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Issue papers and presentations of the seminar on
"How can forward looking activities support the European Research Area (ERA)?"

2 June 2009, Brussels

The primary purpose of this seminar was to discuss the current status and experiences concerning forward looking activities in the context of EU research policy so far and to see how a continuous process of forward looking and horizon scanning activities addressing the needs of the European Research Area - and in particular Joint Programming, the development of EU Framework Programmes and international science and technology cooperation - could be organised now and in the future.

The policy developments regarding the European Research Area have in particular emphasized the opportunities that Joint Programming could offer for optimizing Europe's resources and capacities in the field of research. Joint Programming of research efforts by Member States is to be carried out on a voluntary basis. In order to identify common socio-economic challenges that Joint Programming could address as well as in order to prepare joint programmes once such challenges have been identified, joint forward looking activities between Member States could be experimented. Ongoing forward looking activities at national and EU levels could provide useful inputs to these activities.

Presentations of the speakers

The views expressed in the following presentations are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

Any citation of the content of these presentations should only take place with the prior agreement of the authors. The sources of such citations should be correctly referenced.

  1. Forward-looking activities - What has been done so far?(Jean-Michel Baer 228kb )
  2. Foresight projects selected in the EU "Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities" programme 2007 call
  3. Addressing the needs of the European Research Area. New perspectives for forward-looking activities (Anneli Pauli 472kb)
  4. Introduction on the needs from DG Research directorates regarding the implementation of European Research Area initiatives
    • Needs for supporting Joint Programming (Robert-Jan Smits 391kb)
    • Needs for the development of the Framework Programme (Brendan Hawdon )
    • Needs for the development of international S&T cooperation (Callum Searle 452kb)
  5. How can forward-looking activities contribute to define great societal challenges for ERA?
  6. Discussion and comments(Luke Georgiou )
  7. How can forward-looking activities be used to underpin the development of a vision and a strategic research agenda for a theme selected for Joint Programming?
    • The experience of a thematic directorate of DG Research (Tim Hall 321kb)
    • The messages from the ERA expert group on 'optimising research programmes and priorities' (2008) (Helena Acheson 1.1MB)
    • The experience of European Technology Platforms (ETPs) as a vision-building process (Tiit Jürimäe (349kb) and Karen Metzlaff 879kb)
    • Social platforms: identifying research agendas for the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities at EU level (Paraskevas Caracostas 312kb)
  8. Conclusions of the seminar (Anneli Pauli)

Pictures of the event