QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

The Quantum Technologies Flagship is a European Commission initiative supported by all the member states which is planned to start by 2018 with a total budget of 1 billion€.

This plan is aimed to place Europe ahead in the race for the second quantum revolution, which will lead to new, life changing technologies and will have a huge impact on the market as well, opening up new business possibilities and job opportunities.

For example, already in 2020, Quantum Communication could serve a market sized over €1 billion, with a steep estimated growth rate of 20 percent per year. Near-term technologies could be available within 5 years, notably for sensing, metrology, imaging and communication. Otherwise the anticipated time frame is 10 to 15 years and beyond.

The plan, which was officialised on May 17th 2016 by the EC Commissioner G. Oettinger, is the result of years-long work done by the QT community at large and has involved many different prominent European scientists.

The process started in 2004 with the 5th QIPC conference, which led to the creation of the first version of the Quantum Information Processing and Communication Roadmap and culminated in 2016 with the publication of the Quantum Manifesto, after a long consultation process with the whole community, and endorsed by 3700 people, provided the final dramatic acceleration to the process.

In order to reach the best possible solution for the QT flagship, the EC has nominated a High Level Steering Committee (HLSC), with the role of advising the Commission. The HLSC members are from Academic institutions and Industries involved in the field of Quantum Technologies.

In parallel, the academics stakeholder, which were already organised into “virtual facilities” and “virtual institutes”, and the industry stakeholders (who in 2015 published their white paper), created the informal QUTE working group for the flagship, aiming at providing inputs in a bottom-up approach.

The meetings of the QUTE group have led to the preparation of the QUTE working group consultation report, which was then presented to the HLSC first meeting along with the updated version of the roadmap and discussed there, as indicated in the minutes.

After the first HLSC meeting, a second round of online consultation was triggered (you can download the results here) along with an open workshop about the consultation on the 10 November 2016, which saw the participation of the High Level Steering Committee.

The inputs collected during the workshop served as a basis to the second HLSC meeting, who will soon publish the result of their work.