REPORT
		On the Summer School - Chios, 25.29.06.2007
	Overview 2000-2006 Project Activities 2007 News Gallery Contacts	In Greece for the fourth time took part the Annual ABC Summer School. It included meetings of the ABC Working Groups - EU Integration, Trade Facilitation and Project Sustainability and a Seminar on EU Programmes. The Seminar on The 7th EU Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP7) was the main part of the Summer School 2007. It was a 2- day seminar and was carried out by Anna Maria Heidenreich, an expert at the DIHK Representative Office in Brussels. The main objective of the seminar was to inform the 17 participants about the FP7, which bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under a common roof. The programme playing a crucial role in reaching the goals of growth, competitiveness and employment is the EU main instrument for funding research in Europe and it will run from 2007 to 2013. The EU budget for the next seven years is € 50.5 billion. The broad objectives of FP7 have been grouped into four categories – “cooperation”, “ideas”, “people” and “capacities” - which cover all forms of European collaboration in research with a main focus on common research and innovation projects of business, universities and sciences in a wide range of research themes. While FP7 participants can in principle be based anywhere, there are different categories of country (Member States, Associated Countries, Third Countries) which may have varying eligibility for the different schemes. Within the framework of the new financial perspective 2007-2013 the European Commission has introduced various changes in its external aid programmes. This is also true for the former pre-accession aid schemes “PHARE”, “ISPA” and “SAPARD” and the former instrument for the Western Balkan countries “CARDS”. They have been integrated in a new common “Instrument for Pre-Accession” (IPA). IPA funds transition assistance and institution building as well as cross-border co-operation in all target countries (candidate and potential candidate countries) and supports regional development, human resources development and rural development only on the candidate countries as a preparation for the Structural and Cohesion Funds after accession. On the meetings of the Working Groups the specific problems and questions for each working group were discussed and each working group accepted an Annual Agenda.
		Pictures of the events see Gallery.