Verheugen welcomed Turkey's decision, saying that "businesses and in particular SMEs will strongly benefit from this participation." He said that it will "provide both EU and Turkish enterprises with new great opportunities for cooperation".
The Commissioner also expressed his hope that "this decision will also have a politicial effect of bringing Turkey and the EU closer together".
The CIP programme, provided with a budget of €3.6 billion until 2013, mainly aims to promote entrepreneurship and growth of SMEs, which form the "backbone" of the Turkish economy, Bozkir pointed out. It will allow Turkey to participate in joint EU projects and accrue the full benefit of best practice exchange, according to the Commission.
The CIP consists of the following three pillars:
- An 'Entrepreneurship and Innovation Framework Programme' (EIP), created to foster the competitiveness of enterprises;
- an 'Information and Innovation Framework Technologies Policy Support Programme', which aims to speed up the development of a "sustainanle, competitive, innovative and inclusive information society," and;
- an 'Intelligent Energy-Europe Programme' (IEE), which promotes energy efficient and renewable energy sources in all sectors.
Turkey has already participated actively in innovation-related activities under the EU's 6th Framework "Research and innovation" programme, which have been further extended under the CIP.
Turkey is the third candidate country, after Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to join the CIP.
