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EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY ORGANISATIONS
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N°3, 6th March 2008

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Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7)
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)
Tenders Electronic Daily (TED)

In this Issue

• Editorial
• EARTO Task Forces, Working Groups, Other Activities
• EARTO News
• European News
• The EARTO Meeting Facilities
• Calendar

Editorial

EARTO Annual Conference

The 2008 EARTO Annual Conference takes place in Madrid on 28th - 30th May, hosted by FEDIT, the Spanish Federation of Innovation and Technology Organisations.
The theme of the conference is "Impacting New Markets", with three parallel sessions on May 29th devoted to:

• new geographical markets (Asia-Pacific, India, Latin America ...)

• new service offerings to RTO customers (going beyond traditional R&D services ...)
• measuring RTO impact on customers and economies (methods and techniques for measuring RTO success ...)

The conference will be preceded on 28th May by the EARTO Working Group. The Working Group will focus in particular on:

• a review of members' first experiences with the new State Aid Framework for R&D and Innovation (there are reports of governments being reluctant to take decisions, or tending to take negative decisions, about new programmes or new investments because of uncertainty about how to interpret the new rules)

• presentation of first results from the EARTO FP7 performance benchmarking service

    The full programme is available here: 

Reduced Budgets for 2009 FP7 Calls for Proposals

We reported by e-mail to all members on February 20th that there are likely to be reduced budgets for FP7 Calls for Proposals in 2009. This is because of changes to the Commission's internal budgetary procedures.

Our first information was that there would be no Calls for Proposals for Research for SMEs and Research for SME Associations. This provoked an almost unprecedented protest by 21 Member States and Association Countries, but the Commission is refusing to change its position.

In our e-mail of February 20th, we asked members to share any information they have about reduced budgets for Calls for Proposals in the thematic priority areas. We have had feedback on NMP and Transport.

• NMP: Significantly reduced budget available for 2009. Current plans are to launch a Call in late 2008, with the next Call in late 2009 for which the evaluation and selection will happen in 2010, with funding from the 2010 budget. There is about €570 million available for these two Calls, but it is not yet decided how it will be distributed between them.
• Transport: The available information is not very clear, but it seems that there is practically no budget available for 2009.
• SMEs: There will be no Calls funded from 2009 money, but a Research for SMEs Call will be launched in July 2009, closing in December 2009, with evaluation and selection in 2010 and funding out of the 2010 budget.

Any member with information about other thematic priorities is invited to share the information by contacting baumeister@earto.eu.

EARTO Task Forces, Working Groups, Other Activities

How to Get Earlier Information about FP7 Calls for Proposals? Proposal for an EARTO Special Interest Group

In the previous edition of EARTO News we launched the idea of members sharing informally obtained advance information about forthcoming FP7 Calls for Proposals.

So far only three members have shown interest, which is not sufficient to establish a meaningful project.

Any other members who are potentially interested are asked to contact taffah@earto.eu urgently.

EARTO Task Force on ex post FP6 Project Audits – Follow-up

We reported in the previous edition of EARTO News that in our recent meeting with the Commission Heads of Unit responsible for ex post audits of FP6 projects, it appeared that the Commission would permit RTOs to use average personnel costs in their cost reporting, provided that an auditor was satisfied that the averages could be shown to be accurate on the basis of recalculating the real personnel costs for a sample of FP6 projects involving the same RTO.

There has been a similar issue with regard to FP6 Collective Research projects involving large numbers of SMEs with small amounts of in-kind costs. The Commission has been demanding individual audit certificates for each individual SME. Now it seems that the Commission will accept an audit certificate based on a sample of the SME cost claims in such a project.

Any member wishing for further information is invited to contact hull@earto.eu.

EARTO News

EIRMA R&D Management Study Group 3 - 6 June 2008, Neuville-Bosc

Each year, EIRMA – The European Industrial Research Management Association – runs a special residential course for younger, rising R&D managers. The 3 1/2 day course is run by experienced R&D managers from industry or with industrial experience. This year EIRMA is making the course open to EARTO members.

The EIRMA course offers an interactive learning experience for younger R&D managers who are facing their second or third career promotion leading to a number of discontinuities in job content. The Management Study Group is based on exchange of and mutual learning from practical experience of participants, supported by a senior faculty and a series of lectures.

While the first promotion of a scientist or engineer in an R&D organisation brings the individual to the position of leading a small group or a section s/he still participates in direct R&D work, having similar but broader expertise in the subject area than her/his co-workers.

Further promotions and career development lift the responsibilities to the supervision and coordination of work of larger groups. At this level, job content becomes distinctly more heterogeneous and the individual will no longer be fully expert in all the details. Members of the team will probably also come from various disciplines and departments. The new responsibilities comprise to a far greater extent strategic planning and management of project portfolios and aspects of:

• project supervision, collaboration with external R&D organisations;
• contact with manufacturing, marketing or sales colleagues, or integration of different functions in cross functional teams;
• personnel management, recruitment, career planning, remuneration;
• budget control.

The cost of the course, including accommodation and meals, is €2,200 per person Link

Any interested member is invited to contact taffah@earto.eu

European News

EUROSTARs - First Call Closed

EUROSTARs is an Article 169 initiative involving 29 European countries and the European Commission. EUROSTARs funds transnational R&D projects by research-intensive SMEs (at least 10% of turnover invested in R&D). The programme also expects participants to fund at least 50% of the R&D on average.

Sceptics have doubted that there would be significant demand for such a programme. The results of the first EUROSTARs Call for Proposals suggests that there is: almost 200 proposals were received, of which 25% - 30% can hope to obtain funding. The evaluation results are expected before the summer.

The next EUROSTARs Call for Proposals closes on November 21st. Link

IPR in Research for SMEs and Research for SME Associations

A new feature in the funding model used for Research for SMEs and Research for SME Associations in FP7 - see next article - is that the price paid to R&D performers may be less than 100% in exchange for the R&D performers receiving corresponding title to intellectual property from the project.

A first but still very preliminary analysis of the projects selected  for funding following the first Calls for Proposals for these two programmes indicates that very little use is being made of this possibility. Almost all projects seem to prefer the default option, i.e. that the IP rights are retained by the participating SMEsand the R&D performers receive full payment.

The EARTO Meeting Facilities

Since December 2007 the EARTO meeting facilities are available in a reconfigured format.
The EARTO first-floor meeting room is available for meetings of up to 16 participants at cost price to EARTO members.
Bigger meetings can be accommodated in a large, modern meeting room on the 5th floor of our building at a very attractive price. 
Members are also welcome to use our small room suitable for up to five people free of charge.
For further information, please contact Kadija Taffah taffah@earto.eu at the EARTO Secretariat: +32-2-5028698

Calendar

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