EU Funding Opportunities
The European Union’s funding organisation Framework Programme (FP7) has a budget of €50.5 billion for the period from 2007-13. €1.3 billion of this is reserved exclusively for SMEs and an even larger portion is available to 3rd sector or public organisations. As we enter the final year of FP7, the EU has saved the ‘best until last’, with far more funding available this year than in any other.
FP7 grants fund research across a variety of areas, from Information and Communication Technologies to Health to Socio-economic sciences and Humanities. The EU views industrial involvement, particularly that of SMEs, as key to ensuring that the results of such research are used to enhance European competitiveness and to increase European growth.
However, many applications struggle to find appropriate SMEs to participate in their funding applications, therefore SMEs can be in high demand and there are many opportuniesi for involvement with research
The funding return is relatively generous with SMEs, with the potential to recover 75% of their research costs and a great opportunity to lead on the exploitation of the results of the research.
