission, interaction and collaboration with firms.
:   [(37)](#footnoteref37)
     The role and participation of research organisations in the Framework Programmes, Ernst & Young Special Business Services, 2015 forthcoming.
:   [(38)](#footnoteref38)
    See Annex 2
:   [(39)](#footnoteref39)
     The respondents could identify themselves as: Higher education institutions, public research organisations, individuals, private sector, ministries and agencies, or SMEs.
:   [(40)](#footnoteref40)
     For EC Contribution per country across the sub-programmes please see the HLEG report, p. 32.
:   [(41)](#footnoteref41)
     CORDA: 03/12/2015
:   [(42)](#footnoteref42)
    Success rates of male and women candidates to Marie Curie individual fellowships are statistically very similar, i.e. there is no discrimination for women applicants. In addition, family friendly measures are set at contractual level and adopted in all Marie Curie projects. In particular, the family situation of the researcher is taken into account for fixing the amount of mobility allowance to which all Marie Curie researchers are entitled. A dedicated panel (Career Restart Panel – CAR) was introduced under the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (IEF) in the 2010 People Work Programme with the aim to better ensure equal opportunities and encourage the return into the career after a break.
:   [(43)](#footnoteref43)
     CORDA (SESAM, RESPIR) 03/12/2015
:   [(44)](#footnoteref44)
     OpenAire report, Dec 2015 and see Annex 24.
:   [(45)](#footnoteref45)
     Note that each publication can be attributed to more than one programme, which is why the total of publication per programme is higher, than the total number of publications.
:   [(46)](#footnoteref46)
     Open access (OA) can be defined as online access to the results of publicly funded research at no charge to the end user. The Commission has promoted open access to scientific peer reviewed publications in FP7 in two ways: in selected areas of FP7, through a pilot action based on the "best effort" to make scientific publications open access; and for all areas of FP7, by allowing costs for open access publishing to be eligible for reimbursement. Further information about open access in FP7 is contained in annex 19 as well as in several thematic annexes.
:   [(47)](#footnoteref47)
     CORDA: 01/12/2015
:   [(48)](#footnoteref48)
     Excluding the ERC that does not have these numbers registered for FP7.
:   [(49)](#footnoteref49)
     See for instance, Annex 10.4 to the SWD.
:   [(50)](#footnoteref50)
     Reported in CORDA: 1-12-2015 with 9901 finalised projects and 137 ICT projects with 295 patents reported from DG Connect. Not including the ERC.
:   [(51)](#footnoteref51)
     The registered IPR can only be used as a proxy since patents are not innovations per se but they may lead to new products and services. Whether they lead to innovation can only be identified on a case by case basis.
:   [(52)](#footnoteref52)
     Not including the ERC
:   [(53)](#footnoteref53)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014.
:   [(54)](#footnoteref54)
     Survey of R&D SMEs which participated in a FP7 Health project.
:   [(55)](#footnoteref55)
     Survey of FP7 NMP participants whose projects are closed. Annex 1, section 4, and section 10 for Evaluation of Thematic Areas in the Cooperation Programme
:   [(56)](#footnoteref56)
     Survey, Annex 9, section 4, and section 10 for Evaluation of Thematic Areas in the Cooperation Programme
:   [(57)](#footnoteref57)
     Survey, Annex 9, section 4, and section 10 for Evaluation of Thematic Areas in the Cooperation Programme
:   [(58)](#footnoteref58)
     Reports on social implications
:   [(59)](#footnoteref59)
     Survey of 50 projects financed.
:   [(60)](#footnoteref60)
     Science Metrix, 2015.
:   [(61)](#footnoteref61)
     The Cooperation Specific Programme identified six Joint Technology Initiatives. The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) was implemented not as a JTI but through an agreement with ESA and research grants, on the basis of a decision taken after the launch of the FP.
:   [(62)](#footnoteref62)
     Second Interim Evaluation of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) 2013.
