ESFRI supports a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy making on new and existing pan-European and global research infrastructures. In line with this mission, in November 2004 the Competitiveness Council mandated ESFRI to develop a strategic Roadmap for Europe in the field of research infrastructures, as a tool to help the development of an overall strategy for the efficient and cost effective realisation, deployment and use of research infrastructures of relevance for the European Research Area.  

ESFRI Membership is open to delegates from EU Member States, Candidate and Associate Countries, thus also to WBC. For researchers from the Western Balkan countries, these projects are of relevance sofar as "Any country is free to join the European research infrastructure projects and any scientist can access them, once they are operational."

European Roadmap for RIs was first published in 2006, with 35 projects, it was updated in 2008 bringing the number of RIs of pan-European relevance to 44. A further update is currently under preparation and will be published in December 2010. The update will focus on projects dealing with Energy, Food and Biology.

The report at hand further elaborates on following points:

• Status of the roadmap projects and their implementation
• Role of ESFRI in the implementation of the roadmap
• The tools supporting the Roadmap Implementation (national roadmaps, framework programme tools, structural    funds, EIB, The European Research Infrastructure Consortium ERIC)
• Main challenges facing the roadmap projects