Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) supports collaborative research in order to extend Europe’s capacity for advanced and paradigm-changing innovation. They will foster scientific collaboration across disciplines on radically new, high-risk ideas and accelerate development of the most promising emerging areas of science and technology as well as the Union-wide structuring of the corresponding scientific communities.
The FET programme has three complementary lines of action to address different methodologies and scales, from new ideas to long-term challenges:
• FET Open supports early-stage research on any idea for a new technology. There are no pre-defined themes. It encourages scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines to work together on game-changing science- and technology research, expanding well beyond the traditional technological disciplines. Overall, FET Open will receive 40% of the total FET budget in Horizon 2020.
• FET Proactive addresses promising directions for research on future technologies in order to build up a European critical mass of knowledge and excellence around them.
• FET Flagships are science-driven, large-scale, multidisciplinary research initiatives oriented towards a unifying goal, aiming at transformational impacts with substantial benefits for European competitiveness and for society.