The term of "civil aviation" is nowadays associated by almost everyone with rather large airplanes and companies like Boeing and Airbus that represent, especially in Europe, the main form of air transport. However, in many parts of the world categories of smaller airplanes even for less than 19 passengers are used for civil aviation quite frequently. The dominant market for these categories of aircraft is USA.

There is a wide range of commercial aircraft, from small aero-taxi (2-4 passengers) to regional airplanes of commuter type, falling under European Air Safety Authority (EASA) CS-23 regulation category, particularly:

- Normal Utility Aircraft ? pilots + max. 9 pax (MTOW 5,670 kg)
- Commuter Aircraft ? pilots + max 19 pax (MTOW 8,618 kg)

The European manufacturers of larger aircraft represented mainly by Airbus have achieved leadership in the global market. This part of European aviation industry is nowadays substantially competitive. In the area of regional and small-size commercial aircraft the situation is completely different. In the past or even now, a number of traditional aircraft manufacturers of this category went bankrupt or struggled with economic problems. Just only a few European aircraft manufacturers succeeded in establishing themselves in the world markets.

The development and manufacture of smaller commercial aircraft are now concentrated mainly in the EU countries like France, Italy, Germany and Austria as well as in the New Member states like the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. This sector including also a great number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), is very important in terms of maintaining European competitiveness in aeronautics.

In general, there is still sufficient potential for European aircraft manufacturers to regain influential position in the world market of small-size commercial aircraft, which is nowadays dominated in particular by the American aeronautical industry, predominantly by USA, Canada and Brazil.

The CESAR project is aimed at providing the European manufacturers of regional, commuter and business aircraft with an enhanced ability to become fully competitive in the world market of small-size commercial aircraft. The project objective is to build up a new development concept for this particular aircraft category and to improve selected technologies enabling significant reduction of time-to-market period and lowering the overall development and operational costs, while considering safety, passenger comfort and environmental impact.