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| Signatures including commentsRefine your search Show all comments (sorted by date) Show all comments (sorted by length) Show regional comments: 2212 comments. (Note: Some comments are not made public accessible.) 1 Sep 13:52 Other Jawaharlal Nehru University Surajit Ray The research related administrative load is quite high in the FP7 projects (especially among the out of Europe collaborating partners) and sometimes its more of a hindrance to the normal workflow. To be accountable about time, in the context of ones passions (research) is a contradiction. When the mind wants to explore ideas - the very fact that minute details of the effort have to be maintained, can cause the researcher to be less productive and more report oriented. Research degenerates into an exercise in tedium. 27 Aug 12:04 Poland Technical University of Lodz Centre of Mathematics and Physics Janusz Kuliński I expect the simpification of the grant procedure for new technology of teaching. 17 Aug 09:34 Slovak Republic Technical University of Kosice Natasa Urbancikova I agree, the higher level of trust will bring mutual benefits. 13 Aug 14:40 Germany Fraunhofer FOKUS Ina Schieferdecker European projects are a great instrument for doing research with international colleagues, however increasing management efforts needed to establish and process projects hinder more and more. 6 Aug 11:48 Switzerland Department of Paediatrics, Division of Paediatric Pulmonology, University of Bern Oliver Fuchs Thank you very much for this initiative. I totally agree. Good luck to us all. 4 Aug 09:33 Germany Fraunhofer IWES Marc Schönfeld The funding of activities (Research, Demo, Training, Management ...) with different funding-rates is much to complex because direct costs and overheads on them have to be calculated (and later claimed in the Form C) separately. If you have to do some adjustments for previous periods later on, things are complicated even more ... In general I think researchers have to spent too much time on adminstrative functions which is very ineffective for the main research work. I think more trust in them and the organisation they work for would help the European Union to get faster and better results. 3 Aug 11:29 Germany Science Services GmbH Stefan Schöffberger Hello, from my experience in research I can say that administrative burdens take up more and more time the more successful a researcher is with his work. Senior researchers who should be there for their siblings spend most of the time with administrative work - a lot of that with work on funding their research. With more time for their work, that is research, the qualitiy and succes will be far beyond the current outcome. Please check if there are ways to effectively minimize this burden. 30 Jul 12:32 United Kingdom Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral Leonie Seliger As a first time participant in a EU funded research project, the very high administrative load , the bewilderingly complicated way information is gathered by the EU, and the archane language used by the commission required an unexpectedly high input of time (time lost to the actual research process) and created stress factors that were extremely counterproductive. It has made me seriously question my willingness to participate in another project. 28 Jul 14:32 Germany Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg Ulrich Hauptmanns The assessment of whether a contract has been duly completed should be carried out evaluating the products instead of looking at lists containing presumably worked hours of a number of collaborators. Although co-operation is desirable projects involving too many institutions produce too much overhead costs. In many cases a close evaluation of whether what is proposed to be done has not already been done by other people who were less efficient salesmen is desirable. 26 Jul 09:45 Czech Republic COC Ltd. Miroslav Necas I agree with the declaration based on the experiences I have obtained during my in-person involvement in FP6 and FP7. 22 Jul 23:25 Italy Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Giorgio Soldani I have served as a Co-ordinator of European RTD projects and I found the administration and scientific reporting of these project quite complex. I think the management of these projects should be semplified a lot. 20 Jul 12:09 Germany Fraunhofer IPA Cornelia Freudenberger I agree that European research should be based on trust and responsible partnering and therefore urgently needs a simplification and confident communication instead of often practised bureaucratic rule-enforcement. 18 Jul 10:26 France Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan Joseph Zyss The administrative burden has become overwhelming and a hindrance towards joining projects. Which boils donw to an ever narrowing dilemna in-between i) keeping away from proposals and such, thus accepting to face degraded funding conditions and ii) cutting an ever increasing chunk of ones research time towards meeting the demands of sterile and abusive administrative constraints. Which does not mean that researchers should isolate themselves in some sort of unaccountable ivory tower activities, by far. It is just a matter of keeping a proper and decent balance, which is not currently the case with hardly measurable consequences on the attraction of scientific careers upon young people as well as overall quality of scientific outputs as a result of over- and micro-managed time consuming constraints. 17 Jul 20:19 Germany PBC-group Evangeline Leitl There are too many obstacles for the international work of research-groups, for instance genomic screen. There is no possibility for the ones with rare diseases to send blood etc. for ongoing genomic screens to other countries, due to the ethical approval! So happened only some months ago (and still is not possible) to the ones with PBC (rare autoimmune disease), for instance. We cannot send samples to the studies ongoing in other countries (at the moment ongoing in Oxford, U.K.), the samples cannont be accepted there! It is not understandable, as there is effort, but this cannot be for the patients in other countries. And this in the 21-st century! So sorry. Evangeline Leitl, PBC-sufferer with genetic background. 7 Jul 12:16 Italy Istituto di Tecnologie Industriali e Automazione Marco Sacco As coordinator of some projects I would like to have simpler financial and administrative provisions. 6 Jul 20:10 United Kingdom St Georges, University of London Dorothy Bennett I fully agree that the procedures should be simplified. Our experience with EC funding has included mountains of unnecessary and time-wasting paperwork. 