European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures

The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures - ESFRI - was launched in April 2002. It brings together representatives of European Union member states and Associated States, appointed by Ministers in charge of Research, and one representative of the European Commission.

The role of ESFRI is to support a coherent approach to policy-making on research infrastructures in Europe, and to act as an incubator for international negotiations AbOUT concrete initiatives.

History

Period 2005-2006

During the 12th Meeting of ESFRI in Brussels, on 25 February 2005, John Wood (chief executive of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils) was nominated as new chair of ESFRI for the next period of 2 years. On December 2005, John Wood announced the creation of an ESFRI Executive Board, with the aim of supporting the Chair in the planning of ESFRI activities. This Board is composed of the ESFRI Chair, of the Commission's representative and of three ESFRI members selected by consensus.

Based on the evolution of ESFRI in 2004-2005 a revised version of procedural guidelines was agreed by the ESFRI delegates in June 2005. 1

The third European Conference on Research Infrastructures was organised on December 6-7 2005 under the auspices of the UK presidency, in Nottingham, in cooperation with the EC. The conference contributed to discuss the needs for the further strengthening of pan-European Research Infrastructures and to present the work of ESFRI in the development of a coordinated European Roadmap.2

During the whole period, the discussions at Council of the European Union and European Parliament level highlighted the important role of ESFRI as a basis for the implementation of FP7. As stated by the Council of the European Union in its meeting of July 24th, 2006, the Community Framework Programme will aim at supporting the "construction of new research infrastructures or major upgrades of existing ones focussing mainly on preparatory phases, to promote the emergence of new research facilities, in accordance with the principle of 'variable geometries', building primarily upon the work conducted by ESFRI".

The preparation of the ESFRI roadmap was the main activity of the Forum during this period, supported by three Roadmap Working Groups. In this context, the European Commission supported also several meetings, from September 2005 up to May 2006, where external scientific experts from all fields of science and technology were involved and consulted in the process of preparing the roadmap. ESFRI agreed on its report during its meeting of September 28th 2006.3

Period 2003-2004

During this period, ESFRI first discussed its mode of operation and adopted the first procedural guidelines in June 20034

In November 2003, the second Conference of Research Infrastructures was organised by Sincrotrone Trieste http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELETTRA in close collaboration with AREA Science Park and the European Commission and took place in Trieste, Italy. The objective of the INFRA/ERA 2003 conference was to assess the present and future role of the research infrastructures in the construction of the European Research Area, and to further a common EU and Member States policy in their support, as initiated by ESFRI.

In 2004, during its 10th meeting, ESFRI decided to prepare a roadmap for research infrastructures in Europe, for the next 10 to 20 years.

(see ESFRI communication on the European roadmap for research infrastructures -17.12.04 5)

This was in line with the conclusions of the Informal Competitiveness Council of 1-3 July 2004 and the meeting of the Competitiveness Council (November 2004).

(see Extract from the conclusions of the Informal Competitiveness Council of 1-3 July 2000 6 and 2624th meeting of the Council of the European Union COMPETITIVENESS (Brussels, 25-26 Nov. 04) 7)

The objective of the ESFRI Roadmap will be to provide an overview of the needs for research infrastructures of pan-European interest. This will be used to facilitate decision-making by Member States and by the European Commission. The aim of ESFRI will not be to prioritise or to decide on funding and the location of future infrastructures.

Period 2000-2002

The idea to develop a more coordinated approach for policy making in the field of research infrastructures in Europe emerged from the Strasbourg Conference on Research Infrastructures 8, jointly organised by the European Commission, the French Presidency and the European Science Foundation (ESF) on 18-20 September 2000. The main results of the Conference were summarised in a working document of the European Commission in January 2001.

(see Commission working document "A European Research Area for Infrastructures" - 27.02.01 9)

On the basis of this document, in June 2001, the Research Council invited "the Commission, in close collaboration with the Member States, to explore the establishment of new arrangements to support policies related to research infrastructures".

(see Council Conclusions "Infrastructures in the European Research Area" - 26.06.01 10)

Responding to the Council's invitation, the European Commission set up a high level Expert Group with representatives from all Member States. In February 2002, the Group issued a report recommending the creation of a “European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures”.

Report of the Expert Group - 05.02.02 11 Following the recommendations of this high level Expert Group, Commissioner Busquin wrote a letter to the Research Ministers of the 15 Member States in February 2002, asking them to nominate representatives to the Forum and to offer operational support from the Commission. The first meeting of ESFRI took place in Brussels on 25 April 2002.

Press release for the inauguration of the Forum - 25.04.02 12 During this meeting Hans Chang (Director, FOM, NL) was officially nominated by the ESFRI Members as Chair of ESFRI for a period of two years.

Operation Mode

The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures was set-up following a recommendation of the Council of European Union. Its main scope is:

to support a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy-making on research infrastructures in Europe; to facilitate multilateral initiatives leading to the better use and development of research infrastructures.

In line with the procedural guidelines, the Forum acts as an informal body on issues raised by one or more country delegations. The Strategy Forum gives national authorities the opportunity to be informed of and to explore (i.e. without "a priori" commitments) international and national initiatives concerned the building or upgrading of research infrastructures of European significance.

