Highly recommended: The Finance helpdesk

We strongly recommend the Finance helpdesk, regularly informing about FP6 and FP7 financial issues. Recent publications concern for example:

- Recording Hours Guidelines for FP7 Projects
- Issues surrounding 60% Derogation Overhead Rate for SMEs
- List of documents required to be seen by Auditor

For more information and registration please refer to the Finance helpdesk.

ICT call 3 event at EPFL

Euresearch Lausanne and SCIPROM co-organise an info event on the FP7 ICT call 3 taking place at EPFL on 22 Jan 2008.

Patrick Furrer, the National Contact Point for ICT will explain the content of this call and provide us with the latest information from the European Commission.

Professor Adrian Ionescu will analyse the evaluation process of the Commission with emphasis on the most important points to be considered for writing a successful proposal.

For more detailed information please refer to the Euresearch site. Participation is free of charge but we kindly ask you to register beforehand.

Meeus - a self-help resource for the FP7 user community

Recently, a new service - Meeus - was created by the originators of the DESCA consortium agreement (www.desca-FP7.eu). It is intended as a self-help resource for the FP7 user community. It intends to give answers to difficult questions about FP7 from other FP7 users.

In general, answers are of high and will only improve with an increasing number of users.

Auditors question Commission's evaluation of research funding programmes

The EU Research and Technological Development (RTD) framework programmes have been evaluated by the European Court of Auditors.

'Poorly defined programme objectives and weak performance measurement undermined effective monitoring and evaluation,' said the Court of Auditors in a statement. 'The absence of a comprehensive evaluation strategy, agreed between the Research Directorates-General implementing the framework programmes, resulted in inconsistent approaches between the different Commission services,' states the report.

Source: Cordis

The full report can be found here:
http://eca.europa.eu/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/651520.PDF

Ethics for researchers

Protection of identity, privacy, obtaining informed consent and communicating benefits and risks ... the European Commission published a new brochure on Ethics for researchers which can be downloaded on the cordis site.

Several FP7 calls launched

The European Commission has published a number of calls for proposals under all four specific programmes of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) namely Cooperation, Ideas, People and Capacities.

To see the full details of the calls, please consult the cordis web site.

Eurostars programme for research -performing SMEs launched

On 2 Oct 2007 a new programme supporting research-performing SMEs was launched by EU and Eureka.

The Eurostars Programme is the first European funding and support programme to be specifically dedicated to SMEs. Eurostars is intended to stimulate them to lead international collaborative research and innovation projects by easing access to support and funding.

A Eurostars project is a European research and development project. It can address any technological area, but must have a civilian purpose and be aimed at the development of a new product, process or service. A Eurostars project is collaborative, meaning it must involve at least two SME participants (legal entities) from two different Eurostars participating countries.

First application cut-off date is Friday 8 February 2008 1700 CET.

For more information please refer to the eurostars web site.