5 Jul 16:59 United Kingdom Kings College London Ron Irwin Having managed the EU’s application process since 1987 at both Imperial College and now here at King’s College London, and seeing how the ‘simplification’ has developed over time it has always struck me as perverse that even though possibly as much as 80% of the research for the EU is carried out by Universities and Research Organisations there seems to be no understanding in, or regard paid by, the Commission as to how academics actually carry out research and manage their time. The on-going insistence of the Commission and the Court of Auditors to compel academic researchers to adopt an industrial/commercial approach to research has served only to alienate almost the entire academic community – as the number of signatures here testifies. It is true that the use of public funds needs accountability but is it necessary to thrust commercial practices such as personal hourly time-keeping on to researchers who, because of their deep interest in their subject, do not adhere to the normal ‘rules’ of hours of employment? How many of the world’s advances in science and technology would have come about if researchers had clocked in at nine and went home at five? The level of time accountability being required by the Commission is one that is used by industry to compare its costs with its expenses and ensure profitability. University researchers are not concerned with profitability but with producing results that advance their area of expertise. These differences in aim need to be recognised and the methods and practices of the group that is the main actor in these research programmes , the academics, should be the main motivation – not the other way round. There needs to more measurement of and weight given to what is actually produced rather than to investigating and proving the detail of the costs of producing those results. The amount of public money that goes into private accounting firms when auditing the costs of the research activity in FP programmes is enormous and could be better spent finding ways to help researcher take the results of their projects further along the development process. The application procedure on all EU programmes – FP, IMI, Public Health, Interreg, Justice, LLL, Erasmus – needs to be the same. The internal divisions and conflicts at the Commission between the DGs and sections that manage these programmes need to be addressed and consensus reached as to how we apply. It should be possible to have a ‘one-model- fits-all’ application procedure because in each case the same things are being requested - how we will approach the problem, what we think we will produce and how much that will cost. This lamentable practice of the EU for each of its sections (even within the Framework Programmes) to think it has ‘special’ requirements that mean it needs a ‘special’ application procedure, makes it almost impossible to persuade academics that the benefits of receiving a grant outweigh the stresses of applying. A two-stage process should be the norm – whereby there is much less input required at stage 1 and only those applicants going forward being required to draft a detailed specification at stage 2. This has been welcomed by researchers. Real effort, on the part of the Commission as a whole, needs to be applied to improve its procedures. These represent my personal views, not necessarily the view of the College. 5 Jul 13:33 United Kingdom University of Leeds Neil Thomson Many high level research groups are put off applying for European funding due to the large administrative burden that is required. 2 Jul 11:53 Sweden Lund University Sindra Peterson Hear, hear! 2 Jul 11:08 Spain Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense Manuel G. Velarde Due to increased paperwork and other time consuming duties in the past decade I have refused to be coordinator of research proposals to be submitted to the EU. This added to the lack of trustiness of the researchers from EU Administration may justify how difficult is to compete with our fellow colleagues working in the USA. 1 Jul 09:59 Lithuania MODUSAS, Ltd. Gintautas Balčiūnaitis Bureaucracy is a good think, but it shold not be a backpedal... 30 Jun 22:23 France LOGMA sa François MALBRUNOT Unfortunatelly, I expereinced myself in several projects including European funding, the complexity of the procedures and systematic delays for getting effective payment. 30 Jun 13:17 Italy IAMC-CNR Giovanni Fanelli The acceptance of these simple requests of researchers would be a strong political signal about the importance of research for development 29 Jun 14:57 Spain CIEMAT Fernando Larcher Simpler is more efficient and productive 29 Jun 06:56 Lithuania Kaunas high and information technologu park Zigmas Bigelis When evaluating research we ought to understand that it is very important and critical to start research and finish it ASAP. Such an requirement of global competition and it is a pity taht EU with larege resuurces suffer from red tape (bureaucracy ) and did not get results. Risk is rateher typical situtaion if we compare situation ir EU with US resaerach support. 28 Jun 02:41 Germany max-planck-insitute for Astrophysics roderik overzier I believe the main goal of the European Researchers funding scheme should be to bring in the best researchers from overseas or to keep the best researchers in Europe. However, this goal will never be achieved as long as the route to obtaining funding isnt drastically simplified: at least in astrophysics, It appears to be much easier and much less work to get equal (or better) jobs elsewhere than from the EU funding scheme. 25 Jun 19:12 Germany MPI für Physik Stefan Kluth I do support this declaration, since I was and still am involved in EU applications, and found that wihtout support by EU experts it is impossible to navigate the system. Also, the impact of pre-chosen research policies on the funding programs is largeand stops many very good ideas, because they dont fit into a rigid frame. 25 Jun 18:21 Germany MPE Rene Fassbender Time wasted with bureaucracy is time lost for discovery! 25 Jun 16:59 Germany Helmholtz Zentrum München Cornelia Kaloff The following two duties should be disestablished: - filling of time sheets (too complicated, time-consuming and unnecessary) - deliverables reports (unnecessary, as all information is already included in the periodic activity reports) 25 Jun 15:58 Germany Excellence Cluster Universe Marco Baldi We should spend our time in actually doing research rather than in studying complicated regulations to apply for fundings. 25 Jun 15:47 Germany Max Placnck Institut of Psychaitry Axel Steiger Time should be used for research, not for to much bureaucracy. 