WG Legal Experts

EARTO WG Legal Experts is composed of more than 80 active experts. The WG is looking at the EU legal rules related to Research & Innovation and impacting RTOs. The experts define common positions and organise workshops with key institutional stakeholders to best prepare the legal aspects of related EU policies.

Key Topics for 2026

  • Horizon Europe implementation: Rules for Participation and Model Grant Agreement (legal aspects) & Annotated Grant Agreement,  Data Management Plan
  • Intellectual Property Rights, Standard Essential Patents & Standardisation
  • EU State Aid rules: implementation and revision
  • Open Science policy, incl. FAIR data, European Open Science Cloud, Open access to publications
  • Public Procurement of Innovation: incl. PCP, EU PP partnerships
Cooperation with EU Institutions & Stakeholders
  • European Commission (DG R&I, DG CONNECT, DG GROW, DG COMP, DG EMPL, DG JRC)
  • EP (ITRE)
  • Council of the EU
  • European Patent Organisation (EPO)
  • Industry: BusinessEurope, Digital Europe (especially on SEPs)
  • Universities: EUA, CESAER, The Guild
  • ASTP, ALLEA

Latest Papers Published

22 / 04 / 2026

EARTO Response to the EC Consultation on GBER

EARTO welcomes the EC’s initiative to consult stakeholders on the draft revised GBER, and building on its previous responses, reiterates and expands its key recommendations to ensure that the revised regulation effectively and equitably supports Europe’s innovation ecosystem.

26 / 01 / 2026

EARTO Response to the EC Consultation on the Revision of EU Public Procurement Rules

EARTO welcomes the EC’s initiative to revise the EU Public Procurement Framework. The revision offers a crucial opportunity to reshape procurement as a driver of competitiveness by ensuring that Europe’s public investment mechanisms support EU R&I capabilities.

23 / 01 / 2026

EARTO Response to the EC Public Consultation on the European Research Area ERA Act

EARTO responded to the European Commission’s public consultation on the European Research Area (ERA) Act and submitted an additional paper: EARTO Response to the EC Consultation on the European Research Area (ERA) Act.

03 / 10 / 2025

EARTO Response to the EC Consultation on GBER

Building on our previous responses, EARTO reiterates and expands upon its key recommendations to ensure that the revised GBER and its RD&I Framework effectively and equitably support Europe’s innovation ecosystem.

03 / 10 / 2025

EARTO Response to the EC Consultation on the European Innovation Act

EARTO welcomes the EC’s initiative to shape a European Innovation Act to boost the EU’s competitiveness, economic growth and security. This paper raises issues identified by European RTOs and highlights five key policy areas where decisive measures are needed.

30 / 09 / 2024

EARTO Response to EC Consultation on ERA

To answer the European Commission’s public consultation on the European Research Area, EARTO would like to bring forward some key issues to the Member States and the EC regarding the current challenges as well as the evolution of ERA.

22 / 03 / 2024

EARTO Paper: Unlocking Innovation: The Role of RTOs as Intermediaries in Knowledge Valorisation

This position paper reiterates the multifaceted competencies of RTOs and underscores their significance as intermediaries in knowledge valorisation processes bridging the so-called ‘valley of death’ of technology maturation between basic science and the market. This paper shows examples of EARTO members’ activities as knowledge valorisation’s intermediaries. This intermediary role complements RTOs’ RD&I activities coming on top of their RD&I collaborations with an array of stakeholders ranging from academics to various industries to public entities and government at all levels. RTOs have their own in-house research programmes through the whole TRL scale and do not use any intermediaries, they are their own intermediaries with the industry through their RD&I collaborations directly with the industry as well as via their own start-up creation. Many RTOs have their own ventures, see EARTO paper on RTOs’ deep-tech start-ups) or Intellectual Property (IP) licensing.

