The European Commission has launched a debate with EU Member States on establishing a European action plan that will make European Research Infrastructures sustainable in the long term.

Discussions will be based on a document published today by the Commission, outlining key issues the different stakeholders will need to address in the action plan.

These include:

• Synchronizing national research infrastructures roadmaps and their budgets
• Making Research Infrastructures available more broadly by establishing cross-border access schemes
• Launching large-scale pilots involving Research Infrastructures and industry
• Exploiting the data produced by European Research Infrastructures in a more strategic way
• Putting in place effective governance mechanisms at European level
• Finding ways to increasingly and more efficiently use the European Structural Investment Funds, the European Fund for Strategic Investments, and the InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators programme for developing Research Infrastructures
• Promoting the international outreach of Research Infrastructures and using them as flagships for European science policy

The upcoming Bulgarian EU Presidency will facilitate discussions by organizing a high-level conference on Research Infrastructures on 22 and 23 March 2018. During the conference, participants will adopt a joint declaration, which should lead to the identification of priority actions to be endorsed at the Competitiveness Council of the EU in May 2018.

Once finalised, the action plan on sustainable European Research Infrastructures will also feed into the discussions about the EU's post-2020 long-term budget, including the successor of Horizon 2020, the current EU research and innovation funding programme.

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Source: https://ec.europa.eu