ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE NUCLÉAIRE EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH Laboratoire européen pour la physique des particules European Laboratory for Particle Physics Response of CERN 1 to the EC Green Paper on a common strategic framework for EU research and innovation funding Geneva, 2 May 2011 Foreword The EU framework programmes have contributed in a fundamental way to the integration of European research in the past 25 years. They have evolved substantially and the current 7 th framework programme contains a coherent set of sub-programmes aiming at strengthening transnational cooperation in Europe in a number of key science and technology areas, establishing and supporting excellence of European science in frontier research, developing and stimulating mobility and researchers careers within the European Research Area, and enhancing the research and innovation capacities throughout Europe. CERN welcomes the initiative of the European Commission to launch an open public consultation on the identified main issues and challenges towards the preparation of the new common strategic framework for research and innovation, to which all interested stakeholders may contribute. CERN has been actively involved in EU projects since the start of the 6 th framework programme, and is currently among the top 50 participants in the 7 th framework programme. Over the past 10 years the Organization has participated mainly in the Research Infrastructures, e-infrastructure and Marie Curie programmes, and more recently has expanded its involvement into areas such as health technologies, science and society, ICT, open access and frontier research projects (ERC Grants). CERN is coordinating about half of the FP7 projects in which it is has been involved. By responding to a number of questions of the Green Paper, for which the Organization considers it is sufficiently competent to answer, CERN is providing its input to the preparation of the next framework programme for research, technology and innovation. In a challenging post-crisis period, the EU needs to step up support for research and innovation in order to ensure, in a global competitive environment, the sustainable development and leadership of European science and technology which are necessary for the upturn and growth of European economy and for the prosperity of Europe. To maximise the impact and benefits for European citizens, the EU should continue to actively support basic and applied research and enhance their synergies to hasten the innovation cycle. Training and mobility of young scientists and engineers, further integration of science and society, and better support for the development of pan- European Research Infrastructures should be among the priorities for the next framework programme. 1 CERN is an intergovernmental organization with 20 Member States, hosted by Switzerland and France. The main activity of the organization is research. CERN has received funding from FP6 and FP7.
Working together to deliver on Europe 2020 The questions in this section correspond to Section 4.1 of the Green Paper. 1. How should the Common Strategic Framework make EU research and innovation funding more attractive and easy to access for participants? What is needed in addition to a single entry point with common IT tools, a one stop shop for support, a streamlined set of funding instruments covering the full innovation chain and further steps towards administrative simplification? A number of FP sub-programmes are extremely competitive with success rates below 15%, so many good projects are not selected for funding, and there is a huge waste of resources and efforts for the preparation of unsuccessful proposals. The EC should endeavour to allocate sufficient funding to the most competitive parts of the framework programme, and consider introducing systematically a 2-stage evaluation process for large FP projects (e.g. with requested EC contribution above 6 M ) and/or for the most competitive Calls, based on the experience of FP7. Despite the planned significant simplifications in the administrative management of the next framework programme, as long as strict financial audits continue to be implemented, the burden with accounts keeping and cost justification will not decrease accordingly. Therefore, CERN would recommend a review of the audit policy on EU projects whereby the auditors should verify only the major costs and expenditure items. This should be the case in particular for projects where the funding rate is below the maximum. Another possibility would be to introduce flat rates, i.e. a certain fraction of the direct costs, of the order of 5-10 %, for covering travel and other minor expenses, which do not have to be justified and will not be subject to audit. A reduction of the reporting load during the project execution phase would make the EU programmes more attractive for the participants. For example, in a 4-year project there could be light scientific / technical progress reports once a year, and financial reports once in two years. In some FP programmes the schedule of the Calls is too rigid. For example, under FP7 Capacities there were only two Calls for Design Studies, and certain topics are included in the Work Programmes only once for seven years. More flexibility in the Call planning will facilitate the access to the framework programme. 2. How should EU funding best cover the full innovation cycle from research to market uptake? Basic and applied research are both drivers of novel technology development and play a key role for innovation. They need to be supported on equal footing and appropriate EU funding schemes for strengthening the synergies between basic and applied research should be developed in order to facilitate the full innovation cycle. Page 2 of 16