25 Jun 12:38 Spain Instituto de Salud Carlos III RAFAEL NAJERA I fully agree with the Declaration. I think that bureaucrazy is complicating the already complicated process of performing research. The administration of funds should be made by the researchers with a clear and simple process of accountancy and freedom for the expenditure of funds, according to the needs of the project. These ideas will reduce the bureaucrazy and reduce costs. The results should be evaluated by publications and/or patents. 24 Jun 14:01 Netherlands Leiden University L.J.F. (Jo) Hermans Too much regulation and/or mistrust makes EU programmes extremely unattractive for high-level scientists, and thus makes them miss their goal completely. In addition, the amount of taxpayers money spent at burocracy and external auditing is appalling! 22 Jun 11:28 Poland Technical University of Lodz Wojciech Zabierowski Computer methods in music research, automatic generation of music score (ex. with neural networks) Web technology in business solutions. 22 Jun 11:26 Italy Università di Roma Tor Vergata Laura Micheli No time for research only for trying to present a proposal, find partners and then pray. 22 Jun 09:11 Spain Official Medical College Medtechnologu S.A.U Simon Schwartz-Riera The Official Medical College and the SME Meditcnology S.A.U. help and advice researchers for improving science,technology and the success for bio to practical resolts to the society. I am the coordinator. I have experience on european projects and I and we support all the concepts of the present Declaration 14 Jun 19:07 Other UNIVERSIDAD IBEROAMERICANA DARWIN MUNOZ THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO DEVELOPMENT COUNTRIES 14 Jun 15:39 Germany BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing Ute Kalbe Administrative requirements in the framework of EU funded projects especially in case of coordination have grown over the years and consume a lot of resources which meanwhile can hardly be covered even by large organisations. In relation to the effort for writing proposals the chance for actual funding is rather small. 13 Jun 17:49 Spain ICTA, UNiversitat Autonoma de Barcelona Joan Martinez-Alier Although European financing (in my field, ecological economics) has been essential for European researchers since 1990, and the level of understanding of the needs of a new field such as this one has been far greater at European than at national level (in many countries), nevertheless the bureaucracy is too complicated and meddlesome, focusing on minor details. Project officers are generally helpful but sometimes not competent. 11 Jun 13:18 Poland Military University of Technology Tymoteusz Trocki Let us take this opportunity to support simplification of funding procedures on R&D in Europe by underlying the similarities and contrasts between the needs and the purposes of scientific activities. Let the need of promising scientific results that will proof commercially and financially satisfying not be obscured by the need of promised funding in order to perform science that misses the needs of the society that pays for it. Let us search for the needs. 11 Jun 10:50 Spain University of Malaga Cristina Urdiales One spends most of the time in a project filling paperwork rather than doing real research. 11 Jun 01:00 Poland Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of History Magdalena Micińska The era of communism was building the steps of bureaucracy and bans to stop people frpm being citizens. Demcratic Europe of XXI century is almost as good in this business. 11 Jun 00:05 Italy ENEA and University of Bologna Giuseppe Maino I strongly agree on the declaration and any effort done to improve funding resources for basic and applied science. 10 Jun 19:50 Poland University of Warsaw, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities Grażyna Wieczorkowska-Wierzbińska VII The most important factor in evaluating the grant proposal should be – in my opinion- former achievements of the team - the results of the former research grant (national, European,….). So far a lot of effort is made to evaluate proposals ( beautiful promises of getting wonderful results) - the proposals are ranked. Evaluation of results doesn’t allow to differentiate between good and “not so good” researchers. By “good” I mean those who test IMPORTANT models (even if sometimes without success) creatively and use their money in the most effective way. This can be evaluated after the fact and not before. 10 Jun 17:02 Other Instituto Politécnico Nacional Luis Villa The poor participation in this kind of iniciatives is not a problem of the lack of ideas. It is a bureaucratic excess proble. 10 Jun 15:48 Italy ISTITUTO DI CHIMICA BIOMOLECOLARE ANTONIO TRINCONE agree 9 Jun 21:35 Croatia University of Zagreb School of Medicine Milos Judas I fully agree that administrative burden for EU-funded projects is too extensive and too complicated - especially in comparison to USA researchers it seems that we here are doomed to spend much more time on administrative/bureaucratic issues than to the fruitful research. 9 Jun 16:08 Germany Flensburg University Herbert Bruhn I agree with every word of the statement. 9 Jun 15:42 United Kingdom The University of Reading Andrew Fromant Onerous and protracted 9 Jun 14:20 Germany University of Flensburg A. Willi Petersen Very good and great initiative, because I totally agree. The project administration (some finance handbooks with over 100 pages ... awful) becomes more and more no sense and the work is horrible and in the last years I stoped therefore my european project activities! 9 Jun 12:26 Germany Universitaet Flensburg Olaf Jaekel I couldnt agree more. 9 Jun 10:58 Croatia University Hospital Center Zoran Mitrovic How can we develop into globally prosperous and competitive community if restrained by administrative burden we impose to ourselves? 9 Jun 00:29 United Kingdom UCL Katrin Skoruppa I totally agree - a lot of money is wasted on making the European Dream become a bureaucratic nightmare Katrin (who received a positive evaluation for a Marie Curie fellowship in November, an invitation to negociate in December and is still waiting for her contract...) 8 Jun 15:33 Germany Fraunhofer CNT Martin Landgraf Great initiative, I really hope the burden of admin mngt.can be limited 8 Jun 03:12 United Kingdom University of Manchester Karl Herholz Better algnement is also required with regard to the interaction and consistency of local university administration rules with EC/FP rules. I would like to appreciate the big help and enormous support we have been getting from the coordinating centre administrators of our project (DiMI) at Cologne university. 