EUREKA's Eurostars Programme is an European funding and support programme to be specifically dedicated to SMEs. Eurostars will stimulate them to lead international collaborative research and innovation projects by easing access to support and funding.

A Eurostars project is a European research and development project. It can address any technological area, but must have a civilian purpose and be aimed at the development of a new product, process or service. A Eurostars project is collaborative, meaning it must involve at least two participants (legal entities) from two different Eurostars participating countries. In addition, the main participant must be a research-performing SME.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General (DG ENTR) is looking for SMEs in the aerospace sector who would be interested in hosting a Commission official for one week in order to help him/her to understand better the problems SMEs are facing.

The action will be financed from the DG Enterprise's training budget and thus there is no cost to the participating official or to the host firm.

The EC officials will be available to explain and present to the host companies and to the local business community EU policies of importance to business. They will help to understand better the European Union, institutions and environment.

A principal objective of DESCA is to provide a Model Consortium Agreement which seeks to balance as fairly as possible the interests of all partners in an FP project. In order to achieve this objective, the DESCA Core Group has worked closely with FP contract experts from many other organizations - representing large and small firms, universities, and research organizations. More than 30 individuals have participated in the DESCA Consultation Group. .

You will find here a PowerPoint Presentation with the basic facts about DESCA.

The final DESCA 2.0 is published on the website: http://www.desca-fp7.eu/download-desca/

Participating in this type of event decribed below is network in view of a future involvement in projects.

"The NACRE ('New Aircraft Concepts Research') project will hold its second conference from 8 to 10 July in Greenwich, UK.

The conference aims to extend the audience to members of the (aeronautical) science and technology community outside the NACRE consortium to share information on the drivers for research on unconventional aircraft concepts and on the NACRE project achievements to date.

The first AVIATION CO2 conference will be held from 8 to 10
September in Budapest, Hungary.

"The event will address the most current
policy and technology related issues in the aviation industry, and aims to focus
on significant solutions of sustainable transport.