European ICT R&D effort

EU has decided to invest some 18% of its R&D budget (worth €50bn over the 2006-2013 period) or €9bn, in research on information technology and communications. The effort underlines the EU's determination to close the research gap with its competitors, and to focus on domains where EU has a competitve advantage.Funding will go to Joint Technology Initiative (based on both private and state cooperation), such as Artemis for embarked systems, ISI for satellite communications or JTI Europ for robotics. This ICT R&D budget is the most important budget allocated within the seventh EU technological R&D framework.