Research Infrastructures, in particular those which are based on instrumentation, have very large innovation potential since they develop continuously cutting-edge technologies to maintain their scientific excellence. The Integrating Activity projects, funded under FP6 and FP7 Research Infrastructure programmes, should be extended and funded at more significant level to bring together basic and applied research, thereby enhancing the opportunities for novel concepts and technologies, developed at the infrastructures, to faster reach the market. A flexible EU-funded instrument for implementing sabbaticals or secondments of researchers between basic research organizations, applied research institutes and industrial companies, including SMEs, would increase the collaboration between these actors and enhance cross-sector fertilization and implementation of novel ideas, products and services. The EU has supported thousands of projects under the previous FPs, providing primarily only seed funding which in many cases proves to be insufficient. EU projects have typical durations of 3-4 years which is often not enough to go successfully through all stages of the innovation cycle, from basic research and development to the competitive market. The next FP should enable to support multi-phase projects where each phase is built on the results of the previous phase(s) and represents one further stage in the innovation cycle. The Intellectual Property Rights should not be the same through all stages of the innovation cycle. At the earlier stage(s) this would facilitate better collaboration between industrial companies, which could be even competitors, and could allow public entities to comply with relevant preprocurement constraints. Thus, the approach to IPR should acknowledge the different needs of the various stages of research and development. In order to facilitate the last stage of the innovation cycle, all EU projects oriented toward applied research (e.g. from the Cooperation-like programmes) should include a Work Package with innovation-related activities prototype testing and validation, market research, implementation of IPR strategy, technology transfer, etc. and that should be taken into account in the evaluation criteria. 3. What are the characteristics of EU funding that maximise the benefit of acting at the EU level? Should there be a strong emphasis on leveraging other sources of funding? An important and valuable characteristic of EU funding is that it allows, via consortia and projects, to create and/or strengthen tight links between major research centers, such as CERN, and a number of universities and smaller institutes, often engaged in applied research. This gives excellent opportunities for the latter to be involved in projects and technological challenges out of their reach, and offers major research laboratories access to new specialized competencies, spread over Europe and closer to the market. Another valuable feature of EU projects is the possibility for cooperation with countries and centers of excellence outside of Europe, which otherwise would have been difficult for many FP participants. For many European universities and research institutes the participation in EU projects is recognized as a stamp of quality of their research teams and programmes. National funding agencies often provide complementary funding for participants in EU projects where the funding rate is (well) below the maximum, thus creating significant national leveraging. Page 3 of 16
4. How should EU research and innovation funding be used to pool Member States' research and innovation resources? Should Joint Programming Initiatives between groups of Member States be supported? EU research and innovation funding can be successfully used for the support of new partnerships, including industry, having as a driving node a world leading laboratory or center of excellence, such as CERN, for cooperation on priority topics agreed with the EU and bringing added value for the European society (e.g. technologies for health). The EU funding could complement the national contributions, in particular for staff mobility, training of students in science and engineering, and joint technology developments. In the fields of particle accelerators and detectors, the competences in Europe are distributed between CERN, a number of leading national laboratories, and a very large number of universities and smaller research institutes. Novel EU instruments for support of joint programming in these fields could facilitate the creation of sustainable structures to play the role of a distributed laboratory at European level, with EU funding matching in a useful way (e.g. at least at 30% level) the total efforts and resources that have to be invested. 5. What should be the balance between smaller, targeted projects and larger, strategic ones? This depends on the phase of the innovation cycle. Earlier phase competitive projects should be smaller, with shorter duration, and allowed to fail, especially in the high-risk / high-gain technology domains. At the later phases the projects should be larger, with longer duration, and less numerous. Only the most successful / promising ones in the first phases should be funded at the later phases, so that the impact can be optimal. Large strategic projects are in principle necessary to fund (i) Private-Public Partnerships, such as the Joint Technology Initiatives, (ii) e-infrastructures of pan-european interest, such as GEANT, PRACE and the Grid, and (iii) Integrating Activities grouping Research Infrastructures in various fields of science. Smaller targeted projects are important in certain stages of the innovation cycle (e.g. for feasibility and market studies) and they may, therefore, contribute to bridging the gap between basic research and market applications, and facilitate knowledge sharing / transfer with industry, including SMEs. Overall, a very large number of small (in terms of number of participants and EU funding), unrelated and scattered collaborative projects may have lower impact than fewer larger and more inclusive projects. It may be useful to introduce lower funding limits for collaborative projects, which may depend on the specific programme and the S&T field. Page 4 of 16
