Brussels, 04 Nov 2005

The Commission has provided details of the retained project proposals following the fourth Information Society Technologies (IST) call of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), with the largest portion of funding (151 million euro) being set aside for mobile and wireless systems research.

This investment in mobile and wireless systems aims to protect communication systems and personal data against cyber crime, with the overall goal of ensuring European leadership in technologies that are at the heart of the knowledge economy. The 151 million euro of co-financing being invested by the Commission represents in these projects roughly 15 per cent of the total available funds under the fourth IST call.

A further 83 million euro of EU funding will be spent on 24 projects in the field of health technology research. Retained initiatives include using new biosignal sensors to detect and treat cancer and other tumours, developing navigation aids for the visually impaired, and a study on the cost-efficiency of health care spending.

In the field of road safety research, the Commission will contribute a total of 91 million euro to 22 projects, which will focus on in-vehicle safety systems such as automatic emergency call technologies. Meanwhile projects to improve online services will receive 73 million euro of EU funding, and will aim at helping the Internet to evolve into a wireless network supporting full mobility, interactive television and post-third generation (3G) mobile technology.

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The remaining funds will be split among these same thematic areas as well as eight others, including nano-electronics, audio-visual systems and technology-enhanced learning.

Under this call for proposals, 69 million euro has been set aside in order to facilitate research cooperation between the older and newer EU Member States. Just over six per cent of the retained projects originate from new Member States and candidate countries.

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