Eurostat manages the geographic reference database of the European Commission.
Within the scope of this activity, Eurostat provides Commission services with geographic information needed to perform their respective policies.

To be able to fulfil its mandate, Eurostat is requesting the provision of a European geographic database on topographic data in the scale of 1:250 000 and the provision of a geographic database of energy transport data in the scale of 1:250 000. In addition, Eurostat is requesting updates of these geographic databases, for detailed technical documentation on the data and its usage and for technical support on data usage.

The deadline for receipt of tenders is 26 October 2006

The full contract notice can be found here:

http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:184902-2006:TEXT:EN:HTML

http://fp6.cordis.lu/

At the Lisbon summit in March 2000, EU governments called for a better use of European research efforts through the creation of an internal market for science and technology - a "European Research Area, ERA".

FP6 is the financial instrument to help make a European Research Agenda a reality. 6FP was voted on in October 2001. In March 2002 the European Parliament read it for the second time. The Commission adopted its Work Programme on March 3rd 2003. 

There are three main instruments;
1. Network of Excellence,
2. Integrated Projects,
3. Define and support joint national programmes
GI is embedded in the programmes.