6. How could the Commission ensure the balance between a unique set of rules allowing for radical simplification and the necessity to keep a certain degree of flexibility and diversity to achieve objectives of different instruments, and respond to the needs of different beneficiaries, in particular SMEs? By entrusting the Project Officers with more flexibility in the preparation of the Description of Work (Technical Annex of the Grant Agreement), in order to be able to adapt it to the needs of the projects, whilst taking fully into account the comments and recommendations of the Evaluation Panel. More flexibility in modifying milestones and deliverables, which may be needed in view of the project development, will be also useful. An appropriate use of flat rates (e.g. certain percentage of the direct costs) for travel and other minor costs would allow simplification of the financial reporting. Technical audits should focus on the Deliverables, and financial audits on the major expenditure items, such as the personnel costs. Using lump sums for reimbursement of personnel costs may bring a significant simplification. However, the mechanism for use of lump sums should be carefully developed due to the large differences in personnel costs across the Member States and Associated Countries, regions and sectors (academia and industry). As regards the move towards result-based funding, it is to be noted that in many fundamental science disciplines forecasting precisely the results / output of the project is not possible due to the nature of curiosity-driven research. In projects with high-risk / high-benefit research (e.g. ERC Grants) the expected results cannot always be guaranteed and the use of models for payment against deliverables may be counter-productive. In order to facilitate the involvement of more participants and thus increase the impact of EU projects, the EC should develop flexible mechanisms for participation of groups of legal entities from the same country. The current FP7 third party mechanism is not at all flexible and does not foster integration on national level. 7. What should be the measures of success for EU research and innovation funding? Which performance indicators could be used? At a project level, possible performance indicators are percentage of deliverables successfully achieved, number of scientific publications, patents filed, academic degrees obtained, new jobs created in academia and industry, start-up and young companies involved, use of results either for market applications or in further R&D activities, interest and added value for society. There is no unique way of measuring success of EU projects across the various disciplines and programmes, and this will depend on the type of projects and participants. At a programme level, the development / consolidation of sustainable structures, which may vary according to the needs of the scientific communities, may be used as a measure of success. Page 5 of 16
Performance indicators for the efficiency of the programme implementation should be also systematically introduced, such as measuring the time from the Call closure to the signature of the Grant Agreements, delays in the processing of the Periodic and Final project reports by the EC or the Executive Agencies, etc. The success and impact of EU funding for research and innovation will be enhanced if the obtained results are made available and accessible to citizens, scientists, academia and industry using Open Access publication models. It is important to note that societal impact of fundamental research is difficult to be evaluated quantitatively, and that many, initially unforeseen applications may be developed at a later stage. At a programme level, the EC has to develop performance indicators in line with the objectives of the next framework programme and its sub-programmes. 8. How should EU research and innovation funding relate to regional and national funding? How should this funding complement funds from the future Cohesion policy, designed to help the less developed regions of the EU, and the rural development funds? EU research and innovation funding should be complementary to and not replace regional and national funding, and should bring clear added value. At programme level, levering regional and national funding with support from the framework programme and structural funds should be used in a complementary way for distinct purposes. For example, a fraction of the structural funds for each EU member state could be reserved for the construction and implementation of Research Infrastructures, in which the local industry and/or academia are involved, including infrastructures situated physically in another country, whereas support from the framework programme may be sought for the operation costs and transnational access to the facilities. At project level, the more funding sources involved the more complex and lengthy it may become to set up and manage 2. It is preferable to have a model where the participants and the EC co-found the EU project and the value of all funding resources engaged is taken into account during the evaluation and budget negotiation. In terms of implementation, when the EU is not providing the full total funding, the financial reporting and audits should be done only on a fraction of the project-related costs sufficient to justify the EU contribution. 2 In certain European countries the funding obtained by the EU, if not sufficient to cover the full project costs of the participants, may be complemented by national funding agencies. In most cases this means duplicate application procedures (for EU and for complementary national funding), duplicate reporting, etc., for the same project. Page 6 of 16
