Education and training, the central topic of the present issue, is seen by the Commission as an integral part of all future integrated project and network of excellence. A joint programme in training researchers is considered as an essential feature of integration activities for spreading excellence and for the sustainability of high-level skills in the topic considered. Integrated project as well might be a suitable vehicle to provide or contribute to improve such training programmes. The Consultative Committee Euratom-Fission encouraged this approach for the radiation protection area, the question of how to deal with education and training in the implementation of the 6^th Framework Programme in particular being retained as a key area of recommendation by the Working Group in radiation protection. As a another example to highlight the importance of training programmes, specific guidelines on education and training programmes in radiation protection for medical exposure (see publications) were issued by the Commission in 2000 following the evaluation of a working group taking into account the recommendations of international committees (ICRP, WHO, AIEA, Article 31 Group, ..) and supported by international associations such as the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) and the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics (EFOMP) notably.

It will be therefore important to take into account training and education activities in considering the forthcoming calls for proposal of the 6^th Framework Programme, the publication of the first call being expected soon. Waiting for this publication, the last progress of the 6^th Framework Programme implementation may summarise as follows:

• the results for the assessment of Expressions of Interest for evaluating the feasibility of implementation integrated projects and networks of excellence are published. Full documents can be referred to on CORDIS especially for chapter 2.3 on radiation protection (www.cordis.lu/fp6/eoi-analysis.htm);
• the Specific Programmes, including EURATOM one, were approved on September 30, 2003
  (www.cordis.lu/fp6/ );

the Work Programmes implementing the Specific Programmes and defining the boundaries of the first call are in preparation; the publication of the first Call is expected before the end of the year; the deadline for submission of the proposals will be at least 3 months after the publication of the Call. At the time of publishing the present issue, these documents are not yet available. The readers are invited to refer to CORDIS for the publication of the Call and dissemination of all related documents.