Norwegian reflections on EU’s new research programme (FP9)

Yesterday,  Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise – NHO, Statoil and SINTEF visited Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Moedas, Mr António Vicente and his Cabinet expert Keith Sequeira to discuss the framework and content of EU’s future Framework Programme for research, FP9.

SINTEF was invited to join NHO to this meeting. NHO is the main representative organisation for Norwegian employers.

The discussion centered around the issues of mission orientation, the output and impact ambitions and the importance of keeping the focus on:

• industrial leadership,
• key enabling technologies,
• energy and
• oceans.

Important to recognise impact of decarbonised fuel

It is of importance that EU recognises the vast impact decarbonised fuel could have in the future from sustainably produced hydrogen including CCS.

• Here is the FP9-input delivered from SINTEF (Draft)

Furthermore, the Industrial Leadership pillar is important and that the three pillar approach should be pursued in a balanced way.

High expectation for new European Innovation Council

The commission has high expectation for the establishment of the European Innovation Council which is set to boost innovation and bridge the gap between lower TRL to higher TRL’s. The SME support will be supported better.

It is key that the vehicles at hand work seamlessly and an example of such an arrangement is the Norwegian Pilot-E.

The mission orientation could at the highest level have links to the grand challenges of food, water, health and energy.

The next months will be important to determine the structure and content of FP9 including the missions. I would like to thank NHO for inviting us to this meeting and for the very good discussions with the Head of Cabinet. We foresee a fruitful discussion in the time to come.