Fabienne Corvers, European Commission
DG Research, Impact Analysis Unit, Brussels, Belgium
How European research policy shapes European integration – the cross-border impacts of the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (assigned to theme
Since the signing of the Single European Act in 1986, European research and technology policy has changed from being a supporting industrial policy instrument in the thirty years preceding the act to becoming a research and technology policy in its own right in the 1980s and 1990s with its own set of instruments and a steadily increasing budget. The legislative proposal for the Framework Programme (FP), the main and most well known instrument to implement European research and technology policy, will this year be accompanied - for the first time in its history - by an Impact Assessment report. Based on analyses performed on the impacts of past Framework Programmes, this paper will present the results and demonstrate how European research policy has shaped European integration. Research is a collective endeavour and FP participation means participating in multi-partner, multi-national research teams. Not only has this feature been highly appreciated by FP participants over the years, it is due to this feature that cross-border impacts on Europe’s research community came about and contributed to Europe’s economic competitiveness while maintaining social cohesion among its regions.
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