On 7 November 2011 NEREUS organized for its members a workshop and networking event to give information on next year’s FP7 work programme to the NEREUS community as well as support them and facilitate the mobilization of relevant EU-funded projects in the core areas of the network collaboration.
Mr. Thomas Geist, Austrian Research Promotion Agency, Aeronautics and Space Agency, member of the program committee, was among the invited speakers and gave a presentation on the upcoming opportunities in the FP7 SPACE program and GMES Initial Operations (GIO).
Further to this, two ongoing projects mobilized on the NEREUS platform were presented to the participants.
Mr. Volker Schumacker, CEON Bremen – coordinator of the “DORIS_Net” (Downstream Observatory organized by Regions active In Space – Network) project gave an overview on its objectives and vision. The project brings together 13 NEREUS regions and associate members collaborating to facilitate the regional development of GMES downstream services by building a European network of “Regional Contact Offices”.
Prof. Alan Wells, NEREUS Vice President , gave a presentation of the “The ISSUE” (Traffic-Health-Environment. Intelligent Solutions Sustaining Urban Economies) project. Starting the first of January 2012, “The ISSUE” is a three years project aimed at developing co-ordinated action to support economic sustainable development by boosting the competitiveness of transport-related economies through cooperation among regional research-driven clusters.
During the final discussion Mr. Peter Breger, European Commission DG Enterprise and Industries – Space and Development Directorate – who joined the event, kindly replied to several participant’s questions. When asked about the implications of the EC budget proposal to leave the GMES programme outside the EU budget for the period 2014-2020 Mr. Breger expressed the EC’s recognition of the importance of GMES for European regions. He explained however that the EC’s position towards the GMES programme is to leave the financing of the programme post 2014 to the decisions of the Member States.
