Brussels, 19/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 19 October in Brussels, the president of the European Strategic Forum on Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) presented the first European road map on infrastructure research. This document identifies 35 research infrastructure projects that ESFRI believes are of prime importance for scientific progress and innovation in Europe. The road map, of which John Wood emphasised the developing nature, will help to devise installations according to a common European approach and will be very useful for setting priorities and pooling significant financial resources needed for their development. At this stage, no decision has been taken on how they will be built, which will depend on the priorities of Member States and their financial capacities.
Congratulating ESFRI and its president, John Wood, the European Commissioner for Research Janez Potoènik, declared, ““Research infrastructures are a critical element of building research excellence in Europe. Not only can they support the work of European scientists, but world-class facilities attract the best scientific minds from around the world. We can't afford to have 25 separate approaches to such facilities and the work of ESFRI has been extremely important in providing a common European approach. This is the European Research Area in action.” The Commissioner explained that he would be launching a great debate next year to see where European research stood and that he would soon be writing to research ministers to get the debate up and running on priorities regarding infrastructure and its funding.
The 7th Framework Research Programme entering into application next year will be accompanied by an envelope for co-financing infrastructure but this is, above all, intended to serve as a catalyst for speeding up project implementation. Only €1.7bn is available in this envelope for the seven years covered by the framework programme (2007-13), whereas the 35 EFRI selected projects account for 13.5bn alone. Although part of the funding will come from the EIB via the “Risk Sharing Facility”, most will come from Member States. The Commission envisages two stages, with an initial call for tender focusing on the study and conceptualisation stages projects judged to be priorities (still in 2007) and a second phase for launching infrastructure construction in 2010.
The ESFRI roadmap) identifies 35 large-scale infrastructure projects at various stages of development in seven main areas of research: 1) Environmental Sciences, including AURORA BOREALIS a powerful research Icebreaker vessel (31,000 tonnes displacement 196 metres long) which will be able to penetrate into the central Arctic ocean, estimated cost: €360 million, EMSO deep (sea-floor observatories network and can be integrated into GMES and GEOSS, cost: 150 million, (ICOS) the Integrated Carbon Observation System, cost: 255 million; 2) Energy: three projects involving high flux irradiation experiments: Jules Horowitz Reactor (500 million, International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (855 million) and High Power Experimental Research (850 million); 3) Material sciences: with the exception European Synchrotron Radiation Facility Upgrade (ESRF) and the Institut Laue- Langevin (ILL), both based at Grenoble in France, for €230 and €160 millions respectively, all the projects come close to costing a billion Euro: the production of neutrons by European Spallation Source (1050 million), the construction in Hamburg (this is none of the most advanced projects) of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser XFEL (986 million), Pan-European Research Infrastructure for Nano-Structures PRINS (1110 million) ; (4) Astronomy, Astrophysics Nuclear and Particle Physics: here we find the modernisation of the laboratory (GANIL) of Caen in France on the physics of magic nuclei (137 million), the extremely large European telescope (850 million) and an anti-matter research infrastructure (FAIR) planned for Darmstadt in Germany (1186 million) which is another very advanced project; (5) biomedical and life sciences: which includes the multi-siting and updating of national clinical trials infrastructures (36 million), the infrastructures network for structural biology in the search for centres of excellence via specialities (300 million), upgrade of the European Bioinformatics Institute at Cambridge in the United Kingdom (500 million); (6) human and social sciences: six projects for putting into a network and/or the setting up of low cost data bases; (7) Computation and data treatment.
The work and the resources necessary to built and exploit these large international standard infrastructures will far exceed the means of a single institution, or even country. The roadmap will allow best use of the available resources at European level to set up and develop these installations. Within the 7th research framework programme, aid will be provided for research infrastructures for use, in the preparatory stage, essentially in creating the most appropriate legal framework and in establishing the funding and construction plan. The roadmap was drawn up after an intensive consultation and evaluation process by peers, over two years, and with the involvement of over one thousand European and international top level experts. ESFRI is made up of representatives of Member States and top rate European scientists. The roadmap was devised using the “list of possibilities” proposed in April 2005. Detailed information on the projects can be found on: http: //cordis.europa.eu: esfri: home.html (oj)