The next, ninth FP (FP9) concerns many national/regional stakeholders, has an important impact on the science and innovation performance of a country/region by the funding volume and underlying principles that express common values shared by the member states of the European Union, the European Commission and the associated countries. Hence, the Flemish Department of Economy, Science and Innovation took the lead in organising its stakeholders to prepare a common position paper on FP9. In this paper, we make clear which general principles are important for us, but we do not want to “hide behind the headlines”1 and hence, propose some ideas on how to implement these principles or to tackle urgent issues.
