Brussels, 11/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 10 Jun, the European Commission announced the start of work to set up an EU programme to coordinate research, financed by the member states, with a view to ensuring safe and sustainable food supplies. In Paris on Thursday, the first meeting of the advisory scientific committee for the EU joint programming initiative (JPI) on agriculture, food safety and climate change took place. EU Research Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said the JPI would introduce coherence and coordination in the place of separation and duplication and would therefore make a major contribution to the EU 2020 strategy. Twenty EU countries are involved in the JPI, jointly controlled by France (represented by the “Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique” (INRA)) and the United Kingdom (represented by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council). The JPI will provide opportunities for researchers to meet up, making more efficient use of national funding (of more than a billion euros each year), sharing research outcomes and coordinating future work to avoid duplication and increase profitability. The European Commission was involved in the preparations for the JPI, which was formalised on 28 April by the adoption of a recommendation. The Commission will contribute some €2 million in funding. The scientific advisory committee meeting at INRA headquarters in Paris was attended by 12 leading scientists, two of them from the United States, who want to ensure the IPC's strategic agenda is ready by the end of the year. (B.C./transl.fl)