:   [(63)](#footnoteref63)
     http://ec.europa.eu/research/press/2013/pdf/ppp/egvi\_factsheet.pdf.
:   [(64)](#footnoteref64)
     Final Assessment of the Research PPPs in the European Economic Recovery Plan: Factories of the Future; Energy-efficient Buildings; European Green Cars Initiative, 2013.
:   [(65)](#footnoteref65)
     FP7 had two main elements in favour of SMEs: a commitment to spend at least 15% of the Cooperation Programme budget with SMEs; and the implementation of SME-specific schemes that aim to strengthen the innovative capacity of low and medium tech SMEs through support for outsourcing R&D (Research for SMEs) and tackling more generic challenges (Research for SME associations). FP7 established a 75% funding rate for SME participants, compared to 50% for large companies.
:   [(66)](#footnoteref66)
     SMEs participating in FP6 grew on average 64% in the period 2003-2011. In the same period, for the control group employment grew 9%. In: Study Performance of SMEs within FP7, Panteia, May 2014.
:   [(67)](#footnoteref67)
     The time after completion of the projects in FP7 is rather short to identify impacts on the business performance of participating SMEs; therefore a similar analysis on participants in FP6 was performed in order to get an indication of possible longer term impacts of participation in the Framework Programme.
:   [(68)](#footnoteref68)
     Classical distinctions between basic and applied research have lost much of their relevance at a time when many emerging areas of science and technology (e.g. biotechnology, ICT, materials and nanotechnology, and cognitive sciences) often embrace substantial elements of both, and for sure originate from fundamental scientific ideas. Frontier research therefore often generates unexpected or new opportunities for commercial or societal application from the immediate term to the very long term.
:   [(69)](#footnoteref69)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015).
:   [(70)](#footnoteref70)
     Analysis of the Competitiveness and Innovation Survey. See Annex 26 for details.
:   [(71)](#footnoteref71)
     Science Metrix et al: Study on network analysis of the 7th Framework Programme participation, 2015
:   [(72)](#footnoteref72)
     This is measured in terms of "dyads". A diad reflects pairs of distinct institutions collaborating in a same project. Overall, 458,278 dyads were identified in FP6 whilst there were 525,474 in FP7. Ibidem
:   [(73)](#footnoteref73)
     FP7 overall excluding the People and Ideas Programmes which mobilise single institutions. The results are partial as the study covered projects until December 2014
:   [(74)](#footnoteref74)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7: preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 100
:   [(75)](#footnoteref75)
     Science Metrix, 2015.
:   [(76)](#footnoteref76)
     The chord diagram illustrates the bidirectional linking relations (via topics in corresponding papers) among grants funded by the same subdivision or by different subdivisions.
      
    The width of each chord is relevant to the existing relations (links) of the grants funded in this subdivision. E.g. if a grant has 7 links to other grants the width will be bigger by 7 monads contributed by this grant. If a grant has 1 link to another grant the width will be bigger by 1 monads contributed by this grant.
:   [(77)](#footnoteref77)
     RPO study, op cit.
:   [(78)](#footnoteref78)
     Role and participation of universities in the Framework Programmes. ISMERI EUROPA Srl, 2015
:   [(79)](#footnoteref79)
     Source: RTD-F1 based on the ERA survey 2013.
:   [(80)](#footnoteref80)
     Study on Network Analysis of FP7 participation, 2014
:   [(81)](#footnoteref81)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(82)](#footnoteref82)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming
:   [(83)](#footnoteref83)
     TRI-Value study.
:   [(84)](#footnoteref84)

     
       Based on the IMPACT-EV questionnaire, FP7 researchers reported to have collaborated with other European projects and research organisations in relation to their research. Actually, 46% of the projects that reported achieving impact on ERA have collaborated with other FP projects, with an average of 2.9 projects (collaborations) per project. The range of values goes from collaboration with 1 project to a maximum of 6 projects (i.e. INSPIRES project). Furthermore, 20.8% of the projects collaborated with non-FP projects, with an average of 2.5 projects (collaborations) per project. Again, the range of values goes from collaboration with 1 project to a maximum of 6 projects. Regarding the collaboration with research organisations, 12.5% of these projects mentioned this type of collaboration. Some examples highlight, for instance, the HI-POD project which collaborated with a relevant research infrastructure: Dariah-EU (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities).
