Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

The European Union, being an area of economic (and social) integration, is
for obvious reasons interested in transport development. As a result, transport
research is intensive and strongly represented in framework research programmes,
as well as in other projects, directly or indirectly funded by the EU.
According to the information from the Transport Research Knowledge Centre
(TRKC – on the Internet pages of the European Commission) out of 5,613 described
research projects, 994 consist of projects funded by the EU with 28 receiving
financial support form other organizations or international programmes
19 . The remaining ones, documented by the TRKC rely on funding provided
by specific countries or public funds; however they are conducted within
an area of interest to the European transport policy.
The projects financed through EU framework programmes, constitute
a separate category in transport research. The Fourth EU Framework Research
Programme (1994-1998) contained individual TRANSPORT programme consisting
of projects in the following areas of research: strategy, integration and individual
types of transport (rail, road, air, water and urban) 20 with 21 (rail) to 55
(waterborne transport) projects executed within each of the sectors. Within the
next Fifth Framework Research (1998-2002), research in the field of transport
was also conducted. The biggest number of transport research projects was allocated
to the GROWTH Programme (“Competitive and Sustainable Growth”) in
the following areas of research: sustainable mobility and intermodality (52 projects),
technologies of land and maritime transport (45 projects) 21 . The Sixth EU
Framework Programme (2002-2006) lists within activity area no. 6 (“Sustainable
Development, Globalization and Ecosystems”) subject priority no. 6.2 “Sustainable
Land Transport” 22 . The following areas of research were specified within
that priority 23 :
– new technologies and concepts of transport development;
– advanced design and production methods in transport;
– balancing and integrating various modes of transport;
– increasing safety and limiting congestion.
Apart from Priority 6.2, transport research was also conducted within Priority
4 “Aeronautics and Space”, where issues connected with air transport were
placed 24 . Within these two priorities, in the direct field of interest of the Euro-
19 Including ECMT – European Conference of Ministers of Transport, TEDIM – Telematics in Foreign
Trade Logistics and Delivery Management in the Baltic Sea Region (partnership programme of
Baltic countries), DEUFRAKO – bilateral Franco-German programme associated with Predit [France]
and Mobility and Transport [Germany], http://ec.europa.eu/transport/extra/web/projects_database.cfm,
as of 07.05.2007.
20 http://cordis.europa.eu/transport/src/project.htm, as of 07.05.2007.
21 http://cordis.europa.eu/growth/src/proj-fp5.htm, as of 07.05.2007.
22 Structure of VI Framework Programme – see http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6/activities.htm, as of
08.05.2007.
23 http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6/sp1_wp.htm#sustdev2, as of 08.05.2007.
24 http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6/activities.htm, as of 08.05.2007.
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