Overview of High Intensity Linac Programs in Europe

Recent years have seen a boost in the support by the European Union (EU) of accelerator research in Europe. Provided they coordinate their efforts and define common goals and strategies, laboratories and institutions from the member states can receive a financial support reaching 50% of the total project cost. In the field of High Intensity Linacs, the EU has already supported the EURISOL initiative for nuclear physics, which this year is applying for funding of a Design Study, and the development of linacs for Waste Transmutation. More recently, an initiative for high-energy physics has been approved, which includes a programme for the development of pulsed linac technologies. The coordination and synergy imposed by the EU rules increase the benefit of the allocated resources. Combined with the ongoing internal projects in the partner laboratories, these European initiatives represent a strong effort focussed towards the development of linac technologies. This paper summarises the requests from the various European communities and gives an overview of linac R&D activities sponsored by the EU, together with some information on parallel national/local projects. The parameter choices as well as the main technical features of the different projects are presented and compared.