Twee nieuwe uitvoerende agentschappen ondersteunen Europees onderzoek (en)

Today sees the creation of two agencies to manage research projects funded by the European Union budget. The "European Research Council Executive Agency" will support the implementation of the Ideas Programme of the 7 th Research Framework Programme (FP7), which supports frontier research. It will manage about €7 billion. The "Research Executive Agency" will administer the Marie Curie fellowships schemes, research for the benefit of SMEs and parts of the Space and Security research themes. It will manage research funding of €6.5b and provide evaluation and support services to all other parts of FP7. The creation of these two agencies was put forward in the legal document setting up FP7 and the plans have recently been approved by the Member States and the European Parliament. These agencies are just one strand of wide-ranging actions within FP7 to improve the efficiency of research management, thereby supporting the aims of the European Research Area and providing the best possible service to scientists.

"These agencies are good news for European research," said European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik. "Our aim is to make sure that as much of the Framework Programme as possible is dedicated to research. We already have one of the lowest levels of administrative expenditure internationally for a research programme. I have made it a priority to ensure that FP7 gives great service to the research community for less cost, and that as much money as possible can be used to finance research activities."

The Council and Parliament decision that put FP7 in place proposed two executive agencies to help manage the €50 billion budget, a significant increase on the previous programme. Executive agencies are set up under a specific Council Regulation [1] and perform a variety of management tasks. By concentrating on these management tasks, the new agencies will be able to improve efficiency in implementing certain aspects of the project cycle and will provide a better service for the research community. Following a proposal from the Commission, the Member States, through the Regulatory Committee for Executive Agencies, unanimously approved the establishment of the agencies at their meeting on 14 November 2007. The European Parliament's Budget Committee gave its positive opinion at its meeting on 27 November 2007. Accordingly, the Commission has now decided to formally establish the two agencies. In line with the original Council Regulation on executive agencies, they will both be based in Brussels.

The agencies are a new option for research support in specific circumstances. Areas of the Framework Programme where there are large numbers of relatively small, regular grants, such as Marie Curie fellowships, or grants where there is not likely to be significant policy input, such as support for SMEs, will be managed by the Research Executive Agency. The European Research Council Executive Agency will be the implementing arm of the European Research Council, applying scientific funding strategies and methodologies defined by the ERC's Scientific Council.

The Research Executive Agency will also manage the process of receiving proposals and organising their evaluation for the whole programme, which in 2007 numbered nearly 27000 proposals and required the hosting of 8000 experts.

The creation of the two agencies is one of the ways in which the Commission has sought to make FP7 as administratively efficient as possible. Other examples include: reducing the reporting requirements on project participants; creating the Risk-Sharing Finance Facility so that FP7 money is used to leverage considerable additional financial resources for research; a unique registration facility for project applicants and a more streamlined computer system.

For information on FP7:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7

For information on the European Research Council:

http://erc.europa.eu

For information on the Research Executive Agency:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/rea/

See also MEMO/07/586