7 Jun 21:07 Germany University of Munich (LMU) Martin Parniske Increase the percentage of funding allocated to open calls. Reduce the percentage of calls that do require entrepreneurial involvement. Reduce thematically narrow, program-oriented funding. Remove funding targets dictated by lobby groups. Reduce the number of countries required in a consortium. The distribution of the European research funds should be the responsibility of science focused organizations like EMBO. 7 Jun 20:55 Germany Ludwig Maximilians Univserität Hubertus Kohle I habe taken part last year in a project which was horribly complicated. I do wish that this will change profoundly! 7 Jun 20:52 Germany FAU Dominik Böhler Providing the ability to focus more on research and less on administrative tasks will greatly enhance the quality of research output. 7 Jun 17:58 Germany Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen Ingrid Kottke Decisions on proposals need to be more transparent. Proposals should therefore be presented orally in open frame in front of reviewers and applicants. 7 Jun 15:18 Germany Fraunhofer IGB Dieter Bryniok I totally agree and support the declaration. Reduced administrative expenditure will release resources and energy for R&D work, which should be the main objective for European Framework Programmes. 7 Jun 14:38 Germany LMU Armin Scrinzi Suggestion for priorities: - STABLE rules: even the worst rules may seem simple once you got time to get them to know. - Long term, stable administrative staff: staff can learn about his/her subjects and develop more professionally. This is one of the secrets of any effective burocracy. - Reduction of reports: every scientist knows that they are essentially for the administrative drawers: even knowing this, producing them costs TIME. - Reduction of milestones and similar fun stuff: these are largely buracratic rituals which we, the scientists, comply with. Inventing ever new ways how the milestones were reached and passed costs TIME. 7 Jun 14:37 Germany LMU Nico Grove Actual approach prefers tender process experienced bidders with (tender specific) ressources. Small institutions with the tender requested knwolegde however cannot afford to enter bidding process due to lack of resources. 7 Jun 14:35 Germany LMU Guenter Froeschl if you need extensive training and education, and an extra position for a secretary, just to be able to write a grant-application and the proper reports afterwards, there is something deeply wrong 7 Jun 11:45 Germany Ludwig Maximilians Universitaet Joseph Zihl We need more time for research. One weay to achieve this is to reduce the time spent for administration. 7 Jun 10:55 Denmark Technical University of Denmark Peter Andersen I have coordinated one FP6 programme and I am currently coordinating one FP7 programme. I believe some simplifications have been implemented. However, the administrative burden is still very large. 7 Jun 10:49 Germany Ludwig Maximilians University Dieter Braun We want to invest in science, not in bureaucracy! 7 Jun 10:17 Germany Ludwig Maximilian University Christoph K. Neumann Furthermore, I think that the principles both of funding and of reporting/accounting should be organised in a way that takes the nature of the disciplines involved in a project into consideration. Geriartric psychiatry, polimer chemistry and research in medieval music are all too different from each other to be subjected to the same procedures. 7 Jun 08:47 Germany Medical Department, Klinikum der Ludwig-maximilians University Martin Reincke Full support for the declaration 6 Jun 12:18 Germany Department für Physik, Ludwig Maximilians Universität Paul Tavan Instead of huge programs and funding of industries, why not take the concepts and procedures implemented in the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or the Swiss Nationalfonds as a model? 5 Jun 18:42 United Kingdom University of Edinburgh Paul Kelly I have benefited from FP5 and FP6 funding, for which I am grateful to the EC. It does seem at times that some of the rules are designed for CAP and merely adapted for FP. 5 Jun 16:51 Germany Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Gerd Sutter From my personal involvement as project partner in 11 research networks since 1996 and my role as coordinator of the FP6 network MVACTOR (LSHB-CT2006-037536) I have experienced a rapidly and steadily increasing administrative burden associated with EU funded research. I fully support this declaration! Gerd Sutter, LMU Munich 5 Jun 11:03 Germany Freie Universität Berlin Nicolas Apostolopoulos This is a very important initiative that will truly help to improve the output of European research activities. www.cedis.fu-berlin.de 5 Jun 10:16 Germany University of Munich, LMU Albrecht Schnabel Dear Sir, dear Madam, dear Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, i want to congratulate you for your effort to simplify and clarify the application for funds in the EU. Only thereby, it will be possible to have all the ideas and the complete creative input of the millions of people living in the EU. Please carry on with your effort to make the scientific projects in the European Community as excellent as they can be, by opening the doors and by bringing more transparency about the allocation of funds to as many people as possible. Thank you. 5 Jun 02:31 Germany University Erlangen-Nürnberg Bastian Bansemir I am very grateful for German and European funding, as my own working place is funded. However, a great amount of time is dedicated to administration. At least two weeks each year are solely spent on reports for several different institutions. Instead of administrating work, we should be able to invest as much time as possible to do research. Therefore I support this declaration with emphasis. 4 Jun 22:05 Germany LMU München Werner Degenhardt I fully support the declaration. The administrative overhead is just too much to get your R&D work done, which was the original goal of the EU funding. 4 Jun 19:28 Germany KIT Zhukov Valery Very lengthy and complicated procedure for any application, consuming 50% of time needed for research! 4 Jun 19:00 Germany University of Munich, Biocenter Michael Boshart The administrative part of the applications should be drastically reduced and at the same time scientific quality criteria should the same or higher as for national funding, e.g. DFG in Germany. 4 Jun 17:28 Germany Poliklinik für Zahnerhaltung, LMU München Karl-Heinz Kunzelmann The current process of EU funding is an enormous waste of man power. The bureacratic application procedure is just focused on formalities. In addition, according to my experience, it is nearly impossible to get funding without extensive lobbying. BUT the costs for lobbying are so high that not every qualified researcher can afford it. Another fact which causes an enormous waste of resources it the need to find partners from other EU countries. In reality this means that some partners are invited to be on the applications only. They get some benefits, but they do not really contribute adequately to the project. In addition, the current policy of funding focus topics is not beneficial for strategic research plans. This policy just means that institutes orient their research interests to fit into those focus topics to get funding at all. But these topics often are not really promoting science (just those who suggested these topics with lobbying). 