Tackling Societal Challenges The questions in this section correspond to Section 4.2 of the Green Paper. 9. How should a stronger focus on societal challenges affect the balance between curiositydriven research and agenda-driven activities? Societal challenges may be addressed by both curiosity-driven and agenda-driven research, and both need to be supported for the benefit (short-term and long-term) of European citizens. Agenda-driven activities usually bring incremental innovation since they are targeting specific and well-defined outputs. On the other hand, disruptive innovation 3, which may result in unexpected significant benefits to society, is almost always brought in by curiosity-driven research that is not necessarily conducted with specific applications in mind. 10. Should there be more room for bottom-up activities? Bottom-up activities, such as the ones fostered by the FP7 Marie-Curie and Ideas programmes, are important for maintaining the excellence of Europe in fundamental sciences and in frontier research. Training of young scientists and engineers through participation in research projects, which is crucial for the future of European S&T, is primarily done by means of bottom-up activities across all fields of science and technology. In addition, bottom-up initiatives similar to the FP6 NEST programme (New and Emerging Science and Technology) should be (re)introduced in the next framework programme since they may catalyse the development of innovative and break-through technologies via collaborative projects, as a complement to the Ideas programme which (in its current form) is designed to fund small-size projects carried out by independent teams. 3 Disruptive innovation refers to innovation which has the potential to give rise to a new range of technological applications. The invention of the World Wide Web is a good example. Disruptive innovations may disrupt an existing market in the sense that they usually lead to significant improvements of products or services in ways that the market does not expect. Page 7 of 16
13. How could EU research and innovation activities attract greater interest and involvement of citizens and civil society? The next framework programme should continue and expand the activities for better integration of science and society in Europe. This could be achieved by developing and implementing an enhanced, comprehensive and sustained Science and Society Programme with a clear European dimension, implemented in synergy with already existing successful (non-eu and national) programmes and activities. In particular, the EU should provide extended support for science education through inquiry based novel teaching methods in primary and secondary schools, and strengthen the dialogue between science and the general public, with special focus on school children and parents. The EU research and innovation projects should include a mandatory set of outreach and communication activities with particular target at young people. For example, CERN hosts the citizen cyberscience centre 4, and dissemination channels such as isgtw 5 and gridcafe 6 are supported by the EC funded project esciencetalk 7. EU support for scientific exhibitions, such as the Universe of Particles 8, which attract thousands of visitors would help increase the interest of the general public and demonstrate the impact of fundamental science to society. 4 http://www.citizencyberscience.net/ 5 www.isgtw.org 6 http://www.gridcafe.org/ 7 http://www.e-sciencetalk.org/ 8 http://outreach.web.cern.ch/outreach/expos_cern/univers_particules.html Page 8 of 16
Strengthening competitiveness The questions in this section correspond to Section 4.3 of the Green Paper. 15. How should industrial participation in EU research and innovation programmes be strengthened? How should Joint Technology Initiatives (such as those launched in the current framework programmes) or different forms of 'public private partnership' be supported? What should be the role of European Technology Platforms? Industry participation in the EU framework programmes is hindered by the following factors: (i) Risk of good proposals not selected for funding due to low success rates, so that significant efforts invested in the proposal preparation are wasted, especially if the industrial partner is coordinating the consortium; (ii) Issues with Intellectual Property rights, in particular in projects involving competing companies; (iii) Horizon for the return of investment / expected profitability, in particular for SMEs. Public-private partnerships are a good mechanism for Knowledge and Technology Transfer from public research / academia to industry. A good example is CERN s Openlab project 9 which brings together leading IT companies to study and develop data-intensive solutions to be used by the worldwide community of scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider. In this model the role of the EU research and innovation funding would be best targeted at funding manpower to work on joint development programmes where expertise and knowledge from the public sector can be commercialised and successfully used by the private sector. 16. How and what types of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) should be supported at EU level; how should this complement national and regional level schemes? What kind of measures should be taken to decisively facilitate the participation of SMEs in EU research and innovation programmes? In order to facilitate the participation of SMEs in the EU research and innovation programme, the funding level should be increased to cover all project-related costs, and the overhead of reporting and project administration must be significantly reduced. CERN has examples from a number of projects under the Capacities and Marie-Curie programmes, where SMEs were interested but declined to participate as full partners because of the reporting and administration overload which has been deemed to significantly outweigh the possible return on investment. EU research and innovation funding schemes should target in particular SMEs which are involved in the development of high-risk / high-gain technologies, having difficulties to attract venture capital in Europe. 9 openlab.cern.ch Page 9 of 16
