"ERA-NET Cofund" A new instrument to serve European project-based research funding
With ERA-NET Cofund, for which the European Commission has just launched the first calls for proposals, the ERA-NET network partners will initiate a large-scale call for international project proposals in a targeted domain. The Commission will add 33% to the overall public budget of the call. The ERA-NET partners will be able to use part of this additional contribution to finance the administrative costs of setting up the call for proposals, but the emphasis is clearly on the funding of R&D. The national agencies will fund and sign grant agreements with the research organisation teams of their respective countries.
Under this new system the European Commission will devote a larger budget to the research component and target its funding more closely, within the framework of the societal challenges described in Horizon 2020.
The calls launched by the ERA-NET Cofund partners will address researchers in the public and/or privates sectors as the case may be, European universities, and research organisations that are eligible for funding from their respective national agencies.
Launching of these calls is subject to the condition that they create European added value. All the research projects funded in this context must indeed be transnational, bringing together at least two participants from two different countries. The projects shall be selected through a European-scale competitive peer evaluation.
The themes of the calls launched within this framework shall be complementary to the Horizon 2020 calls, with the concern to avoid duplicating public funding at European level. In the same manner, ANR has made a large part of its Work Programme 2014 consistent with the European Commission's funding programme. (lien vers l'actu en anglais Horizon 2020 du 19/12/2013)
ANR is actively participating in these multilateral actions, particularly in the domains of the environment and biology-health: a number of large-scale calls for proposals on these subjects will be launched within a few months.
| The key to understanding: from the ERA-NET of FP6 and FP7 to ERA-NET Cofund |
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| In an ERA-NET of the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes (FP6 and FP7), the research organisations pool their human and financial resources in order to conduct joint activities. Among these activities, the ERA-NET partners can launch a call with the aim of funding international research projects. The European Commission reimburses the costs of setting up the call and the management expenses of the organisations participating in the ERA-NET. In FP7 it moreover proposes the ERA-NET+ instrument, of which the sole purpose is to launch a call for project proposals. The financial participation of the Commission only concerns the research projects selected at the end of the call for proposals process. With ERA-NET Cofund, the Commission henceforth combines these two instruments. |
