Brussels, 15/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission adopted a recommendation on Friday 15 July in which it calls on EU member states to develop and pursue a common vision on how to coordinate research at EU level in the field of ageing. The recommendation, entitled “More years, better lives - the potential and challenges of demographic change”, calls on member states to include the following initiatives, as part of their research agenda on ageing:
- identifying and exchanging information on relevant national programmes and research activities and exchanging best practices, methodologies and guidelines;
- identifying areas or research activities that would benefit from joint coordination or pooling of resources;
- considering the changing needs of elderly people when defining the objectives for ageing research programmes;
- sharing, where appropriate, existing research infrastructures or developing new facilities such as coordinated databanks or the development of models for studying ageing processes;
- encouraging better collaboration between public and private sectors and between different research activities and business sectors related to demographic change and population ageing;
- creating networks between centres dedicated to demographic change and population ageing research.
The Joint Programming Initiative will develop its common strategic research agenda on the ageing population over the coming months with the assistance of prominent experts, the Commission says in a press release. This agenda will then be implemented through joint initiatives and projects involving a substantial commitment of funding and participation from countries involved.
The Commission adds that it will provide financial support for the coordination of the initiative; which is expected to start delivering concrete results after 2012, such as science-based recommendations for adapting pension systems based not only on age, as is currently the case, but on people's capacity to work.
The initiative is led by the German Ministry for Research and Education. Twelve additional countries have agreed to participate so far (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK) and three countries will take part as observers (Belgium, Ireland, Norway). The Commission is a non-voting member of the governing structure. (G.B./transl.rt)