Optical telecommunications: Quo vadis Europa?

The downturn of the telecommunications market in the early 2000\´ had a profound impact on the manufacturing and design of photonic components in Europe. As a result, in order to survive companies had to diversify their products, proposing photonic components for more applications than just communications. The importance of optical communications for the European economy is still recognized by the European Union and enjoys continued support. Tributary to the changes in market landscape, the priorities and strategy of support by the European Commission had to evolve. In this presentation we will start by reviewing the evolution of the research priorities defined by the European Commission, starting with the ACTS Program ("Advanced Communications Technologies and Services"), together with an outline of the support mechanisms, namely the "European Framework Program for Collaborative Research". The efforts supported by the European Commission will be put into perspective with the overall European efforts and a link will be made to the priorities of the member states of the European Union, when a dedicated priority exists. We will highlight the importance of the collaborative European effort and give examples of its impact. We will then provide an insight in the drivers behind the definition of the policy and its associated research priorities, which is based on inputs from the constituency, market analysis, European strengths and other policy areas like security or sustainability. We will review the whole definition process, indicating where the constituency can participate in shaping the priorities. We will conclude by presenting the long term vision and giving indications on the likely research priorities for Photonic Components in the ICT Workprogram 2009-2010 of the 7th Framework Program (FP7).