Website: European Research Area (ERA)

The European Research Area (ERA) is a unified research area open to the world based on the Internal market, in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely. Through ERA, the European Union and its Member States hopes to strengthen their scientific and technological bases, their competitiveness and their capacity to collectively address grand challenges.

The European Research Area is composed of all research and development activities, programmes and policies in Europe which involve a transnational perspective. Together, they enable researchers, research institutions and businesses to increasingly circulate, compete and co-operate across borders. The aim is to give them access to a Europe-wide open space for knowledge and technologies in which transnational synergies and complementarities are fully exploited.

ERA consists of activities, programmes and policies which are designed and operated at all levels: regional, national and European.

Some public policies which have an important impact on research are defined at the European level. This is notably the case for state aid and competition law, as well as for many relevant internal market rules. The EU also develops and promotes voluntary guidelines and recommendations which serve as common European references. Examples can be found in areas such as researchers' careers and mobility, knowledge transfer and co-operation between public research and industry. The EU also fosters a broad-based approach to innovation. With the launch of the Europe 2020 strategy and the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative a strategic approach to innovation is now on the European agenda.

While most research activities, programmes and policies take place at regional and national levels, no single country offers sufficient resources to be competitive on the world scale. To strenghten ERA , such activities and policies should be increasingly designed and operated from a transnational perspective, including, where relevant, cross-border co-operation. But this does not mean that they should be centralised in Brussels.Transnational co-operation helps make the most efficient and effective use of national and regional resources.

ERAWATCH is the European Commission's information platform on European, national and regional research and innovation systems and policies. Its main objectives are to support policy-making in the research and innovation field in Europe and to contribute to the realisation of the European Research Area (ERA).

Wikipedia: European Research Area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Area

European Commission: ERAWATCH http://erawatch.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

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