The European Research Area, abbreviated as ERA, launched at the Lisbon European Council in March 2000, is composed of all research and development activities, programmes and policies in the European Union (EU) which involve a transnational perspective. Together, they enable researchers, research institutions and businesses to increasingly circulate, compete and co-operate across borders. The aim is to give them access to a Europe-wide open space for knowledge and technologies in which transnational synergies and complementarities are fully exploited.
The creation of a European research area was given new impetus in 2007 with the European Commission's Green Paper on ERA. In 2008, the European Council set in motion the Ljubljana Process to improve the political governance of ERA and adopted a shared ERA 2020 vision. Concrete progress is being made via a series of new partnership initiatives proposed by the Commission in 2008.