Europe needs to keep its place in the skies to keep its place in Europe. Two parallel objectives are presented in ‘Flightpath 2050’: the first in maintaining global leadership, the second is serving society's needs. They are closely interconnected because this is only by serving society's needs that we will be able to keep a position at the forefront of the global economy. A new instrument has been proposed to bring together all the relevant EU instruments: the ‘Common Strategic Framework for Research and Innovation Funding’. This will allow put in place truly crosscutting strategies covering the whole innovation system, from research to technical developments, to demonstration and market uptake.