Something really interesting to watch will be the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) grant/s.
http://www.euractiv.com/innovation-enterprise/euro-research-race-enters-closin-news-513278Of the final 6 (at least 1 of which will be getting $1 billion in funding from the EU), 4 of the 6 are, to put it mildly,
REALLY REALLY AWESOME.1. FuturICT; this project aims to take in and process huge quantities of data, using it to predict large scale future events, as well as produce more accurate methods of modeling future events.
2. The Human Brain Project; this project is an outgrowth of Project Blue Brain. Project Blue Brain has been simulating, at the molecular level, how neurons interact. Thus far, they've simulated portions of a rat brain, with a goal of simulating a full rat brain by 2014. Their ultimate goal is to simulate a human brain (approximately 1000 times bigger, according to their site), which is where it ties into this sub-project. They've already got plenty of results from their work thus far; and if they were to simulate a full human brain, BAM, strong humanlike AI.
3. Robot Companions for Citizens; this project is to effectively create an environment of human-interaction friendly robots to make our lives better.
4. Guardian Angles; this project aims to create wearable equipment for health and environment monitoring purposes; essentially a really small, user friendly sensor-platform.
5. ITFOM; essentially just an IT reworking of the way medical information is processed/gets around. It should be done, but it's more of a 'business as usual' project as far as the average person is concerned IMO
6. Graphene Flagship; material science research into graphene and related materials; again, important, but relatively mundane as far as transformative potential goes
Links to the projects can be found on the page I linked.