4 Jun 17:18 Germany LMU Andreas Hauser Current situation is so unbalanced that there are software programs available to generate false time keeping data for EU projects. 4 Jun 16:54 Germany Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Nic. Nistor Researchers have to do more research and less bureaucracy! 4 Jun 16:51 Germany Ludwig-Maximilians-University Benedikt Bader To receive funding for a year, you have to work 2 months. Unfortunatley, the chance of funding is usually below 20%. If granted, you keep fulfilling requirements rather than working in actual research. 4 Jun 16:51 Germany Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Armin Nassehi I have experiences both with German research grants (DFG or Federal Ministries) and a EU-grant (Knowledge&Policy). In camparison with the national level of research the EU grant needs much more bureaucratic input. Beyond that I want to suggest to facilitate different formats of research, e.g. smaller formats in humanities and social science. 4 Jun 16:47 Germany LMU Heinrich C. Kuhn The preambula to the declaration is too lyrical for my taste (e.g. visions are religious or medical phenomena, and should have no place anywhere else), but I agree with the aims of the declaration. 4 Jun 16:42 Germany Institute for Infomation, Organisation and Management, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Arnold Picot Expecially mediums sized and smaller research organisations are clearly disadvantaged with the current, very complex and cumbersome procedures! 4 Jun 16:36 United Kingdom RGT Freelance Ltd Roger Trengove Financial Reporting is extemely important and clearly must be auditable but it must also be fit for purpose as so much time is spent providing minute detailed information. In addtion rigid formats for technical reporting can often loose the the message. 4 Jun 15:32 Germany German Aerospace Center (DLR) Jürgen Kompenhans Due to my own experience as partner, work package manager and coordinator in different networks, STREPs and NoE I agree with the objectives and support the initiative to reduce the administrational overhead and overregulation at EC funded research projects. However, we have also to consider that we spend taxpayers’ money and have to justify how we do this. In my opinion this should not be done by monitoring the budget with increasing attention to details but by assessing whether the scientific and technical results of a project justify the amount of budget spent. A reduction of administrational overhead and controlling should be balanced by a better review process of the scientific and technical results of a project. 4 Jun 07:56 Belgium Ghent University, VIB Peter Vandenabeele Administration is the task of administrators for which they have chosen. Performing excellent science is the choice and driving force of scientists. Scientist dont expect administrators to perform science. So administrators shouldnt expect scientists to spend too much time on administration, which distracts them from their core business. Reducing the complexity of administration and reporting will create time for new ideas, insights, well designed experiments and increased quality time. 3 Jun 16:29 France Institut national pour la rercherche médical et la santé (INSERM) Guido Kroemer The administrative burden that arises from managing EU grants has become unbearable and de facto detracts researchers from their mission. This statement comes from one of the laureates of the Descartes prize (given by the EU) for collaborative research. 3 Jun 16:28 France Institut national pour la rercherche médical et la santé (INSERM) Guido Kroemer The administrative burden that arises from managing EU grants has become unbearable and de facto detracts researchers from their mission. This statement comes from one of the laureates of the Descartes prize (given by the EU) for collaborative research. 3 Jun 15:57 Israel Tel Aviv University Ron Shamir Requiring hourly (!) reports by PIs and students is exaggerated. Overly detailed reporting, auditing and monitoring requires a considerable effort and attention for a non-productive and non-scientific work. 2 Jun 16:43 Poland Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Applied Informatics and Mathematics (WZIM) Leszek Chmielewski As a former expert of the IST Committe and EU Projects advisor at the National Contact Point I can see how the procedures change to more complex and more difficult to apply. This direction should be changed, or the universities and research institutes will not be able to accept the funds. Business-type financial and organisational procedures are now more important than science. Where are you going, European Research? 2 Jun 15:47 Portugal University Tras Montes Alto Douro (UTAD) Joao Carvalho We are embraced in too much bureaucracy. More than 50% of our time is spent for administrative issues, imposed by administrative officers and regulations. No simplification exists, no help in this matter and few time remains for research and study. 2 Jun 11:57 France Université de Lyon Maciej Orkisz simplify procedures, reduce paper, allow smaller easy-to-manage projects, leave time for research ! 2 Jun 11:57 Portugal UTAD; CRIA-ISCTE Paulo D Mendes Simplicity helps Transparency. 2 Jun 11:56 Germany Fraunhofer Institute for Wood research Brigitte Dix Research projects are necessary especially for SMEs (see many calls). But it is increasingly difficult to participate SMEs (fewer companies, the SMEs don´t have time and manpower for the meetings abroad and/or the necessary funds (already 10000 € are too much for many SME for research, especial in economic crises). In my experience, the application and administration (the research institutes must help) are too complicate for many SMEs. 2 Jun 10:12 Portugal Instituto Higiene Medicina Tropical Leonard Amaral There is an urgent need to develop agents that are effective against MDR and XDR TB. We have developed such agents and determined the mechanism by which they promote the killing of intracellular MDR/XDR Mtb. This mechanism involves the activation of the human non-macrophage of the lung to kill intracellular Mtb. This mechanism therefore avoids any mutational response of the intracellular organism that leads to resistance. At this time Global clinical trials with the phenothiazine thioridazine for the cure of XDR TB are being organised with our international partners in The Netherlands, UK, Argentina, India, Guadalupe, Mozambique, and other areas of the globe where XDR TB is prevalent. 