Europe's Grand Plan
By Peter Clarke,
Europe has budgeted more than 3 billion euros (about $3.6 billion) for collaborative IT research. But will it face the cost-cutting that trimmed past commitments?
The program, called ITEA-2, is set to run from 2007 to 2015, with government paying 35% to 40% and industry the rest. The original Information Technology for European Advancement program began in 1999 to support European independence in software-intensive systems for embedded applications. ITEA is on pace to spend 1.2 billion euros. While that funds 9,500 person-years of R&D on 85 projects, it's far from the 20,000 person years and 2.4 billion euros budgeted before the economic downturn of 2001.