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Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn announces today nearly € 6.4 billion of European Commission investment in research and innovation. The package, the biggest ever, covers a vast range of scientific disciplines, public policy areas and commercial sectors. This funding will advance scientific boundaries, increase European competitiveness and help solve societal challenges such as climate change, energy and food security, health and an ageing population. Around 16,000 participants from research organisations, universities and industry, including about 3,000 SMEs, will receive funding. Grants will be awarded through "calls for proposals" (invitations to bid) and evaluations over the next 14 months. Many calls will be formally published on 20th July. This package is an economic stimulus expected to create more than 165.000 jobs. It is also a long-term investment in a smarter, sustainable and more inclusive Europe. It is a key element within the EU's Europe 2020 Strategy and in particular the Innovation Union Flagship, which will be launched in autumn 2010.

More students than ever went abroad for studies and company placements with EU support through the Erasmus programme in 2008/09. According to new figures released today, almost 200 000 higher education students received grants to study or train abroad. This represents an overall increase of 8.7% on the previous academic year and means that more than two million young Europeans have benefited from Erasmus funding since the programme's launch in 1987. The biggest increase is in the number of students going on company placements – up more than 50% on the previous year. In addition, last year more than 36 000 staff from higher education institutions went abroad to teach or receive training in one of the 31 European countries participating in the Erasmus scheme.

On 21st of October the European Commission announced the first group of projects that will benefit from a total of €500 million worth of investment in vital transport infrastructure projects across the EU. The grants will be allocated under the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) programme, which helps to fund works to build missing transport links or remove bottlenecks in order to enable people and goods to circulate quickly and easily between Member States. The €500 million package constitutes a vital part of the Commission's response to the economic crisis. The funding announced today will go towards projects in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom. A second group of projects benefitting from TEN-T funding will be announced later this year.

The European Parliament and the Council have modified the procedural rules of some EU programmes in order to make the selection of projects easier and to make the attribution of the grant faster. The Lifelong Learning Programme is one the programme concerned by this modification.