2 Jun 09:48 Portugal Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro Rolf Kemmler A burocracia muitas vezes ilógica e desnecessária rouba valioso tempo aos investigadores - trata-se efetivamente de desperdício de recursos caros! 1 Jun 12:56 United Kingdom Manchester Institute of Innovation Research Ian Miles The burdens are hard for us and must be unbearable for small businesses and lone reseqarchers 1 Jun 10:38 United Kingdom University of Bath Peter Hall Occams razor is found to be effective in all areas of human activity: it should be applied to funding by reducing rules to the minimal necessary set. The benefits will be seen in improved research quality feeding through to the wider economy. 31 May 11:14 Sweden Umea Plant Science Centre Monica Pacurar Please simplify the administrative procedure for research. 31 May 11:03 United Kingdom University of Bath Julian Padget For me, the administrative burden is a major dis-incentive to seeking EU FP7 funding. The models employed by EPSRC (UK), the Royal Society and the various bilateral exchange schemes (such as those run by the British Council, DAAD, CSIC etc.) are much more appropriate for research activities, particularly given the relatively small amounts of money involved. 31 May 10:56 Norway SINTEF Building and Infrastructure Jan Lindgård It should not cost too much to prepara a proposal to a EU project 31 May 10:27 United Kingdom University of Bath William Megill The level of detail required in the current reporting system is a heavy workload, and if it is to be done properly and on time, then it requires that every grant employ an individual dedicated solely to the task. If the system were simplified, the funds currently being deployed on the reporting tasks could be diverted into more productive research, for the benefit of all. 30 May 00:26 Hungary Budapest University of Technology and Economics András Korn Not only are the rules complex, its often almost impossible to obtain authoritative interpretations, and even the rules themselves dont necessarily filter down to the people who should be following them. I had a SATIN grant and it was almost completely unclear to me how I could spend it (the bureaucracy of our own university didnt make things any better, to be sure). In the end I was only able to use a very small fraction of the grant, so it didnt serve its purpose of facilitating better cooperation between universities in different countries as well as it could have, by far. The problem is thus not just one of administrative complexity but also one of communication, and lack of access to people with answers to administrative questions. Where local laws and institutional regulations intersect EU regulations (contradictions are likely), the situation deteriorates even further. I grew disillusioned with these processes to the extent that Im now pursuing a career as an engineer in industry instead of a researcher at the university (administrative hurdles were certainly not the deciding factor, but an important one). 29 May 21:03 Israel Tel Aviv University Daniel Cohen-Or I agree with the declaration 29 May 09:26 Israel Tel Aviv University Nir Shavit I am a computer scientist. I have had a very difficult experience with EU grant administration. I think the EUs notion of how science works is wrong. I fear this is one of the reasons European science lags behind American science. We need to fix this. My experience is that EU granters and regulators focus too much on deliverables, to such an extent that instead of science we are reduced to software development. We cannot spend time perusing new directions because we must deliver software...and without promising deliverables, its hard to get funding. In the end, this software will anyhow never be used, because software is only used if there is technology transfer into industry, and this does not happen because regulators insist on it, it happens because companies are exposed to breakthrough ideas through papers, talks, and not because we will give them software. The administration of the EU grant funds themselves is overloaded with bureaucracy, to the point that I found I am greatly distracted by the fund administration, and need to employ people just to take care of this administration..this is an unnecessary waste of time and funds. Its is OK to check what funds are spent on, but one must trust scientists that they are spending it on science. Could the few exceptions that are bound to occur justify the excessive spending on control mechanisms? Look at science in the US, with the NSFs looser bureaucratic process and more vague insistence on deliverables. Is it less successful than the science in Europe? So let us rid European science from these overheads, and perhaps with the burden lifted, European science will be able to rise to the levels of creativity and influence we see in America. 28 May 14:49 Belgium K.U.Leuven Liliane Schoofs too much rules and administrative matter that block the real science 28 May 10:01 Austria University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) Marianne Penker Lets focus on research not on administration! 28 May 09:57 Spain Thechnical University of Madrid Juan L. Perez SIMPLIFY ADMINISTRATIVE WORK AND MORE RESEARCH TIME 27 May 22:25 Germany Fraunhofer Geselschaft Steffen Rupp I fully support the declaration. Reduction of administrative burden will help to focus on the essentials, R&D which is the original goal of the EU. 27 May 19:10 Austria TU Wien Andrew Frank The complexity of the rules have increased from FP to FP; at the moment, participating in EU research projects is for most programs of no benefit to the top researchers: too much administration, not enough freedom to follow interesting and risky research leads. Fraud is still possible and occurs, despite all the rules - but honest research has become difficult. 27 May 17:15 Germany Fraunhofer WKI Guido Hora The last 2 EU-projects we have been involved in took almost 12 month from the note from the EC of the acceptance of funding until the GA has been signed. Also, negative comments from PO were often very frustrating. Strict dateline by the EC towards the project consortium and coordinators, but EC takes all their time in the world! The process must be accelerated by a factor 2 to 3 with clear action plans during the negotiation phase. Outsourcing to not EC employed PO didnt help to speed the process. Very, very frustrating...... 