Facts & Figures:
SME participation grows
The preliminary evaluation results from the SME Association's latest call for Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) applications reveals that small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) participants account for well over half of the proposals selected to receive funding. This number can only improve.
The latest results reveal SME participation is still growing. Of the 383 proposals received, 140 were invited to stage two of evaluations, and of these, 45 proposals have been selected to receive EU funding.
Overall, 1756 participants were involved in the 137 proposals that qualified for evaluation in the second stage. The type of participants applying for funding were a fairly even split between SMEs, RTD performers and other organisations. Most of the participants were from the industry activity sector, followed by the research activity sector, the higher education activity sector and the services activity sector. The majority of proposals retained for funding involve projects requiring a 36-month duration period.
Most of the proposals involve projects associated with the agricultural/forestry industry, followed closely by the food and information and communication technologies industries, while the least number of applications are for projects within the security, nanotechnologies and chemical/petro chemical sectors. The highest number of proposals came from the United Kingdom, followed by Spain, Italy and Germany.
New publication: SME participation in FP7 Spring 2009 report now available
Following on from our facts and figures section of SME Update Issue 5
(http://ec.europa.eu/research/sme-techweb/newsletter/issue5/facts-figures_en.html)
on the third progress report on SME participation in the FP7 Cooperation programme, we have produced a leaflet that explores the applications in more detail.
Over 1,500 FP7 project contracts have been signed to date and 60% of these have at least one SME participant. For more detail about SME participation in the Spring Report 2009 see the leaflet at
http://ec.europa.eu/research/sme-techweb/pdf/fp7_report.pdf.