The mid-term review of the 2001 White Paper stresses the key role of innovation in ensuring sustainable, efficient and competitive mobility in Europe. The EC ITS Action Plan Communication highlights the need for innovation and market introduction of cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). With cooperative ITS, drivers' vehicles will "talk" directly to other vehicles and with the traffic management system.The complexity in the technologies and operational framework for these services can only be overcome by creating the appropriate incentives for stakeholders to invest in further innovation. The timely availability and deployment of these services depend furthermore greatly on the Public Authorities in the establishment of national cooperative infrastructure (road side systems).P3ITS will establish a European network of 13 procurement experts, professionals from the ITS sector and industry and public procurement agencies for a period of 18 months to:- Investigate Public Procurement mechanisms and PCP in particular with respect to innovation and deployment requirements for cooperative ITS services;- Liaise with and build upon state-of-the-art expertise;- Consolidate national, regional and urban best practices into a European model approach for PCP of new cooperative ITS;- Investigate how PCP can help to answer the challenges of national, regional and urban transport policies and possibly derive recommendations if additional approaches would be required;- Disseminate and increase awareness, understanding and exploitation.The quality of the contents of the P3ITS project and the value of its results will benefit significantly from the RTD field trial programmes that its partners plan in 2010-2012, among others in the Netherlands (over 4000 innovative vehicle platforms and cooperative infrastructure) and France (25 local authorities plan procurement of innovative cooperative ITS services).