After eight years of active collaboration MNT-ERA.NET has ended. Thanks to all of you for the fruitful cooperation in all these years.

MNT-ERA.NET has been a network of 21 national/regional ministries/ funding agencies which have coordinated their efforts to launch annual calls for R&D projects in the area of micro and nanotechnologies. The network started as an ERA-NET initiative in 2004 and has been supported in FP6 and FP7 until 2011.

The main objective of MNT-ERA.NET has been the opening of annual transnational calls in order to stimulate the creation of a new highly competitive industry and increase the participation of SMEs and newcomers in transnational RTD. Furthermore, strong efforts have been done to cooperate with the European RTD community and to integrate the national /regional / European strategic priorities in a systematic multiannual plan.

Overall MNT-ERA.NET has implemented 6 calls with a success average of 20-30%. Thanks to this initiative, 100 M Euros have been invested in transnational cooperation between 2006 and 2011 and more than 107 transnational projects in the field of micro and nanotechnology have benefited or are currently benefiting from MNT –ERA.NET network.

The future beyond MNT-ERA.NET. Thanks to the positive experience in MNT-ERA.NET, funding organizations involved in this network have already committed themselves together with other agencies in a new ERA-NET called M-ERA.NET that is a merger of MNT-ERA.NET and MATERA which will allow them to cover the materials domain including micro and nanotechnologies.