Siegfried Reich

Changes in Architecture and Participation in European Framework Programmes

May 29th, 2010

From May 20-21 EARTO held its annual conference in Gothenborg. Amongst the many excellent presentations, secretary general Chris Hull addressed in his talk “the Grand Challenges: The Essential Contribution of Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs)”. The following shows a slide (presented also at other occasions) which I believe reflects in an excellent way the development of the European Framework Programme. Here it is (copyright Christopher John Hull):

The image expresses IMHO very well how the framework programmes changed – at least during the last 10 years – from a perspective of individual (and co-funded) projects, towards increasingly policy driven initiatives with the idea of making a bigger impact (by larger initiatives such as IPs or by including the member states with Article 169 initiatives, by joint programming, etc.).

I would like to add a second slide that shows involvement of some key Austrian RTOs (AIT, JR, SRFG) in the Framework Programme (the slide has been presented by Klaus Pseiner, FFG):

The slide shows the European participation (in red/orange) and the national participation (in green) of core Austrian RTOs (research and technology organisations). As can be seen from the slide, there is an increase in national participation (for various reasons) and a decrease – at least the last years – in participation in European programmes. One obvious reason for that is the increasing competition through a grown EU; also the year 2003 was an all-time high; there were many national programmes been set-up in Austria; etc. But after all, I would assume, that participation in European framework programmes simply has increased in complexity (not to mention administrative issues). BTW: I should add that Salzburg Research‘s participation in FPs has over the years been slightly increasing in absolute figures (1,04 Mio. in 2004 to 1,39 Mio. in 2009); however, we had a bigger growth in our other activities, which means that the relative portion of the framework programmes at Salzburg Research has declined to about 20% in 2009, which is still an excellent value, I believe.

I would assume that if this trend continuous, FP8 will be even more complex: grand challenges will need to be addressed, a closer cooperation between science and industry is requested, national initiatives will be synched, etc. How this fits to the overall wish of fewer administration, reporting, etc. is an open issue.

Amongst the wishes I have for FP8: one should introduce a reputation system. I.e., those organisations (or units thereof) who have a long track record should be able to earn brownie points for that.

Entry Filed under: Europe,Event