:   [(85)](#footnoteref85)
     HLEG p. 60
:   [(86)](#footnoteref86)
     Below the estimation (1.1) used at the moment of preparing the ex-ante FP7 IA.
:   [(87)](#footnoteref87)
     FP7 Health Survey October 2014.
:   [(88)](#footnoteref88)
     Each euro of EU contribution has led to more than 6 euro of the RSFF loan finance.
:   [(89)](#footnoteref89)
     Each euro from the EU budget contributed to total financing of 28 euro of RDI investment.
:   [(90)](#footnoteref90)
     Has the Commission ensured efficient implementation of the Seventh Framework Programme for research? Special Report No. 2, European Court of Auditors (2013), see http://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR13\_02/SR13\_02\_EN.PDF
:   [(91)](#footnoteref91)
     The HLEG concurred that the FP7 contribution per million EUR of national RTD expenditures is 30% higher in the EU-13 than in the EU-15 and that in the countries that have been heavily hit by the economic crisis, the national RTD expenditures have been cut down, resulting in a comparable high contribution of FP7 to available FP7 funds.
:   [(92)](#footnoteref92)
     Active and Assisted Living Programme (AAL), EUROSTARS, European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP), Joint Baltic Sea Research Programme (BONUS).
:   [(93)](#footnoteref93)
     Niehoff, 2014
:   [(94)](#footnoteref94)
     Doussineau, Harrap, Kamil Özbolat, Haegeman and Boden (2014) An assessment of the impact of the FP7 ERA-NET scheme on organisations and research systems, JRC
:   [(95)](#footnoteref95)
     Interim Evaluation of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP), 2012.
:   [(96)](#footnoteref96)
     When compared with unfunded stakeholders.
:   [(97)](#footnoteref97)
     Impact Assessment of the Regions of Knowledge Programme, 2011.
:   [(98)](#footnoteref98)
     Financial contributions run at around 25-30% above the required minimum.
:   [(99)](#footnoteref99)
     Final Evaluation of Security Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (Technopolis, 2015)
:   [(100)](#footnoteref100)
     Source: Supporting expert for the Cooperation programme. This result is rather consistent to the analysis of ERAWATCH country profiles and the analysis of thematic priorities. They are by and large matching national priorities; in some Member States there is even a 1:1 priority setting such as Lithuania.
:   [(101)](#footnoteref101)
     See Annex 2.
:   [(102)](#footnoteref102)
     See Annex 2.
:   [(103)](#footnoteref103)
     Field-weighted citation impact divides the number of citations received by a publication by the average number of citations received by publications in the same field, of the same type, and published in the same year.
:   [(104)](#footnoteref104)
     Relative citation impact compares the number of citations per scientific paper from a given field divided by the number of citations per scientific paper for the world as a whole.
:   [(105)](#footnoteref105)
     Jacob, J., et al. (forthcoming).
:   [(106)](#footnoteref106)
     An analysis of the role and engagement of universities with regard to participation in the Framework Programmes, forthcoming
:   [(107)](#footnoteref107)
     The Web of Science database maintained by Thomson Reuters covers around 12,000 peer-reviewed journals in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities going back in some areas to the 19th Century.
:   [(108)](#footnoteref108)
     Only those publications which were validated by a digital object identifier (DOI) and identified in the Scopus database are counted. This represents about 80 % of all publications which have been reported. The Scopus database maintained by Elsevier covers around 51 million records from 22,000 peer-reviewed journals “in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities” going back to 1995.
