CLORA: A welcoming FP9

CLORA, a group of associated French research organisations, has called for a strong, accessible and collaborative next Framework programme. They hope this will work to improve the European Research Area (ERA). In their position paper they argue that coherence across EU programmes and policies could help achieve this. They advocate fostering excellence as a condition for funding as well as ring-fencing funding for the European Research Council.

The paper also calls for FP9 to be made more accessible to citizens, through outreach via the media and social networks. To this end, they suggest strong, relevant and better coordinated actions to address societal challenges. Similarly, they state FP9 needs to be more accessible to researchers. They propose that this could be done through further simplification, improved success rates and greater collaboration across the whole ERA and beyond. Finally, to remain accessible to universities, they maintain that funding must predominate in grant form and the requirement for impact ought to reflect the nature of the research.

From the text:

“…expected impact…must always be adapted to the purpose of a project and its level of maturity in the research and innovation value chain.”

“The European Commission must establish a clear framework with clearly identified challenges and strategic objectives for international cooperation, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030.”

The full report is available here.