Involvement of the SMEs in the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union: Case Study for Romania

The objective of this paper offers an image of the SMEs’ participation to the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development of the EU, highlighting Romania’s Situation. This report presents statistical data regarding SMEs participation in each category of the specific programs and thematic areas. The report provides information on the EU contribution to SMEs and the number of participating SMEs. For this study, there have been consulted the existing database of the EU, on the Commission website: CORDIS (Community Research and development Information Service); in addition, there have been interpreted the public available data from the European Commission report on SMEs participation in FP7, up to June 2013. In the analysis of the Romanian situation, the public available data have been adjusted to correspond to reality, in terms of nature and classification of the companies, using information from Orbis database. The paper is structured as follows: in the first part is presented the global situation of the SMEs participation to FP7, from all the European Countries. In the second part is analyzed Romania’s participation to FP7. The paper ends with conclusions, highlighting the opportunities opened up by the new research funding program of the EU: Horizon 2020.