:   [(109)](#footnoteref109)
     One analysis, using the reported publications from the 314 completed projects which could be validated in the Scopus database showed that a significant proportion of ERC publications were in the top 1% most highly cited publications worldwide. Out of the 10,796 publications reported, 7003 (or 64 %) were indexed in Scopus. The analysis using the methodology of the US National Science Foundation and based on all the publications acknowledging ERC funding and recorded in the Web of Science database, showed that overall 12% of these publications were in the top 1% most highly cited publications world-wide. On the same basis, the number of the publications in the Top 10% was 855 out of 1996 or 43%.
:   [(110)](#footnoteref110)
     Projects in Life Sciences have on average 23 publications, Physical Sciences and Engineering 48, and Social Sciences and Humanities 18.
:   [(111)](#footnoteref111)
     Reports on societal implications
:   [(112)](#footnoteref112)
     Participant survey. Annex 10.9
:   [(113)](#footnoteref113)
     In a continuation of the policy established in previous Euratom Framework Programmes, the Euratom Specific Programme in FP7 focused primarily on public-sector and long-term research in the field of nuclear energy, both fission and fusion, and related issues of societal concern such as nuclear safety and radiation protection. Also significant progress was witnessed in research on geological disposal of high-level and long-lived radioactive waste and on radiation protection issues. Finland and Sweden became the first countries in the world to select, with local population support, national sites for such disposal facilities. Similarly, a long-term research efforts, supported by Euratom on the health effects from exposure to low doses of ionising radiation resulted in the creation of the Multidisciplinary European Low-Dose Initiative (MELODI) in 2010. A legal entity under French law, it brings together key organisations from several European countries to coordinate and promote this research effort.
:   [(114)](#footnoteref114)
     The ITER international agreement, signed in 2006 just prior to the start of FP7, heralded a major step in the development of magnetic confinement fusion as a global energy source. The Euratom contribution to ITER, 2007-2013, was implemented by F4E, established in 2007 as a joint undertaking under the Euratom Treaty.
:   [(115)](#footnoteref115)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7 : preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, p. 100:
:   [(116)](#footnoteref116)
     Prof. E. Moser (NO), Professors Serge Haroche (FR), Prof. Andre Geim (Dutch-British), Prof. Konstantin Novoselov (British-Russian), Prof K. von Klitzing (DE) , Prof A. Fert (FR), Prof Peter Grünberg (CZ), Professor Torsten N. Wiesel (SE), Theodor W. Hansch (DE). The full list of the 9 Nobel laureates that are/were involved in FET is in the following article, including the reference to the project they are involved in: 
    <http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/future-and-emerging-technologies-fet-supports-nobel-prize-laureates-their-quest-excellence>
:   [(117)](#footnoteref117)
     May-Britt Moser AdG 2010 (Physiology or Medicine 2014); Edvard Moser AdG 2008 and AdG 2013 (Physiology or Medicine 2014); Jean Tirole AdG 2009 (Economics 2014); Serge Haroche AdG 2009 (Physics 2012); Konstantin Novoselov StG 2007 and SyG 2012 (Physics 2010); as well as Ada Yonath AdG 2012 (Chemistry 2009); Andre Geim AdG 2012 (Physics 2010); Christopher Pissarides AdG 2012 (Economics 2010); Jean-Marie Lehn AdG 2011 (Chemistry 1987) James Heckman AdG 2010 (Economics 2000); Theodor Hänsch AdG 2010 (Physics 2005).
:   [(118)](#footnoteref118)
     “Two Fields Medals 2014 awarded to ERC laureates”, August 2014
      
    http://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/press\_release/files/ERC\_Press\_Release\_ICM\_2014.pdf
:   [(119)](#footnoteref119)
     The HLEG reports 24%.
:   [(120)](#footnoteref120)
     Study on assessing the contribution of the framework programmes to the development of human research capacity, 2014.
