The Quantum Technologies Flagship is a

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

scientific research initiative. With a budget of €1 billion, it is one of the large scale initiatives organized by the

Future and Emerging Technologies Horizon Europe is a seven-year European Union scientific research initiative to help develop a sustainable and livable society in Europe. It is the ninth of the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (FP9), and the succe ...

program, along with the

Human Brain Project The Human Brain Project (HBP) was a €1-billion EU scientific research project that ran for ten years from 2013 to 2023. Using high-performance exascale supercomputers it built infrastructure that allowed researchers to advance knowledge in ...

and the

Graphene Flagship The Graphene Flagship is a European Union scientific research initiative. With a budget of €1 billion, it is one of the large scale initiatives organized by the Future and Emerging Technologies program, along with the Human Brain Project and ...

.The Quantum Flagship funds over 5,000 European researchers over ten years. Its long-term vision is to develop in Europe a quantum web, where quantum computers, simulators and sensors are interconnected via quantum communication networks. The objective being to develop in Europe a competitive quantum industry making research results available as commercial applications and disruptive technologies.

Beginning of the flagship

In 2016, the European Commissioner for digital economy and society

Günther Oettinger Günther Hermann Oettinger (born 15 October 1953) is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as European Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources from 2017 to 2019, as European Commissioner for Digi ...

invited the quantum community to provide a common European strategy on

quantum technologies In physics, a quantum (: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This me ...

. Endorsed by 3.400 individuals from academia and industry, a “quantum manifesto” was released in May 2016 in the Netherlands The document called for the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

to launch an ambitious European initiative in quantum technologies to ensure Europe's leading role in a technological revolution underway. Following this document, the European Commission appointed a High Level Steering Committee, composed of 12 academic members and 12 industry members, to deliver a strategic research agenda, an implementation model and a governance model for the quantum technologies flagship. The report of this committee was delivered in 2017, giving a long-term vision of a “quantum web” and the flagship was launched in 2018, bringing under the same brand research institutions, industry, and public funders. The quantum technologies flagship with an expected budget of €1 billion from the EU over 10 years aims to support the transformation of European research into commercial applications. In October 2018, the recipients of the first grants were announced, for a total of €132 million distributed among 20 projects and three years.

References

{{reflist European Commission projects Quantum computing Horizon 2020 projects