ESFRI acts therefore as an incubator for pan European Research Infrastructures.

For its internal operation, the Forum is divided in several organs. An overview is given below:

ESFRI_Structure.GIF

where

RWG = Roadmap Working Group

BMS = Biological and Medical Sciences

ENV = Environmental Sciences

PSE = Physical Sciences and Engineering

SSH = Social Sciences and Humanities

Membership

ESFRI brings together one or two senior science policy officials representing the EU Member and Associated States and a senior science policy official of the European Commission.

The members of each delegation are nominated by their Minister(s) for two years and may be reconfirmed whenever appropriate;

ESFRI Members list - 13th April 2007 (PDF 52KB)

Chair

The Chair of ESFRI is appointed from among the ESFRI delegates, for a two-year non renewable term.

The present Chair is:

Prof. John Wood (Principal, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College, London UK)

ESFRI Secretariat

The ESFRI Secretariat is provided by the European Commission services. The Executive Secretary is Hervé Péro, Head of Unit Research Infrastructures.

Web: http://cordis.europa.eu/esfri/

Executive Board

The Executive Board which is composed of the ESFRI Chair, of the Commission representative and of three ESFRI members selected by consensus. The selected board members are designated by the Forum for a two-year non-renewable term.

The present members are:

John Wood, Chair

Jacek Gierlinski, Vice-Chair

Jean Moulin

Robert-Jan Smits

Beatrix Vierkorn-Rudolph

and Carlo Rizzuto, next Chair

For the preparation of the European Roadmap the Executive Board is supported by the Roadmap Working Group Chairs: Eckhart Curtius (BMS), Bjorn Henrichsen (SSH), Eeva Ikonen (Environment) and Jorgen Kjems (PSE).

Incubator Role

In its incubator role for the development of new research infrastructures in Europe, ESFRI originally hosted discussions on two projects initiated by Germany. Following exchanges in ESFRI, International Steering Committees have been set up. For each project, a Memorandum of Understanding governing the participation of the various partners in the preparation has been signed.

The European XFEL project aims at building a hard X-ray free electron laser at DESY in Hamburg. Detailed information on the project can be found on the XFEL website (http://xfel.desy.de).

The FAIR project (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) aims at building an accelerator facility producing beams of ions and antiprotons at GSI in Darmstadt. Detailed information on the project can be found on the FAIR website (http://www.gsi.de/fair). In 2005 and 2006, through the Roadmap process ESFRI has indirectly generated new incubations for new research infrastructures.

ESFRI Roadmap Report (19. October 2006) 13

This action will be continued in the next years.

Roadmap

The ESFRI Roadmap identifies new Research Infrastructure (RI) of pan-European interest corresponding to the long term needs of the European research communities, covering all scientific areas, regardless of possible location.

Potential new RI (or major upgrade) identified are likely to be realised in the next 10 to 20 years. Therefore they may have different degrees of maturity but it should be noted that they are supported by a relevant European partnership or intergovernmental research organisation.

Project descriptions highlight how they would impact on science and technology development at international level, how they would support new ways of doing science in Europe, and how they would contribute to the enhancement of the European Research Area.

The ESFRI roadmap is an on-going process; therefore this roadmap will be periodically updated and its subsequent revisions will be considered by the different Member states as well as by the European Commission to better define priority projects to be supported at national and Community level. The first revision of roadmap will already start early 2007.

The roadmap process

Roadmap Working Groups. The Roadmap Working Groups may seek independent scientific, technical or socio-economic advice, making use, as far as possible, of existing bodies; the Roadmap Working Groups may also set up specific Expert Groups, with a specific mandate and the agreement of ESFRI; the roadmap being an ongoing ESFRI activity, Expert Groups can be created at any time to cover specific areas and specific RI within the remit of the Roadmap Working Groups. Rules for the preparation of the roadmap have been defined and agreed by the ESFRI delegates.

Rules for making the roadmap 14 Identified Expert Groups in their thematic fields 15 For further information on e-Infrastructures you can also consult the following web page: http://www.e-irg.org/contact/ Following the reception of the RWG reports and to support the drafting procedure of the roadmap report, ESFRI decided during its March 2006 meeting to set-up of a drafting group, the work of which was reviewed by an editing Review Group acting during Summer 2006. The final agreement on the ESFRI Roadmap was reached during the 18th ESFRI meeting on 28-29 September 2006.

European Roadmap on Research Infrastructures (Report 2006) 16 ESFRI agreed in autumn 2006 on a first list of 35 mature proposals for new (or major upgrade of) facilities of pan-European interest covering seven key research areas including Environmental Sciences; Energy; Materials Sciences; Astrophysics, Astronomy, Particle and Nuclear Physics; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Social Sciences and the Humanities; Computation and data Treatment. The resulting European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures has been presented on 19 October 2006 at a press conference in Brussels.

The roadmap is complemented the Roadmap Working Group reports of PSE, BMS, SSH, e-IRG. In addition ESFRI has been in contact with some Intergovernmental Research Organisations which have recently edited their own strategic documents and to which the ESFRI report refers to

CERN Council strategic document 17

ESA vision paper 18

How to contribute to the European Roadmap on Research Infrastructures? Please contact your Delegate (ESFRI Members list) in your country.

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