DG Research

Despite claims by Janez Potocnik, Commissioner for Science and Research, that civil society is crucial for the European Research Area, DG Research has nominated no civil society representative to its high level Advisory Group on research and science.
The European Commission has established the European Research Area Board (ERAB) as the new consultative body responsible for advising the EU on the realisation of the European Research Area (ERA).
22 people will make up ERAB, coming from the (...)

New proposals for more effective and focused research have been presented by the European Commission in a Green Paper entitled "The European Research Area: New Perspectives"
These proposals aim to achieve the economic, social and environmental targets outlined by the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs Drawing upon the Strategy, the European Commission has decided to direct research towards the political objectives contained in it. Freedom for people, infrastructures, organisations, (...)

The European Commission has issued a communication on how to make the results from European Community-funded research available to all.
Although the document is not legally binding, it aims to end the current situation where European-funded research results (ie paid with public funds) are not necessarily made publicly available and may be accessible by subscribing to scientific publications.
In addition, open access to scientific evidence can accelerate innovation and avoid duplication of (...)

The European Commission’s Directorate General on Research publicly launched the 7th European Research Programme (FP7) at a conference held by the German Presidency in Bonn on January 15-16, 2007. The 7th Research Framework Programme will run from 2007-2013. The first calls for proposals under FP7 were issued on 22 December 2006.
Information days for potential applicants were held across the EU during February 2007 (including one in Brussels on the 7-8 February attended by Silvia Marcos (...)

The European Commission recently re-organised its Directorate General dealing with Research.
This re-organisation is partly due to the recent trend within the Commission to outsource areas of specific responsibility to EU agencies. It also comes as an adaptation to the future Framework Programme 7 (2007-2013) to be adopted at the end 2006- beginning 2007.
New organigram

A Roundtable on Health in the 7th EU Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP7) was held on the 28 March 2006 at the Madariaga Foundation in Brussels.
The Roundtable had the aim of gathering opinions from stakeholders on the third "pillar" of the FP7-programme: optimizing health care delivery.
The background to this event was the current Commission proposal on the future 7th Framework Programme on Research which addresses health as one of its themes.
Lara Garrido Herrero gave a (...)

The European Commission Directorate General on Research has set up a directory to collect data on ’who’s who’ in the area of science and society in Europe.
The aim is to produce an online database where potential project partners would be registered, in order to further improve the link between science and society.
Although the "who’s who" is not online yet, stakeholders that have an interest in research can contact DG Research to be added to the Directory.
This Directory (...)

*This article has been updated with information about the outcome of the project.*
The King Baudouin Foundation successfully led an EU-funded project called "Meeting of Minds" which aimed to foster greater involvement of citizens in defining priorities for brain research.
Run by 12 different organisations, the 2-year pilot project "Meeting of Minds" gave the opportunity to ordinary citizens from 9 EU Member States to discuss the impact of brain science on their daily life and express (...)

Following the publication by the European Commission of its proposal for the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) (2007-2013) and the recent two FP6 calls for proposal targeting civil society, the role of civil society organisations must be significantly strenghtened in research.
Although there are a lot of concerns about the funding distribution in FP7, especially with regard to health, the other face of the debate focuses on the "war of evidence". How is defined sound and (...)

Recently, the European Commission published two calls for proposals in the area of Science and Society under the Sixth Framework Programme.
Science Shops
The objective of the call is to contribute to universities’ mission of sharing knowledge outside the academic sphere. It mainly targets local civil society, universities and organisations involved in the training of students.
The call requires the use of specific support actions (SSA) and coordination actions (CA). Participants should (...)