13/07/09

Report Cross-border Research Cooperation in Europe is made available

A report on existing cross-border research collaboration and joint projects has been compiled. This report was produced as a follow-up action of a High-level Workshop of European research ministers and members of EUROHORCs that took place in Lisbon in January 2009. The report draws upon the data of 22 research organisations in Europe that completed an online survey and throws light on the current level of cross-border cooperation between national research organisations and researchers of different countries of the European Research Area.

The report found that the European research funding and research performing organisations had a significant number of cooperation agreements and joint programmes with partners in Europe, and beyond Europe especially with Asian organisations. The organisations have developed considerable experience in the joint handling of programmes at the levels of calls for proposals, peer review and decision-making. A certain prevalence of bilateral collaborations still exists, but multi-lateral endeavours become increasingly relevant. The member organisations of EUROHORCs are faced with strong demands by their national research communities to further extend their European and international collaborations, while having to cope with legal and budgetary limitations as well as with reservations on spending national tax-payers money abroad.