Trust Researchers

A declaration to the attention of the
European Council of Ministers and the Parliament.

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Comments from Finland

25 comments.  (Note: Some comments are not made public accessible.)


19 Mar 10:28   Finland   Åbo Akademi University  Erik Bonsdorff
The problem of administration in excess poses a real threat to European Science.

21 Mar 19:25   Finland   Åbo Akademi University  Johanna Mattila
The excess of administrative burden restrains many talented scientists to apply for EC research money. Filling out excessive administrative reports is not well spent time for researchers and certainly decreases the scientific outcome of these projects, since valuable research time and money is spent on time-consuming administrative tasks.

10 Feb 08:33   Finland   Finnish Institute of Occupational Health  Liisa Moilanen
Simplicity is effective

14 Apr 08:06   Finland   Finnish Institute of Occupational Health  Jos Verbeek
It took me at least three days, dozens of emails, two big bosses signatures and the printing of dozens of new pages to get the name of one of our participants changed in the project just because it did not totally match the formal papers. I felt that this was a big waste of tax payers money.

9 Feb 16:38   Finland   Finnish Work Environment Fund  Ilkka Tahvanainen
That makes it also faster development for national based funders to join common efforts on R&D funding ERA transnationally.

4 Mar 10:10   Finland   Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences  Hannu Markkanen
The administrative burden is so world famous that the US researchers are joking that the bureaucracy of the EU research funding is their biggest competitive advance!
I would also like to take up the inefficiency of the annual review process and (in one case) the
devastating effect it can have on the project when done unprofessionally. It would not be
difficult to find better ways to spend the money used for reviewing of large projects.

17 Mar 12:14   Finland   Institute of Biotechnology  Kamil Ruzicka
Experience with Marie Curie Fellowship. Self-explanatory.

9 Feb 11:58   Finland   National Institute for Health and Welfare  Hanna Nohynek
With present day´s tools of administration and principles of both Good Administrative Practice and transparency, the EU should be able to simplify its project management procedures. Thus more time could be gained for the actual research work. From my own experience I know that the heavy bureaucracy which prevails in the EU Commission funded projects has made many competent researchers and potential co-funders turn their back to EU. This is very unfortunate.

22 Mar 10:07   Finland   National Institute for Health and Welfare  Juha Pekkanen
Good research and new innovations are only possible when research is directed and (re)orientated by the researchers in an atmosphere of trust

10 Feb 07:48   Finland   THL  Olli Leino
The time to perform actually productive work is limited by extensive byrocracy of a project.

10 Feb 08:56   Finland   University of Helsinki  Sirpa Wrede
The investment required by the bureaucracy excludes researchers already prior submission of proposals, so potentially fruitful initiatives never reach EU.

4 May 10:10   Finland   University of Helsinki  Anna Mauranen
Findingds and insights are more important than going to the bureaucratic motions

7 May 09:39   Finland   University of Helsinki  Risto Orava
Current administrative burden in preparing proposals and in executing EU funded projects is detrimental to creative research activities.
For a succesful proposal, a consultant is required to rewrite the proposal in the EU administrative language. This is both expensive and unnecessary process, which is not available to all applicants.

31 Mar 09:48   Finland   University of Helsinki- Finland  Silvain Sagne
Our mission is to contribute on sustaining development, respect, peace and to understand who we are.

10 Feb 11:47   Finland   University of Jyväskylä  Sauli Puukari
The declaration addresses a topic which has a very concrete impact on activities of people working at universities and other organisations that do research and development work. The administrative burden has a negative impact on Eu itself. Accountability is necessary, but when administration becomes too complicated it means less time and energy spent on the core activities, research and development. Therefore, I strongly agree that it is a time to put focus on the key issues and make the administrational system less complicated, yet efficient enough to ensure accountability and proper use of the common fincancial resources.

12 Feb 09:51   Finland   University of Jyväskylä  Jussi Välimaa
The complexity of European funding gives a clear competitive advantage to our global competitors.

7 Mar 14:23   Finland   University of Jyväskylä  Johanna Mappes
The complexity and the great amount bureaucracy of EC funds is waste of money and time from all parties.

8 Mar 11:33   Finland   University of Jyväskylä  Jouni Taskinen
Today, EU funding is so complicated and laborous to administrate thatits is better not to even try.

9 Mar 10:20   Finland   University of Oulu  Olavi Pelkonen
I have been once a coordinator and a partner in some successful and unsuccessful proposals. In that capacity I have observed an increased reliance, even absolute necessity, to employ an army of consultants and other auxiliary people, who have basically nothing to do with real purpose of the undertaking, it is scientific research and development. Controlling has overtaken trusting for a long time ago and we are now approaching a system which does not fall much short of a Soviet-type bureaucratic monster.

28 Apr 14:24   Finland   University of Oulu, Institute of Clinical medicine, Department of Pediatrics  Mikko Hallman
The develoment is of great concern: routine administrative duties are drastically increaed whild the administrative personnel is decreased

15 Feb 12:46   Finland   University of Turku  Eva-Mari Aro
Many of us do not even think about applying research grants from EU because such a load of nonsense paper work!

15 Feb 13:10   Finland   University of Turku  Risto Kalliola
It cannot be in the interest of the EU that many experienced and capable scientists choose not to apply European level research funding, because administrative burden is considered much more important by the Union than genuine scientific performance

9 Mar 07:19   Finland   University of Turku  Tapio Eeva
We simply cant afford wasting time with all this bureaucracy.

28 Apr 13:15   Finland   University of Turku  Patrik Jones
EU-level research funding is very important, particularly in providing opportunities that dont appear to exist at a domestic level. I hope that the level of funding and number of opportunities will increase in the future. However, in my experience, collaborative applications could be simplified, I just spent 2.5 months writing/coordinating a collaborative STREP application for a relatively small consortium (

1 Apr 09:56   Finland   VTT  Pekka Leviäkangas
Risk-taking combined with reasonable accountability and mutual trust is really important. Failing in one of those fundamental principles will result in mediocre results and non-value adding red tape. I do not want to criticize EU research, which has done lots of good, but rather encourage it to be more efficient and wealth and well-being generating effort.



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