The Slovenian Government has produced an expert-group report detailing its priorities for FP9. It focusses on enhancing synergies and collaboration through interconnecting priorities and improving governance.
The expert group, established by the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, lists nine principles which they used to guide their recommendations. Within these principles, they call for an increased budget of 100bn. They also suggest a more holistic definition of impact and improved governance of the research and innovation landscape — including better policy coherence at the Member State (MS) and EU-level.
They then set out their three areas of recommendations: Governance and priority-making, Instruments, and Synergies. The group recommended greater scrutiny of agenda setting in the Work Programmes and the Societal Challenges pillar through greater use of comitology. They suggest that future project funding should be limited for individuals, in favour of transnational projects which build and widen research networks. FP9 was also seen as an opportunity to leverage better synergies between the European Structural and Investment Funds and FP9.
From the text:
“Performance of evaluators should be monitored, feedback given to them and taken into account to improve the overall quality and management of the evaluation process.”
“In general, the more specific rules are attached to various funds, the less optimal their use will be.”
The full report is available here.
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