Chairmanship

Priorities and agenda

Enlargement of EUREKA's geographical boundaries.

Though maintaining its distinctive feature of European initiative, EUREKA will have to conspicuously extend its cooperation with other areas in the world , and, in particular, with countries in the Mediterranean area.

Support to SMEs.

EUREKA will have to boost its support to European SMEs not only through the EUROSTARS Programme but also by means of other interventions such as multinational co-operations tailored to the diversified technological realities that are present in every single member country (eg. Technological centres in Italy, Tecnopole in France and so on).

Widening of EUREKA's aims and targets.

The mission of EUREKA, as it has been set out since its foundation, is devoted to the generation new R&D projects of international cooperation. Nowadays the far-reaching transformation which is underway in the world of research and innovation, calls for an enlargement of the above - mentioned objective: alongside its involvement in the generation of new projects, EUREKA will have to become an instrument of support and coordination for many projects which are already existing at regional, national and international level in order to maximise their potential and avoid futile duplication of efforts. Within this framework, the EUREKA offices in each member country thanks to the first-hand knowledge gained from within the network and at the same time in their position as privileged observation points on the current state of affairs of their own nation, can, together with the EUREKA Secretariat in Bruxelles, contribute to the creation of "an informative intelligent tool" in order to favour the whole "European System".

Cooperation with the European Commission.

Eureka will have to intensify its cooperation with the European Commission, and particularly, with regards to the defining process of the new tools which are currently being developed such as ERANET plus, art. 169 and JTI and, subsequently, by actively participating to the aforementioned activities.

Analysis of the current drawbacks of Eureka.

In order to reach the above-mentioned objectives, it will be necessary to develop a clear idea of Eureka's current situation and of its weak points which have been outlined preliminary remarks . This process may involve, for example:

1 - Analysis of the reasons behind the reduction of financial commitment      deliberated by many national Governments;

2 - Analysis of the state of currently running projects, to be carried out with the
     assistance of the Secretariat, with particular attentionto problem of the projects'
     ever - decreasing dimensions and unbalanced partnerships.

3 - outlining of "guidelines" for project development; thorough rewriting of Eureka's
    "industrial policy", by means of the definition of   new priorities and issues based
     on actual demand arising from the "National Systems" and the "European
     System", also at the expense of the well - tested “bottom - up" approach.