27 May 09:17 Germany Technische Universitaet Braunschweig Wolfgang Augustin The main focus of European research projekts should be research not administration 26 May 17:13 Netherlands European Research Institute in service Science Michael Papazoglou If Europe is to be competitive European research funding needs to be simplified. Too much time is spent on admin. work and filing out all kinds of forms. As researchers were confronted with all kinds of administrative trivia and support to do meaningful research. The actual research output of most research projects is questionable. Emphasis needs to be given to pre- competitive ground breaking research and not purely industrial research which is the current practice with FP-7 projects. Why cant we adopt the NSF example?? 26 May 15:30 Portugal DDTE - LCD - Aveiro University Rui Manuel Guimarães Lima Working on CIDTFF - Research Centre for Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education 26 May 13:44 Germany Internationaler Verein für technische Holzfragen Rainer Marutzky I deeply appriaciate the various opportunities to do research and cooperation on a European level but considerung the cost benefit ratio of most of the European programmes i have to state that the application procedures are to bureaucratic, to ineffective and connected with large amounts of non-relevant data. The application procedures should be essentially revised with support of expericenced suppmitters from industry and research centres. It is also recommended to introduce a first application and pre-decision phase with short proposals before starting the elaboration of a complete application form. 26 May 11:09 Austria University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna Georg Weltin Half-paid is better than no salary, but not enough! 26 May 11:07 Belgium University of Liège David Colignon . . 26 May 10:09 Germany Helmholtz Zentrum München Annette Peters The administrative burden is substantially higher in FP7 than in FP5. As a consequence research staff is involved in administrative work who otherwise would be available for research tasks. 25 May 22:35 Germany Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Christian Griesinger The ERC grants are a great exception to the bureaucracy that one normally experiences with the EU. If they could adopt this scheme for the rest of the framework programmes, then a lot would be won already. Different from the rest of the funding tools of the EU in the frame work programmes, the ERC grants can be written and administered without the help from a company. 25 May 22:30 Netherlands Tilburg University Dean Hennessy Simplicity is (also) the mother of invention. 25 May 22:20 Netherlands Tilburg University Xavier Martin The EU has an important role to play in funding research, and responsible stewardship of that money is important. That is why streamlining the process will make Europe better off, indeed. 25 May 20:53 Germany Helmholtz Center Munich - Institute of Groundwater Ecology Piotr Maloszewski I fully support that declaration. 25 May 17:02 Germany Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Kristin Kersten Time and efforts that need to go into administrative procedures are tremendous, unforeseeable, and hardly manageable for colleagues with a scientific background. The legal requirements greatly diminish time and energy for the research studies, which should be at the core of each project. More than one project partner has announced that they would never want to coordinate such a project...! Such demotivation is sad, and unnecessary. We urge you to simplify the procedures. 25 May 16:55 Germany Helmholtz Zentrum München Rainer Meckenstock In my eyes the efforts to write milestones and deliverables is absolutely useless. It just makes the reporting more tedious but it doesnt increase the outcomes of the study. Science is not foreseable in a way that one can plan a certain result to be achieved by a fixed day. We need a research plan and a good ideas but only very rough time plans (no more than a bar sheet). 25 May 15:59 Germany Technische Universität München Hans-Werner Mewes The administrative overhead is not only not practical but contradicts the basic idea of scientific research. The evolution of formal requirements to apply, run and administer European projects is just counterproductive to competitive and successful science. 25 May 15:59 Germany helmholtz zentrum muenchen Marius Ueffing The current burden of admin, useless control sheets, audits and reporting is impairing our ability to focus on research and development and burries much of our energy in useless formal activities. - How can Europe ever succeed as a science driven society if it hinders those who work for it. 25 May 15:56 Germany Helmholtz-Centre Munich Mike Atkinson Present and previous experience as coordinator of 2 projects, partner in 5 others, evaluator in different EU programmes and member of Advisory board in 2 contracts. Administrative tasks required by the commission have decreased significantly over the last decade, but the complexity of the schemes and the application process provides a de-facto barrier excluding many talented European researchers who are not fortunate in having ready access to assistance and advice. The low probability of success discourages many highly talented groups from applying as it is no longer a cost-effective use of their resources. Strong financial oversight is required but can be simplified. 25 May 15:35 Germany Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, German Research Center for Environmental Health Juergen Ertel European funding is part of our strategic research focus and indicator of the international profile and scientific repuation of our organisation. Therefore, it is very important that European Funding remains attractive for our researchers and that the administrative burden will be kept as small as possible. Due to the increasing number of activities like ERC, ERA NET, TP and JTI with PPP, EIT, Joint Programming etc. the administrative burden is increasing from Framework Program to Framework Program making things very complex. Rules, guidelines, legal things are becomming very diverse and should be simplified and underly the same regulations. An electronic reporting system is fine but should be finalised before a new Franmework Program starts and not use the project leaders as tester. 25 May 13:20 Austria IST Austria Nick Barton European funding for research is an invaluable stimulus to strengthening our research - and the new European Research Council is especially valuable. However, the associated bureaucracy is a major waste of time and money, and compares badly with many national schemes that are run efficiently and fairly at much lower cost. 25 May 13:07 France Organisation Name Last Against the humiliating, captious and expensive lack of discernment of the RD-G since the 6th FP. 25 May 12:58 Switzerland EPFL Eli Kapon A significant part of the proposals currently consists of information that is marginally related to the proposed work and, worse, can be simply copied and pasted from other proposals. 