:   [(121)](#footnoteref121)
     PPMI, 2013, FP7 Mid-term evaluation of MCA
:   [(122)](#footnoteref122)
     These organisations offered more mobility opportunities (48%), introduced new types of training (41%), improved public advertising of job vacancies (41%), implemented advanced career development, advice and job placement services (35%), introduced new supervision methods (31%) and introduced new welcoming or support services (also 31%). In addition, they introduced contracts with full social security (13%), improved working conditions and made more flexible (19%) and offered more financially attractive salaries (21%).
:   [(123)](#footnoteref123)
     See Annexes 10 to 14 for further details.
:   [(124)](#footnoteref124)
     CORDA: 01/12/2015. 9927 project 613 ICT projects were finalised. Not including the ERC.
:   [(125)](#footnoteref125)
     The project COGEU analysed the gaps between frequencies used for television, known as ‘white spaces’, and developed a solution that can help all citizens gain access to broadband through the airwaves. It has implemented a proof-of-concept tool with which local and short-term spectrum licences are traded through an online auction mechanism and inspired a Commission Decision.
:   [(126)](#footnoteref126)
     The project "Forecasting Financial Crisis" provided the means to understand and forecast systemic risk and global financial instabilities for use by players like the European Central Bank (ECB) and DG MARKT.
:   [(127)](#footnoteref127)
     For example, PRIV-WAR contributed to the European Parliament’s Resolution about the development of the common security and defence policy after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.
:   [(128)](#footnoteref128)
     For example, the results of CAP-IRE project carried out under FP7 – Cooperation –SSH have been used as the basis to develop the post 2013 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
:   [(129)](#footnoteref129)
     "Further analysis revealed that active engagement with policy makers was strongly associated with impact on EU policy. About a third of projects that applied some kind of engagement with policy makers had an impact on EU policy" PPMI, op cit, p. 85.
:   [(130)](#footnoteref130)
     For example, the ATOME project proposed revisions of current law to better balance the need to prevent drug abuse while allowing patients access to such medicines.
:   [(131)](#footnoteref131)
     TRI-VALUE study. Project coordinators estimated that 15 to 30% of projects already produced outputs that were “used to date” by the EU Institutions.
:   [(132)](#footnoteref132)
     The funding for Galileo generated a significant amount of new knowledge, bridging gaps between research and market communities and improving relations among businesses and end-users. The most common research outputs were prototypes, product innovations, proofs of concept, trademarks and patents, process innovations and successful trials. For example, the SafePort project developed an Active Vessel Traffic Management and Information System (A-VTMIS) to manage vessel movement, thus improving the efficiency of port operations. The Scutum project promoted the wide adoption of satellite navigation-based technologies for the management of hazardous goods transport.
:   [(133)](#footnoteref133)
     Environment projects also contributed, directly or indirectly, to the EU’s Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package, the Floods Directive, the Droughts and Water Scarcity Communication, the Communication and Action Plan on Disaster Prevention and Early Warning, the Environmental and Health Action Plan, the Environmental Technologies Action Plan, the Sustainable Consumption and Production, and the Sustainable Industrial Action Plan, amongst others. It also strongly supported international initiatives, like the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
:   [(134)](#footnoteref134)
     COM(2011) 500 final
:   [(135)](#footnoteref135)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014
:   [(136)](#footnoteref136)
     See, assessing the Projects on the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) Roadmap, 2013.
:   [(137)](#footnoteref137)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming.
:   [(138)](#footnoteref138)
     Final report Evaluation of Pertinence and Impact of Research Infrastructure Activity in FP7 EPIRIA
:   [(139)](#footnoteref139)
     Adopted on 25 June 2009 to facilitate the joint establishment and operation of research infrastructures of European interest
:   [(140)](#footnoteref140)
     Economical in terms of tangible benefits produced by money spent
:   [(141)](#footnoteref141)
     Annex 21.