Most SMEs in Europe are developing in a regional / national context. The participation of SMEs in the EU programmes may be facilitated by organising national / regional information sessions and events in the different EU Member States and Associated countries as a networking platform for engineering and technical schools, start-ups, SMEs and potential investors and funding agencies. Such events may promote match-making between SMEs, technology brokerage companies and research organisations, whereas the FP National Contact Points may facilitate the search for international partners and consortia. 17. How should open, light and fast implementation schemes (e.g. building on the current FET actions and CIP eco-innovation market replication projects) be designed to allow flexible exploration and commercialisation of novel ideas, in particular by SMEs? Open, light and fast implementation schemes are necessary not only in the domain of Information and Communication Technologies, but across the whole spectrum of technologies and priorities of the future Cooperation-like programme. Such schemes should allow the participation of basic research organisations, applied research institutes, and industrial partners (SMEs in particular), which are able to quickly adopt, implement and exploit novel technologies. 20. How should intellectual property rules governing EU funding strike the right balance between competitiveness aspects and the need for access to and dissemination of scientific results? Rules for IPR management are a fundamental aspect of EU-funded projects, upon which all dissemination and utilisation of results hinge. It is vital that these rules take into account the mission and legitimate interests of both the public research institutes and the participating industrial partners. It is possible to have a number of different project schemes, with corresponding IPR rules, depending on the type of instruments and participants. This is essential, for instance, to protect the pre-procurement rules of certain public research organizations, in order to ensure that these organizations are in a position to fulfil their programmes. For CERN in particular, being able to use the project results generated by the organization for the purpose of executing its scientific programme (which includes the right to have components manufactured by third parties and the right to sub-license for non commercial purposes) are essential aspects for its participation in the EU framework programmes. CERN is of the opinion that for the next framework programme the EC needs to define more clear and streamlined rules for IP and access rights, and then take the necessary measures to ensure their implementation. This may be achieved through mandatory Consortium Agreement templates that may depend on the type of project and the phase of the innovation cycle, with which the participants will be acquainted in advance, and which will avoid spending disproportionate amounts of time and efforts for preparing the Consortium Agreements of EU projects. Page 10 of 16
This approach may mean that different types of projects may have different types of IP / access rights provisions associated to them, depending on the type of partners they are aimed at; this is already the case for certain FP7 instruments that target specifically the needs of SMEs or SME associations, for example. Open Access to the results of scientific research is a key element to ensure that SMEs and other innovation actors can fully reap the benefits of EU investment in research. Free access to, and dissemination of scientific results has no tension with competitiveness and innovation, since the protection of IPR can be done before or in parallel with the publication of the results. CERN fully supports the initiatives of the EC and the ERC Scientific Council to make the results of publicly-funded research under the framework programme universally accessible through different Open Access models. The FP7 Open Access Pilot 10 should be expanded to cover the entire spectrum of EU funded research and innovation programmes. This would enhance their scientific potential and foster competitiveness in research groups operating in universities with reduced means, or small companies, which otherwise would have been prevented to access this precious scientific information. 10 ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/open_access/ Page 11 of 16
Strengthening Europe's science base and the European Research Area The questions in this section correspond to Section 4.4 of the Green Paper. 21. How should the role of the European Research Council be strengthened in supporting world class excellence? In order to develop and strengthen world-class European science, the ERC should remain based on excellence, become fully independent and governed by scientists, and should be better funded, which will allow supporting larger projects with higher potential impact. The newly introduced ERC proof-of-concept funding stream is a useful initiative for exploiting better the innovation potential of the Ideas Programme, and it should be expanded to all parts of the new framework programme including bottom-up initiatives. There is a trend for science to become increasingly global, and in many scientific fields carrying out excellent research requires (large) international collaborations which currently do not fit into the eligibility criteria for ERC grants. In order to support world-class excellence in such fields of science, an additional funding stream should be introduced within the ERC to support larger multi-partner frontier research projects. It will be beneficial for the European Research Area if the ERC Grants include the possibility to fund access to e-infrastructures and Research Infrastructures, which will also enhance the synergy with other parts of the framework programme. 22. How should EU support assist Member States in building up excellence? Support for training of young scientists and engineers is one of the best means by which the EU can assist the Member States in building up excellence. Training and staff exchange activities, such as the ones supported by the Marie Curie programme, should be extended to other Specific Programmes, since they represent a powerful and valuable form of knowledge exchange across the European Research Area. The EU should provide complementary funding for the development of national or pan-european centers of excellence in the Member States, stimulating them to reach the critical mass and quality for being competitive at world-wide level. The EU has to continue to support capacity building in universities, public research organizations and institutes in the convergence regions (EU12) and in less favoured areas in the other Member States. A more flexible use of the Structural Funds for building research and innovation capacity across all EU Member States is necessary, in particular for support of construction and implementation of Research Infrastructures. Page 12 of 16
