The EC has published an independent evaluation of the effects of the 7th Framework Programme. FP7 was found to have been a success, with 170,000 publications and over a million person-years of employment created over a ten year period. It is estimated that each Euro spent by FP7 resulted in 11 Euros of direct and indirect economic effort. The budget of 55 billion Euros represented 25% of all (public) competitive research funding available, and 25,000 projects were funded (from 139,000 that were submitted), involving 21,000 organisations (e.g. companies or universities).
The full report “Commitment and Coherence” is available for free from the EC.