Brussels, 31 Oct 2002
CORDIS, the European Commission's Research and Development Information Service, has launched a new service offering access to news and European funded research information in each of the 13 candidate countries.
The service, available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, offers direct access to news coverage, as well as links to a dedicated partnering service for the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). In addition, this service provides key figures on national participation in the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5) research themes. Direct links to the projects (only available in English) enables users to review over 2400 projects involving organisations from candidate countries.
This gateway aims to raise awareness of the candidate countries' involvement in FP5 and should lead to a better identification of key stakeholders and national scientific potential for FP6. More than 1500 organisations have already expressed their interest in participating in the new framework programme, and over 200 potential partners from Poland, Romania and Turkey can already be identified through the dedicated CORDIS Partners service.
The service complements the National Services gateway on CORDIS, which offers access to individual services for each Member State and introduces national systems and political priorities. They also provide timely information on activities, infrastructures and key stakeholders.
The new service will support the completion of the European Research Area (ERA) in which candidate countries will participate on an equal footing with Member States.
http://www.cordis.lu/candidate_countries