The European Commission has signed the grant agreement for the latest phase of the GÉANT project, GN4-1, which runs to April 2016 with a funding level of €25m.

"I am delighted to announce the signature of the new grant agreement between GÉANT and the EC. With this signature, we will reinforce even further our pan-European network for scientific excellence and European research and innovation. By assuring world-leading connectivity between Europe and the rest of the world in support of global research collaborations, GÉANT continues to help researchers and the wider community to contribute to Europe's growth strategy", Augusto Burgueño Arjona, Head of Unit eInfrastructure at European Commission Directorate General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology.

Together with Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), GÉANT has a long history of meeting the diverse needs of a European research and education community that includes organisations such as CERN, the European Southern Observatory, EUMETSAT and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

By providing the superfast pan-European network and an integrated suite of services including security, authentication, authorisation and identity GÉANT ensures the trust and confidence essential to large scale research collaboration, data-intensive science, HPC and cloud computing, and helping to achieve the EC’s Open Science objectives.

Furthermore, by partnering with its members to build a catalogue of cloud service providers who are connected to the GÉANT ecosystem and can meet terms and conditions appropriate to research and education, and by developing a pan-European delivery framework for the adoption of cloud services, the GÉANT community has a strong foundation on which to build Europe’s Open Science Cloud.

GN4-1 continues this work, providing a governance structure, policies, support model and a funding, metering and billing scheme that delivers long-term interoperability and data portability, helping to ensure Europe’s science and innovation momentum continues.

GÉANT CEO Steve Cotter adds, “I am delighted that, through GN4-1, GÉANT and the NRENs will continue to help accelerate research, drive innovation and enrich education. By delivering essential services, GÉANT is in a position to make a significant contribution to the Digital Single Market and to the future prosperity of Europe.”

The signing of the grant agreement represents the first multi-party Specific Grant Agreement (SGA) completed by the European Commission Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology (DG CONNECT), whose work aims to ensure that digital technologies can help deliver the growth that the EU needs. This SGA follows on from the signing in April of this year of a seven year Framework Partnership Agreement that is intended to cover multiple SGAs for the coming years.

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