The EIFFEL Initiative

Less a research but more of a community effort, the EIFFEL initiative aims at establishing efforts for debate and interaction among the research community, initially in Europe and eventually beyond, in the space of the Future Internet. The initiative was created by the European Commission throughout July 2006 with the EIFFEL whitepaper being the outcome of the initial work, publically presented at the Future Internet workshop in Brussels in December 2006. Several follow-ups were created since then, one of which is the proposal for a Strategic Support Action within the EU’s FP7 research framework with the aim to establish such stage for debate through a concrete set of meetings and workshops to be organized. Another activity within the ICST Society aims at complementing these activities with a stage that targets business strategists and policy makers. These activities, while currently largely focussed on Europe, are expected to grow internationally through appropriately connecting to similar activities, e.g., in the US.