Recently, it was reported that the hyperlinks originally linking to the domains of the EU-funded projects ‘Open Mashup Enterprise service platform for LinkEd data in The TElcodomain’(1) (OMELETTE) and ‘Microscale Chemically Reactive Electronic Agents’(2) are now linking to pornography websites, while other hyperlinks formally providing information on EU-funded projects lead to abandoned websites and error messages.

The two projects above mentioned were publicly funded under the Seventh Framework Programme – Specific Programme “Cooperation”: Information and communication technologies (FP7-ICT)(3), and were completed by 2013 and 2016 respectively. However, the domain names are no longer maintained, even though the links are still publicly listed on the Commission’s website CORDIS.

What actions does the Commission intend to take to ensure the continued accessibility and security of websites and domain names used by EU-funded research and development projects?