Brussels, 19/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - The Belgian Presidency of the EU has decided to make simplification one of its main priorities in the field of research, announced the Brussels Research Minister, Benoît Cerexhe, speaking in Brussels on Friday 16 July. Researchers and businesses are deciding to give up on introducing dossiers into the framework-programme due to the amount of red tape involved. Some researchers claim that they spend more than half of their time filling in dossiers or forms, or writing reports.
“Simplification is one of the ways we can build the trust we place in our researchers”, said Cerexhe, speaking at the informal meeting of research ministers. Amongst other things, the ministers discussed the possibility of bringing in lump sums to fund research projects. Moving to a fixed-sum system is one option to look into, as long as these sums are as close as possible to the real costs and correspond to the national calculation methods in force. The ministers also stressed the need to take account, further to in-depth consultation, of the notion of risk and uncertainty inherent in any research endeavour. They also took position in favour of a significant reduction of the number of existing European instruments.
As well as these simplification measures between now and 2014, consensus was reached on several proposals of the European Commission. These included the issue of the acceptable risk of error in the European funding of research. A new point of equilibrium needs to be defined between the rate of error inherent in the projects and the bureaucratic burden of the checks. The tolerable risk of error could therefore be raised from 2% to 3.5%. Other measures for the short term include removing interest-bearing accounts, taking account of national accounting practices and the possibility of speeding up procedures. Lastly, an ombudsman could be identified for a uniform interpretation of the European rules on research. (B.C./transl.fl)