General Infosheet Vigo

Brief Meeting Report

A -ERA-NETs Presentations by each coordinator – few comments

MarinERA:Inventory of programs open to competition with a peer review session.

AmpERA: MarinERA Questionnaire

Ecord-net:

9 participants + inclusion of new partners soon

Now they can run infrastructures, operationally self sufficient

Ecordnet is interested in EuroMARC(Eurocore initiatives).

“Deep Ocean Floor Frontier” going towards Art. 169.

ESOnet proposals: instrumenting the margins (Ligurian margin) in order to create an international test bunch for sea bed observatories;

ESFRI proposals;

BONUS

Presentation of the website: programs and infrastructures

One of the 4 programs proposed for an article 169.

Science plans: 8 WPS management related topics; basic research; 2007-2012

BONUS has distinguished between National non-competitive, competitive and EU programmes.

Do Bonus MS agree to put money in a common pot?

At this stage, it’s only a virtual pool (Kaisa Kononen)

Many rules must be established before; the principle of “juste retour” can not comply and the EC must find another mechanism (Alan Edwards).

Adapt national programs to achieve this common pot(Antoine Dosdat)

Biodiversa

Simple concept of management.

2 types of common calls are planned: one in Europe and the other with developing countries

WP1 is developing database with CERIF.

Future plans:Unesco ready to cooperate with the biosphere scheme (MAB), objectives to deepen links with NoEs.

EPBRS: 2/year, discuss for priority for Europe, recommendations to the EC

CRUE, Flooding research

Focus mainly inland with no real interaction with coastal flooding.

It considers EU and national policies in order to set up context and priorities which are then used by funding agencies to develop calls.Publication of the 1st call.

Flood action plan must feed the flood directive (DG environment) in order to really influence policy makers and end-users at the end

Progress searchable database and fist pilot common calls

1 new member

Several institutions fund flooding research: NERC, DEFRA and other councilfounders

Marifish

Advices from the fisheries institutes to influence the project.

Best practices, 10 strategic issues, aims to put money in a “common pot”.

The socio-economical aspects are important.

Europolar

Enhance the exchanges of staff (visibility to research agencies), develop common databases

Prototype approach considering a coherent system dealing with information flow: “Polar Alert”.

B - Comments/remarks

MarinERA can serve as the focal point for marine ERA-NETs identifying common views and needs in marine research both in terms of infrastructures and programs;

Connections with policies, international legislation must be established or reinforced (J. Weber, IFB)

Strategies for a Joint call:

Ways to sort this out:
a–with common evaluations
b- earmark money (funds available for a specific call)
The main difficulties appear to establish rank lists.

The ERA-NET scheme:

It can serve as a facilitating interface between the bottom-up and top down approaches both in terms of programs and infrastructures. The best conditions to achieve it have to be elaborated.

ERA-NET plus scheme:

In the frame of the forthcoming ERA-NET plus Scheme (Consortium of 5 countries, budget of 5 millions euros), the principle of“juste retour” from EU can not be applied.
A (from national level) + common pot (X + with EU money; agreed by the MS).

ART169:

DG RTD plans to present proposals for art 169 in spring: issues like common pots must be solved withits own annexes for participation.

DG Fisheries and Maritime affairs - Green Paper Maritime Task Force

(Interservices group + SC + Commissioner J.Borg – DG Fisheries):
launch of the Green Paper April-May 2006. The Task Force has drafted a model (30 pages, 10 issues) to be discussed in the different services on a monthly basis: it will contain specific chapters with marine related research topics.
DG Fish discussionsare willing to reinforce a network of ERA-NETs hence improving coordination among European initiatives and developing links with developing countries. The fisheries research, socio-economical and infrastructure aspects are present in some ERA-NETs. DG Fish can fill some gaps.
Note: Green Paper (brings Commission ideas) andWhite Paper (leads to a proposal).The Consultation process will be launched in April.

DG Environnement, Strategy

Strategy proposal for a Directive (covering the whole water circle) - impact assessments - ecosystem approach guidance (with ICES) – Regional approach with marine strategies and monitoring assessment systems.

ERA-NETs - Exchanges of experiences

Information Exchange

-Based on the BONUS infrastructure portal, expand the database on the European level.

-Integrate social scientists in the elaboration of questionnaires.

-Questionnaire: standardisation of categories to allow comparison of answers.

-CERIF, a Data Base Management System: proposes a data model with flexibility to accommodate databases structures:

-Portal: Use the BONUS template so that the databases are compatible.
Database should provide minimal useful information.

Strategic Activities

-In order to solve barriers such as money transfer across borders, ERA-NETs consortia must be based on what has been already achieved by BONUS and ERA-chemistry practices and publications (see websites below).

-Common evaluation procedure: criteria of excellence depend on countries. In that sense, it could be interesting to investigate the Eurocore evaluation procedure which is a good example from some partners.

-Infrastructure aspects (website: EurOcean):

A particular barrier is the common access to infrastructures, especially research vessels (legal and administrative barriers).
Hence, it has been mentioned that it will be beneficial to improve the flow of information and establish stronger connections among ERA-NETs when dealing specifically with infrastructures.

-As a general trend in ERA-NET scheme, keep the cascade evolution but go directly to top priorities.

To sum up:

- better knowledge of the current running ERA-NETs/SSA (Circle) initiatives,

- deepen interrelations among coordinators,

- avoid duplication of procedures, exchange of experiences and best practices,

- build up the concept of a regular ERA-NETs forum scheme,

- the development of portals or others means to coordinate/exchange databases from various marine research fields.

This ERA-NETs forum was found very useful and welcomed by all participants. Therefore, it wasdecided that it will be reiterated on a regular basis, at least twice a year.

ERA-NETs WEBSITES

coordinators contact details

Ampera

Coord.: Joan Albaiges

other partner: David Cox,

Biodiversa

Coord.: Jacques Weber,

Flora Pelegrin,

Bonus

Coord.: Kaisa Kononen

Johanna Inkinen

Circle

Coord.: Daniela Hohenwallner,

Crue

Coord.: Peter Allen-Williams,

Ecord-Net

Coord.: John Ludden,

Europolar

Executive Director: Paul Egerton,

MariFISH

Coord.: John Lock,

MarinERA

Coord.: Maurice Héral,

Executive Director: Niamh Connolly,

ERA-Chemistry