:   [(142)](#footnoteref142)
     The ERCEA has remained below its planned administrative budget as set in the Legislative Financial Statement (LFS), a difference ranging from EUR -7.8 million to EUR -9.9 million per year over the period 2010-2012. As a consequence, the unexecuted parts of the administrative budget became available for the operational budget
:   [(143)](#footnoteref143)
     Research Executive Agency (REA), has spent EUR 50.7 million (or 20 %) less than estimated This was a result of recruitments on new posts spread throughout the year (rather than as of 1 January), lower salaries, savings on infrastructure costs and – to a lesser extent – savings on administrative costs. cost of coordination was 11.3 Full Time Equivalents (FTE), some 5.3 FTE higher than initially estimated in the LFS, which reduced slightly the savings by EUR 2.3 million.
:   [(144)](#footnoteref144)
     Findings of the evaluations of the REA and the ERCEA
:   [(145)](#footnoteref145)
     'Assessment of the impact of the regions of knowledge programme', European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation' 
    <http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/eu-research-pbKI3211818/>
:   [(146)](#footnoteref146)
     Referred to as EU-13 in the HLEG report, p. 34.
:   [(147)](#footnoteref147)
     Study on Assessing the Research Management Performance of Framework Programmes Projects, PWC, 2015.
:   [(148)](#footnoteref148)
     Performance of SMEs within FP7, Panteia, May 2014.
:   [(149)](#footnoteref149)
     Study on "Budgetary impact of the changes in the cost calculation regime in FP7 (EC and Euratom) as compared to FP6 (EC and Euratom) and its effects on the administrative burden for participants", (2015).
:   [(150)](#footnoteref150)
     Assessing the Effectiveness of Simplification Measures under FP7, 2011
:   [(151)](#footnoteref151)
     Eurobarometer
:   [(152)](#footnoteref152)
     HLEG Report pp. 8-9
:   [(153)](#footnoteref153)
     PPMI, Ex-post Evaluation of the HEALTH Theme in FP7: preliminary analysis of FP7 projects portfolio and their outcome, Jan. 2015, pp 23-25 & 91-92
:   [(154)](#footnoteref154)
     CESS. 2011. Final Evaluation of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.
:   [(155)](#footnoteref155)
     Structural Funds financing RTDI projects represent a very significant part of public support to RTDI in many Member States. In some, in particular in EU-13 Member States, Structural Funds for RTDI are of the same order of magnitude as or exceeded the national budget for civil R&D, so that Structural Funds roughly double (or more than triple in the case of Latvia) the volume of government funding to R&D in the country. In EU-15 Member States, Structural Funds for RTDI are more modest compared to the national civil R&D budget (1 % to 5 %) but still substantial, in particular in Portugal, Spain and Italy 
    <http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/competitiveness_report_2013.pdf>
:   [(156)](#footnoteref156)
     
    <https://ec.europa.eu/research/regions/documents/publications/synergies_expert_group_report.pdf>
:   [(157)](#footnoteref157)
     COWI final evaluation 2014.
:   [(158)](#footnoteref158)
     HLEG p 58.
:   [(159)](#footnoteref159)
     The overarching aim of the Co-operation Specific Programme was to contribute to sustainable development. The monitoring system focused the analysis on the projects funded by this Programme. The study comprised information on about 3,234 topics (from the ‘Cooperation’ Work Programmes 2007 to 2013) and 6,967 projects (from the years 2007 to 2013) with more than 79,000 project participations and a total EC contribution of EUR 25.7 billion.
:   [(160)](#footnoteref160)
     Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Global Action (Final Draft of the outcome document for the UN Summit to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda)
:   [(161)](#footnoteref161)
     Ibidem
:   [(162)](#footnoteref162)
     'European added value of EU Science, Technology and Innovation actions, Vullings 2014.
:   [(163)](#footnoteref163)
     The areas of EU added value: Tackling pan-European challenges, Coordination of national research policies, EU scale of dissemination of research results, Pooling of resources (achieving critical mass; economies of scale and scope), Reduction of research/commercial risk, Increase competition in research, Leverage on private/public investment, Improving S&T capabilities and Enhance researchers’ mobility. See Annex 2.