23. How should the role of Marie Curie Actions be strengthened in promoting researcher mobility and developing attractive careers? The Marie Curie actions have been for many years amongst the most popular, competitive and useful EU-funded instruments and their role should be maintained and further enhanced under the next framework programme. The share and funding for Host-driven actions should be increased, since they contribute significantly, in addition to researchers mobility and opportunities for career development, also to other objectives of the ERA, such as integration of scientific fields, international cooperation and fostering industry-academia partnerships. Besides, the management and administrative efforts for Host-driven actions are relatively much smaller than for the Individual actions. FP7 brought a number of novel instruments in the Marie Curie programme, such as the CO-FUND scheme and the International Research Staff Exchange scheme, which should be continued and further developed. The CO-FUND allows for useful synergies between EU and regional / national / international mobility programmes for experienced researchers, and fosters in-coming, out-going and re-integration mobility (with respect to the ERA). The IRSES is the first type of Host-driven actions specifically aimed at strengthening international cooperation with third countries, and is a very useful instrument for capacity building in developing countries through training and exchange of scientists, engineers, and managerial staff. The current IRSES scheme, however, suffers from significant limitations concerning the eligible countries for participation. The present trend towards mandatory involvement of industry in Host-driven actions in order to facilitate the innovation process is understandable. Nonetheless, it should be taken into account that for many fields, e.g. in the social sciences, mathematics and theoretical physics, such forced industrial involvement may be counter-productive as it may prevent excellent research teams from applying to the Marie Curie programme due to lack of active / productive collaborations with industry. In order to enhance mobility of researchers towards the EU convergence regions, it may be useful to (re)introduce some specific / targeted actions that could require enhanced participation of universities, research organisations and industry from these regions. 24. What actions should be taken at EU level to further strengthen the role of women in science and innovation? Encourage school-girls to engage in scientific and engineering studies at the university by promoting interest in academic and industrial careers. This could be done by targeted events and activities involving high schools across the EU with the participation of young female scientists with successful careers in science, engineering and technology, such as the ones funded by the FP6 SET-routes project 11. 11 http://www.set-routes.org/about/index.html Page 13 of 16
Provide special grants and fellowships for female scientists and engineers after maternity career breaks, with possibility for part-time employment and/or tele-commuting (working from home). In order to enhance the mobility of the families of researchers, the EC should consider the possibility to introduce grants where the research institute / university hosting one of the spouses may receive partial EU support to employ the other spouse as well. 25. How should research infrastructures (including EU-wide e-infrastructures) be supported at EU level? Research Infrastructures are key drivers for generation of knowledge, new technologies and innovation, as well as for training of young scientists and engineers in Europe. Funding for Research Infrastructures has been insufficient and should be substantially increased under the next framework programme, possibly under a dedicated Specific Programme. However, the framework programme should not be used as a funding instrument for the construction / implementation phase of new pan-european Research Infrastructures. Rather, EU funding should continue to be used for the development and closer integration of European research facilities, including transnational access of users from other countries and beyond Europe, based on scientific excellence. Support for the development of key enabling technologies for upgraded or new research infrastructures, and dedicated funding for technology transfer, innovation activities and enhanced involvement of industry needs to be provided under FP8. The Integrating Activity / I3 projects that have been funded under FP6 and FP7 have significant European added value in all scientific fields which use Research Infrastructures, and have been by far the most successful EU instrument for bringing together whole scientific communities across Europe. The available budget for this instrument, especially under FP7, has been limited and many good proposals, evaluated well above the thresholds, could not be funded because of budgetary constraints. Under the next framework programme increased funding for Integrating Activities should be foreseen, both for maintaining EC support as leverage for existing, as well as for