14 / 02 / 2024

Joint Letter to MEP Plenary vote on standard essential patents regulation

20 / 10 / 2023

EARTO Response to the EC Survey on the draft Code of practice on Industry – Academia Co-Creation for Knowledge Valorisatisation

EARTO answered to the EC Survey on the draft Code of practice on Industry – Academia Co-Creation for Knowledge Valorisatisation

30 / 06 / 2023

EARTO Answer to the EC Consultation on SEPs

EARTO calls on the EC to ensure that its Regulation on SEPs will not induce new insecurities for market players, not lead to new hurdles for IP owners, consider aspects of global competitiveness and not come to the detriment of EU RD&I actors.

27 / 06 / 2023

EARTO Reaction to the European Innovation Council Board’s Statement on Intellectual Property

Associations of knowledge transfer professionals, RTOs, and universities publish a joint reaction to the statement of the EIC Board on the Intellectual Property rules applicable to EIC Pathfinder and Transition projects.

31 / 05 / 2023

EARTO Position Paper on the EC Draft Proposal for a Regulation on Standard Essential Patents (SEPs)

EARTO agrees with the EC that technical standardisation and SEP licensing are of the utmost importance to the European innovation ecosystem, and welcomes the attention given by the EC to this topic.

14 / 04 / 2023

EUROPEAN SYMPOSIUM ON SPLH – 2023 QUESTIONNAIRE

At the Symposium on 23 March 2023, stakeholders were kindly requested to return to their associations and attempt to find a consensus in order to inform a wider discussion in Europe regarding a possible common European position on the main contentious SPLH topics.

31 / 07 / 2020

EARTO Paper: Towards a Balanced Approach Between IPRs and Open Science Policy

In this paper, EARTO asks for right balance between the social benefits of the EU Open Science policy to enhance the accessibility and re-use of RD&I results, and the essential role of IPR to strengthen the collaborative development of knowledge and technology.

17 / 07 / 2020

EARTO Feedback on the EC H2020 Data Management Plan’s Template

EARTO hereby provides RTOs’ feedback on the current EC Horizon 2020 Data Management Plan template, as input towards the future Horizon Europe template.

08 / 07 / 2020

EARTO Joint Contribution to the EC consultation reviewing the GBER

EARTO and Vanguard Initiative published their Joint Contribution to the second European Commission (EC)’s Consultation on targeted review of the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) and addressed some considerations about assessing this new specific approach as state aid.

05 / 02 / 2020

EARTO Analysis of Recital 5 of Horizon Europe’s Regulation

Ahead of the trilogue discussions on the Recitals of the Horizon Europe’s Regulation, EARTO proposes some recommendations for the Recital 5 on open science, research data and dissemination of scientific publications.

04 / 12 / 2019

EARTO Recommendations for European RDI Policy Post-2020 – legal aspects

EARTO and its members hereby put forward a set of Recommendations for European RD&I policies post-2020.

23 / 09 / 2019

EARTO Answer to the EC Consultation on Horizon Europe – legal aspects

EARTO input on the topics covered by the EC consultation on Horizon Europe Implementation Strategy.

12 / 11 / 2018

Joint Statement on the Revision of the PSI Directive

The co-signatories hereby voice their concerns on the revision of the PSI directive and call on the EU co-legislators to ensure a sound coherence between the different EU legislative texts on research data sharing.

03 / 09 / 2018

EARTO Position on EC Proposal for a revised PSI Directive

In the frame of the EC review of the EU Directive on the re-use of public sector information (PSI) extending the Directive’s scope to research data, EARTO would like to further contribute to the debate with this new position paper.

17 / 07 / 2018

EARTO Analysis of EC Proposal revising the EU PSI Directive

EARTO voices its concerns regarding the EC proposal to revise the directive on the re-use of public sector information (PSI), extending its scope to research data.

25 / 06 / 2018

EARTO Analysis of EC Regulation Proposal: Establishing HEU & its Rules for Participation

EARTO and its members welcome the EC proposal for Horizon Europe, which is in continuity with H2020 and builds on the successes of the previous FPs.