To estimate precisely the impact of actions undertaken at Community level over the past years is not easy. Often the spin-offs from research can only be grasped in the long term. Furthermore, even if efforts in RTD are indispensable to the maintenance and reinforcement of industrial competitiveness, they cannot guarantee them. Other factors come into play, such as the training level of personnel and the quality of management in companies. That said, however, the Community programmes have produced a whole range of positive results in many areas. The practice of cooperating beyond natural frontiers has been established or reinforced. Competing companies, which did not previously work with each other, have now learned to pool, in the field of research, their know-how, human and financial resources. Laboratory and researchers' networks have emerged, alongside existing international networks, into associations characterized by near irreversibility : as a study by researchers at the University of Manchester on the

impact of Community programmes in Great Britain has shown, once created, these links tend to live on. Several Community programmes highlight real scientific breakthroughs and industrial accomplishments. In November 1991, a significant amount of energy (2 megawatt, during about 2 seconds) was, for the first time, produced by fusion reaction in JET (Joint European Torus) - the experimental thermonuclear fusion devise used in the context of the European research programme on fusion. Another world first, again in 1991, concerns 35 laboratories associated under the Community's Biotechnology Research Programme called BRIDGE: here they succeeded in analyzing completely (to "sequence") a living organism's chromosome: the chromosome III of the yeast. In this way they inaugurated, in an impressive fashion, a new model for international cooperation addressing long and complex tasks. In the field of epidemiology, an area which represents a paradigm for European cooperation, action at a European level has led to the pr

oduction of an "Atlas of Avoidable Death", which allows for comparative analysis of the performance of Europe's health services on the basis of mortality statistics. Likewise an all-encompassing map of potentially usable wind energy in Europe was drawn up after huge and lengthy efforts involving the compilation and harmonization of data. The SUPERNODE project, conducted within the ESPRIT programme, has lead to the development of a new type of "Transputer", which is a microprocessor specially made for parallel calculations. Already a range of very fast parallel calculators, which use the Transputer, have been marketed and adapted to specific applications such as image processing. In software technology, the PCTE project has come up with production standards which are being applied across the world. In the field of computer integrated manufacturing, the CNMA project has lead to the installation of communication networks in production chains of many major European automobile and aeronautic manufacturers. In m

icroelectronics, the CATHEDRALE project scaled down a 100 cm compact disc printed circuit to a single 1cm chip. At the same time the design time for the circuit was reduced from one month to a week. Also in the ESPRIT programme, more specifically the "Domesday" projects, a new type of media, the CD-I (Interactive Compact Disk) was also partially developed. Generally speaking, over 70 ESPRIT projects have contributed to the preparation of European or international norms and standards. Thanks to the BRITE/EURAM Industrial Technologies programme as well, new production methods (laser welding techniques, computer based manufacturing systems for injection moulds) and new products (erasable microfiches using liquid crystals, artificial and totally bio-compatible blood vessels, membranes for the textile industry) have been developed.