COST is the longest-running European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among researchers, engineers and scholars across Europe.
COST funds pan-European, bottom-up networks of scientists and researchers across all science and technology fields. These networks, called ‘COST Actions’, promote international coordination of nationally-funded research.
“COST represents a concrete resolution of the ambiguity present in the early Community endeavours between the alternative objectives of either deciding the principles on which to establish an overall science policy (// EC) or adopting a pragmatic approach to initiate technological cooperation (// council)”
Aked and Gummet – Research Policy 5 (1976)