Science Business reports on FP10 and the European Civil Aeronautics Summit

Last week, Martin Greenacre reported on the European Civil Aeronautics Summit 2024, co-hosted by ASD in Brussels, focussing in the article on the panel on the future of civil aeronautics research. The article highlights Director of the European Commission’s Clean Planet Directorate, Rosalinde van der Vlies’s insights into the future of collaborative research under Framework Programme 10 (FP10), set to begin in 2028.

Van der Vlies emphasised that partnerships will remain central to EU research but must be simplified. “I think partnerships will continue to play a very important role also in the next multi-annual financial framework, but we will need to simplify the governance structure.” 

The article also notes that Executive Director of Clean Aviation, Axel Krein, spoke on the panel on Clean Aviation’s current focus on technologies for regional and short- to medium-range aircraft, whilst acknowledging some gaps, and calling for better coordination across European initiatives. “What am I going to do, what are you going to do, how do we interface? That needs to happen at European level, and I think this is not happening right now.”

The article also quotes Eric Dalbiès, CTO of Safran, who praised the inclusiveness and leverage effect of partnerships, saying, “The condition to receive this public money is to build consortia, industrial partnerships, embracing the supply chain.”

Martin Greenacre notes that many of the issues that came up in the panel discussion are echoed in ASD’s position paper on FP10, which urges the EU to maintain dedicated initiatives like Clean Aviation and SESAR 3. He notes that ASD’s paper cautions against replacing them with a broader Competitiveness joint undertaking, as suggested in the Draghi report.