:   [(164)](#footnoteref164)
     This result was produced by the Nemesis model (See Annex 23). It is hypothetical as the simulation isolated the impact of the FP7, implying that no further FP7 funding would continue after the completion of FP7. The economic impacts simulated in this evaluation cannot be compared with the simulations in the ex-ante impact assessment of FP7 due to different methodologies being used.
:   [(165)](#footnoteref165)
     Annex 23
:   [(166)](#footnoteref166)
     The robotics programme is international recognised in areas such as eInfrastructures and SmartCities and collaborates on coordinated calls with Japan and Brazil, and targeted openings with Korea, South Africa and China. ICT has also supported a quick evolution in eInfrastructures, identified as GÉANT. From an average bandwidths 155Mbps in 2000 GÉANT now operates at speeds of up to 500 Gbps, connects over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across Europe, and offers unrivalled geographical coverage (43 countries in Europe plus 65 beyond), remaining the most advanced research network in the world. SmartSantander is an example of city-scale “smart city” supported by the programme, making technology and sensors useful for the people. In 2011 the EU “Green Smart City” cooperation with China was launched, establishing an expert framework for promoting EU-China Smart Cities cooperation.
:   [(167)](#footnoteref167)
     PwC and OpenEvidence, forthcoming.
:   [(168)](#footnoteref168)
     Study on Network Analysis of the FP7 participation, Technopolis (2015).
:   [(169)](#footnoteref169)
     In this context, the RPO study concurs that FPs promoted and fostered cross-border cooperation of RPOs in Europe allowing the knowledge transfer from EU 15 to EU13 ( the most frequent partners of EU 13 RPOs were RPOs and universities from Germany and UK).
:   [(170)](#footnoteref170)
     GEO is an intergovernmental organisation of 89 governments and around 80 international organisations, which develop together projects and coordinate their strategies on earth observation. GEOSS is critical to tackle global challenges such as climate change, energy and food security, or health.
:   [(171)](#footnoteref171)
     Source: Evaluation of the impact of projects funded under the 6th and 7th EU Framework Programme for RD&D in the area of non-nuclear energy, Technopolis, June 2014.
:   [(172)](#footnoteref172)
     TRI-VALUE study.
:   [(173)](#footnoteref173)
     Big companies invest large shares of their turnover in R&D, so the level of funding is not comparable to EU resources, but these enterprises invest in technologies that are much closer to the market. The EC plays a key role in keeping open resources for long term risky domains, and it has to engage in strategic thinking and help the convergence process, giving prominence to certain areas. In the telecom area for instance, the main players in the provision of networks in Europe take to the Programme, as they benefit from cooperation in order to maintain their global position. Core work on future generations of telecommunication networks is done in the FP projects, in order to give "breathing space" to these otherwise competitors for research and development work.
:   [(174)](#footnoteref174)
     Interoperability across infrastructures, players and service providers remain a very strong incentive for collaborative research in these domains. Even if the standards are eventually not developed by projects but by companies, their participation in projects allows them to diminish the risk of available options and lower the costs and the barriers. The world standard in the field of car electronics was developed thanks to an EU-funded project CESAR. This puts EU manufacturers who have worked together on this standard at the leading edge world-wide. It also puts car electronics suppliers such as Bosch and Infineon in the pole position. Europe is the world leading region in car electronics with more than 40% of world production done in Europe.
:   [(175)](#footnoteref175)
     Ex post evaluation and impact assessment of funding in the FP7 NMP thematic area, Technopolis/Fraunhofer, 2015.
:   [(176)](#footnoteref176)
     Review of the European Research Council’s Structures and Mechanisms (July 2009).
:   [(177)](#footnoteref177)
     An analysis of the role and engagement of universities with regard to participation in the Framework Programmes is forthcoming.

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