EUREKA MEMBER > Austria

Austria is one of the founding members of the EUREKA Initiative. Since 1985, the Austrian involvement in EUREKA has increased dramatically. Currently, more than 10 Mio€/ year of public money (roughly half grants, half loans) are invested in the funding of market-oriented R&D projects with excellent results for Austrian companies and research institutions. From the very beginning, Austria has also been involved in the funding programme Eurostars, run jointly by EUREKA and the European Community.

Alongside bottom-up projects generated by companies themselves, Austria also actively supports strategic initiatives in specific technological domains:

• Manufacturing technologies and new materials: Umbrella projects PRO-FACTORY and ENIWEP
• Transport logistic technologies: Umbrella project LOGCHAIN+
• Agrofood and food chain production technologies: Umbrella project EUROAGRI FOODCHAIN
• Environmental technologies: Umbrella project EUROENVIRON and Cluster project ACQUEAU (Water production and distribution, waste water treatment)
• Sustainable and renewable energy technologies : Cluster project EUROGIA+
• Information and communication technologies: Cluster projects CATRENE (Application and technology research in nanoelectronics), ITEA2 (Software-intensive systems and services), CELTIC (Telecommunication solutions) and EURIPIDES (Packaging and integration of microdevices and smart-systems).

In this regard, Austria also hosts the Chair and the Secretariat of the Umbrella PRO-FACTORY as the Secretariat of the Umbrella LOGCHAIN+.

The Eurostars programme started with its first cut-off date in February 2008. Austrian partners are engaged in more than 10% of all successful projects. The Austrian funding authorities had reserved a budget of 1.5 Mio€ for this first year, however due to the success of the Austrian participants, they decided to fund these participants with almost 4 Mio€.