The Plan for European Cooperating States (PECS) is designed to help European countries, particularly those that joined the EU after 2004, to join ESA. At present, Hungary, Poland and Romania have signed a PECS Charter.
9 June 2011 ESA's Advanced Concepts Team (www.esa.int/act) just released the first Call for Proposals in 2011 on four advanced research topics, open to all universities and research institutes. Ariadna studies (www.esa.int/ariadna) are particularly well suited for PECS universities since they are deliberately targeting research communities not necessarily yet linked to space or ESA in any way.
20 January 2011 ESA PR 04-2011 Romania took a step further in its relations with ESA by signing the Accession Agreement to the ESA Convention on 20 January 2011, to become the 19th ESA Member State.
