COST
European Cooperation in the Field of
Scientific and Technical Research
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NEWS:
The transfer of the COST initiative to the European Science Foundation has been confirmed. The secretariat will move form the Commission in Brussels to ESF in Strasbourg (or possibly a new Brussels office) by June next year.
The proposal was made concrete when both organisations signed
an official agreement at the end of October. COST will remain an intergovernmental
organisation, with the senior officials of its member states as the main decision-making
body.
While COST will be separate from ESF, the possibility of combining activities
in the future is being considered. "This has been mentioned and discussed,"
says Enric Banda, ESF's secretary general, although exactly how this will be
done has yet to be decided. "I would be surprised if in five years time
there is non synergy between the instruments because that's the main reason
why we are taking it on," he said. "We take it to make a one-stop
shop for the research community in Europe. This is what the European research
area is asking for, so this is our contribution."
The Commission has offered to keep running the COST secretariat for a further three months, until the new one under ESF is established. However, Gösta Diehl, chair of the COST senior officials, expects it is more likely to take around five months. "If everything goes well, we will have a functioning office by June next year," he said.
Banda agrees. "Five months is realistic but also a little
optimistic," he said, "especially because we want to make sure the
contract is adapted to the circumstances. We want to protect ESF and what the
European research community wants to do with COST."
The recently agreed specific programmes for Framework 6 set out between 50 million
euros and 80 million euros for the COST initiative during the four years of
the programme. "(COST) will be at least as well off as before," commented
Diehl. He expects that with the modernisation of the secretariat, the initiative
will be able to get the upper limit of the earmarked money.
"I think Europe has to take advantage of bottom-up networking,"
said Banda. "This is a cheap (initiative) but it has to have nought possibilities
to reach out and therefore I think 20m euros year is not an unreasonable figure."
However, in the worst case scenario, no money will be available from Framework
6 to finance projects for the first half of next year.
A meeting with ESF on 18 November will look at the finer detail of the move.
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