The 'Marie Curie Actions' have long been one of the most popular and appreciated features of the Community Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. They have developed significantly in orientation over time, from a pure mobility fellowships programme to a programme dedicated to stimulating researchers' career development. The 'Marie Curie Actions' have been particularly successful in responding to the needs of Europe's scientific community in terms of training, mobility and career development. This has been demonstrated by a demand in terms of highly ranked applications that in most actions extensively surpassed the available financial support.

Entirely dedicated to human resources in research, this Specific Programme has a significant overall budget of more than € 4.7 billion over a seven year period until 2013, which represents a 50% average annual increase over FP6.

Rationale of the 'People' Programme

'Abundant and highly trained qualified researchers are a necessary condition to advance science and to underpin innovation, but also an important factor to attract and sustain investments in research by public and private entities. Against the background of growing competition at world level, the development of an open European labour market for researchers free from all forms of discrimination and the diversification of skills and career paths of researchers are crucial to support a beneficial circulation of researchers and their knowledge, both within Europe and in a global setting. Special measures to encourage young researchers and support early stages of scientific career, as well as measures to reduce the 'brain drain', such as reintegration grants, will be introduced.'

The 'People' Specific Programme acknowledges that one of the main competitive edges in science and technology is the quantity and quality of its human resources. To support the further development and consolidation of the European Research Area, this Specific Programme's overall strategic objective is to make Europe more attractive for the best researchers.

Activities

The 'People' Specific Programme will be implemented through actions under five headings:

• 'Initial training of researchers to improve mostly young researchers' career perspectives in both public and private sectors, by broadening their scientific and generic skills, including those related to technology transfer and entrepreneurship.

• 'Life-long training' to support experienced researchers in complementing or acquiring new skills and competencies or in enhancing inter/multidisciplinarity and/or intersectoral mobility, in resuming a research career after a break and in (re)integrating into a longer term research position in Europe after a trans-national mobility experience.

• 'Industry-academia pathways and partnerships' to stimulate intersectoral mobility and increase knowledge sharing through joint research partnerships in longer term co-operation programmes between organisations from academia and industry, in particular SMEs and including traditional manufacturing industries.

• 'International dimension', to contribute to the life-long training and career development of EU-researchers, to attract research talent from outside Europe and to foster mutually beneficial research collaboration with research actors from outside Europe.

• 'Specific actions' to support removing obstacles to mobility and enhancing the career perspectives of researchers in Europe.