• Published on 15 Oct 2013
• External News

Joint Technology Initiatives highlight contribution to European quality of life and competitiveness

BRUSSELS, 2 October 2013 – Europe’s Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) are delivering exciting results that will help to improve Europeans’ quality of life and contribute to Europe’s competitiveness – this is the key message from a series of events taking place in the European Parliament in Brussels this week. The events are timely, as the European Parliament will soon debate the European Commission’s proposals on JTIs under Horizon 2020.

Launched under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) with a combined budget of €10 billion, the five JTIs - IMI (innovative medicines), Clean Sky (aeronautics and air transport), ENIAC JU (nanoelectronics), ARTEMIS (embedded computing systems), and FCH(fuel cells and hydrogen) – represent a novel and unique model of public-private partnership (PPP).

Since their creation, the JTIs have established themselves as world leaders in leveraging public and private investments in research and development, providing a flexible, rapid response to new policy and technology developments. They created market-driven networks that bring together experts from academia, research establishments, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), industry, regulatory authorities, consumer organisations etc., covering the full innovation chain. The JTIs are also strong supporters of Europe’s SMEs, which receive €517 million in funding through the JTIs and make up 31% of all project participants.

Crucially, the JTIs have demonstrated the success of the PPP model by delivering results that will help to improve Europeans’ quality of life and contribute to Europe’s competitiveness.

For example, FCH’s ene.field project has successfully installed and commissioned its first micro combined heat and power (CHP) units in family homes. Replacing a conventional gas boiler, the CHU unit is able to produce both heat and electricity simultaneously with overall efficiencies in excess of 90%.

Meanwhile Clean Sky’s projects are helping to dramatically slash the air industry’s carbon dioxide (CO2), noise and nitrous oxide (NOx) footprints by developing new engine architectures (such as the open rotor), improved wing aerodynamics, lighter composite structures, smarter trajectories, and more electric on-board energy.

In the health field, IMI’s antimicrobial resistance programme‘New Drugs for Bad Bugs’ is tackling the many scientific, regulatory and economic challenges of developing new antibiotics. There is an urgent need for drugs in this area; antibiotic resistance represents a major public health challenge; it kills 25 000 people annually in Europe alone, yet there currently are few new drugs in the pipeline.

ARTEMIS’s biggest project, CESAR, is helping to keep European industries at the cutting edge by creating a Reference Technology Platform that allows designers to manage the diverse tools needed when developing software-intensive products for markets that demand the highest in safety and reliability, such as the transport and medical sectors. CESAR and the cluster of projects around it set the scene for the ‘CRYSTAL’ ARTEMIS Innovation Pilot Project (AIPP), creating possibly the largest programme on high-reliability systems in Europe, if not the world.

The five ENIAC JU pilot line projects engaged in 2012 an unprecedented research and development (R&D) volume of €728 million to drive towards industrial maturity breakthrough solutions in nanoelectronics, a key enabling technology, with multiple applications in health care, internet, LED lighting, e-mobility, energy efficiency, high performance portable computing, and equipment for next generation high volume/low cost manufacturing.

A press breakfast in the European Parliament was supported by Vittorio Prodi MEP, who commented: ‘The results presented this week demonstrate that JTIs are now an essential part of the European research landscape, fulfilling a key role by bringing together the major players in their respective sectors and so speeding up the delivery of results that will have a real impact on quality of life and competitiveness in Europe.’

Maria da Graça Carvalho MEP said: ‘By leveraging funds from the private sector, the JTIs are actively helping to increase Europe’s total research investment – an investment which is essential if Europe is to tackle the many challenges it faces.’