supporting new projects and communities. However, more flexibility is needed in the Integrating Activity projects as regards their components and activities, which should be in line with the needs of the scientific communities. E-infrastructures are a key tool for supporting the implementation of the European Research Area. Their development and establishment should be driven by the needs of scientific user communities with critical mass and be made in a competitive environment. It is important that access to e-infrastructures is also funded to expand the breadth of the user communities they serve. The user communities themselves must be involved in the governance of such e-infrastructures. The EU should continue to provide significant support for the development of distributed computing infrastructures in Europe, such as GEANT, grid & cloud computing, and highperformance computing centres, which are being used by a large number of scientific communities across the continent and beyond. Page 14 of 16
26. How should international cooperation with non-eu countries be supported e.g. in terms of priority areas of strategic interest, instruments, reciprocity (including on IPR aspects) or cooperation with Member States? In today s global competitive environment, international cooperation is essential for European research and innovation. For the ERA to be successful, Europe needs to play and maintain a leading role in global fields and projects, such as global research infrastructures. The EU framework programme should support cooperation between European research organisations and research organisations in countries of scientifically strategic interest for Europe (e.g. USA, Russia, India, China, Brazil, South Africa), and secure mutual benefit on the basis of reciprocity. EU funding schemes could facilitate the exchange of staff and knowledge with third countries, joint technology development, and participation in international projects. This applies also to enhancing the capacities of developing countries. Under the next framework programme it would be desirable to have more flexible instruments for fostering R&D cooperation, beyond Support and Coordination Actions (and not only at policy level), with a larger number of developing and other third countries. Furthermore, training of PhD students, post-docs and researchers from a wider range of less advanced third countries could be enhanced through the Marie Curie programme. The EU should continue using joint Calls for Proposals co-funded by the framework programme and by the funding agencies of global partners such as USA, Russia, China, etc, supporting collaborative projects in priority areas of common interest. Page 15 of 16
Closing questions CERN would like to make some additional comments on several aspects which are important for the participation of the Organization in the future EU research and innovation programme and are not covered in the Green Paper. Fully exploiting the potential of accelerator and detector R&D and ICT for the benefit of European society CERN and the national High Energy Physics (HEP) laboratories have accelerator, detector and ICT R&D programmes that involve development of technologies and know-how with potential significant spin-off and applications useful for society, such as accelerator technologies for medical and industrial applications, superconductivity, detectors and information technology for medical imaging and treatment, environmental analysis, food technology and nutrition composition, etc. However, transforming these technologies to societal applications represents a lot of additional effort which is outside the remit and mandate of CERN and the national HEP laboratories. Europe could profit significantly if the next framework programme contains a suitable technology transfer funding scheme where CERN and the national laboratories could cooperate to develop pre-industrial demonstrators and engage with European industry for the adaptation of novel technology concepts to specific societal needs, e.g. for health / medical applications. Consortium Agreements Practice shows that in a large number of EU projects it takes many months after the Grant Agreement signature to finalise and sign the Consortium Agreement 12 due to endless discussions among the legal services of the participants on the terms of the Consortium Agreement. In order to streamline the preparation of the Consortium Agreements and make best use of the intellectual property and access rights rules of the next framework programme, CERN would recommend to the EC to prepare mandatory Consortium Agreement templates (one per project type) with few options mainly on governance and dissemination related issues, which should be available at the time of preparation of the project proposals. These should be complemented by a FAQ-service regarding the interpretation of the Grant Agreement and its Annexes, as well as the content of the Consortium Agreements, which should be binding for the participants and also for the EC, so as to avoid conflicting interpretations between EC project officers from different units, Directorates and DGs of the Commission regarding the IP and access rights in EU projects. Conditions for participation of International European Interest Organizations The applicability of the current FP7 rules concerning the participation of International European Interest Organizations (such as CERN, ESA, ESO, EMBL,...), should be extended on the same basis to all other sub-programmes of the future framework programme. Special clause for international organizations The special clause no. 2 applicable to FP7 Grant Agreements, which governs some specific conditions for participation of international organizations, should continue to be used under the next framework programme as well. 12 The Consortium Agreements are deemed to have been concluded before the signature of the Grant Agreements, so a project starting without a signed Consortium Agreement is in effective breach of the contract from the very beginning. Page 16 of 16