On 30 November 2006 MNT ERA-Net organised a conference in Mainz, Germany. The event attracted 80 participants from national and regional ministries and councils, representatives of funding programmes, EUREKA, European Technology Platforms, the European Commission as well as clients from industry and academia. Presentations are available for download.

„Improving Cooperation of European MNT Support initiatives
to enhance the Competitiveness of European Economy”

30 November 2006, Mainz (Germany)

In the first session several ERA-NETs discussed their experiences with joint transnational calls. MNT ERA-Net presented first results of its pilot call 2006; 14 projects with participants from 14 countries and regions have been funded. Two of those projects were presented by their co-ordinators: “Nanocopper”, a project with partners from Austria, the Basque Country and Poland aiming at the development of nanostructured coatings, and “MNT-IS”, a project with partners from Romania and Spain focusing on the development of coatings for implants.

With the coordinated funding of such projects MNT ERA-Net has proved that the ERA-NET scheme is a suitable instrument for establishing transnational collaboration in micro and nano technology. Moreover, the common call procedures require little bureaucratic effort making the scheme highly attractive for project consortia and funding bodies at the same time, stated Julia Mirza, project coordinator from the University of Las Palmas and Roland Brandenburg, MNT ERA-Net co-ordinator unanimously. ”MNT ERA-Net is about to become a well accepted channel for broad transnational MNT co-operation”, claims Roland Brandenburg. “Major challenges will be the sustainable continuation of common calls as well as the mutual opening and streamlining of participating funding programmes”.

Wolfgang Wittke and Hans-Hartmann Pedersen from the EC pointed out the need for an intensified co-ordination of regional and national programmes and European research strategies. Hans-Hartmann Pedersen presented the draft Work Programme for the first micro- and nanomanufacturing calls in FP7 including the opportunities for “ERA-NET plus” calls.

The need for a common approach to transnational calls was identified in a panel discussion involving the coordinators of five ERA-NETs. Converging and overlapping areas such as Bio- ICT-, Micro-, Nano and Materials Technologies could be addressed by co-ordinated calls in variable geometry.

This topic was also discussed in one of the three workshops in the afternoon session: participants agreed that the present ERA-NETs have a high potential to realise cross-technology bridging in the future.

In another workshop the role of MNT ERA-Net in FP7 was discussed. ERA-NET plus activities and co-operation of MNT ERA-Net with European Technology Platforms were considered relevant for the implementation of European MNT strategies.

The conference showed that the ERA-NET scheme and in particular MNT ERA-Net have gained momentum. They mature to a viable network for the integration of the European Research Area - based on autonomous regional and national decision making on a call by call base.