25 May 12:52 Belgium Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Johanna Leissner I have more than 16 years experience with the EU FPs and research projects. Compared to FP2 or FP3 things have become much more complicated and more administrative. Therefore simplification is needed in terms of simplifying contract amendments eg rearranging budgets wihtin the project life time and also to rearrange aims and deliverables according to new research findings during the project; less administrative burden is needed in terms of reporting eg requested are midterm report, yearly report, 6 months report, management report, report on the kick off meeting etc., this is too much. Researchers spend more time for writing reports and other documents instead of devoting their time to the real research. Time sheets for are also a burden. Research is always a risk - there is no guarantee that all the experiments will bring positive results. But the work done in a project can easily be checked by the midterm and final report and the deliverables. The time to contract is quite ok already now, however often the researchers want to define themselves the start of their project but it is not welcome by the COM services since within the DG Research head of units want to be the quickest unit in terms of time to contract. This is not acceptable for the project teams. Alltogether I want to support the continuation of the heart of the Framework Programme - the cooperation programme which is the most important scheme for a successful implementation of the ERA. 25 May 12:22 Germany University of Regensburg Guenther Bayreuther The enormous misproportion between cost and benefit for most scientists and their organisations connected with applications to the EU for funding of research must be drastically improved by reducing the formal requirements and bureaucracy - of course within appropriate, reasonable and fair rules. 25 May 11:11 Germany Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik Martin Hölzer I agree with every single word. 25 May 09:23 Austria Innsbruck Medical University Monika Ritsch-Marte I am grateful for all the funding I have received - but adminstration has become a burden, tendency increasing... 25 May 08:51 Austria Museum f. angewandte Kunst Barbara Karl Too much administrative work impedes research. 24 May 13:52 Belgium University of Antwerp Dominique (Nick) Schryvers why not simply couple funding on the output during previous years? No need to write lengthy projects that finally change anyway while running. Researchers that have shown to produce serious output, will most probably keep doing so in the near future. 23 May 14:42 Austria rho-BesSt coating GmbH Doris Steinmüller-Nethl Within the last years many improvements - especially for SMEs - have been achieved - but there is plenty of room for further changes and facilitation... 23 May 12:20 Serbia Visoka tehnicka skola strukovnih studija Ljubomir Jacic Due to my experience, the essence of research project proposal should overcome the FP7 bureacracy.... 22 May 19:24 Austria Institut for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences Eva-Maria Knoll Among many other burdens I struggle hard with the complicated and quite often incorrect English of EU funding bureaucracy. I wish the forms, explainations, and letters would be short, straight, and get checked by a native speaker. 21 May 22:09 United Kingdom IALS Constantin Stefanou It took years of campaigning for the European Commission to convinve member states that the regulatory burden of administration on SMEs was a serious problem. Funny how the Commission cannot see how its very own regulations are a burden to the small administrations of Universities. 21 May 21:07 United Kingdom IALS Helen Xanthaki The bureaucracy involved in EU funding and the financial conditions for funding is such that only private organisations can actually apply. Universities can offer exceptional research but they can only match the Commissions funds via what is now contributions in kind, ie time of qualified staff and facilities: yet contributions in kind do not count. So public bodies, like Universities, are asked to pay 30% towards the project at a period of time where state funding is being curtailed. The result is obvious: a handful of Universities conduct research for the Commission. What a waste of human dynamic! 21 May 12:46 United Kingdom University of Birmingham Jan-Ulrich Kreft Many thanks for your initiative - less time for admin means more time for research output. 21 May 11:30 Germany Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Law Marianne Wade The time, effort and special skills required to ensure EU-funded research projects are correctly administered are so demanding, they cause reluctance even among experienced research administrators to support applications. To counter this, researchers must often take on an administrative burden distracting them from doing what they should be and what EU research funding should be supporting them to do: the best research they can. 21 May 10:53 Germany Medical Faculty Carl Gustav Carus of Dresden University of Technology Thorsten Liebers I totally agree. 21 May 09:54 Switzerland Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Pénélope Leyland Whereas the forms A3 etc are relatively simple to perform, understand and undertake, the auditing process of at least FP6 relatively straightforward also , the constraints of management of proposals (now become a necessary prerequisite to obtain success in a proposal), especially when this is undertaken by a specific management partner, leads to tedious and conflicting with science research and technology advancements, leaving less and less time to do the actual work. Also the multiplication of meetings such as management meetings, steering committee meetings which are conflicting with the scientific interest of just getting on to do the job as defined in the Part B DoW, to do research and to do technological advancements that are the main goal (or should be) of EC projects. Too much time, effort and manpower is taken to just do management, of which 90 % is not in the context of the work programme as submitted originally to the commission. This is greatly due to this multiplication of meetings and paperwork that these management and non scientific activities engender. The experience that I have encountered in EC projects is that when the management is performed by the SCIENTIFIC co-ordinator, especially in the case of Industrially orientated projects with large budgets, the whole process is transparent simple and smooth. Management issues are discussed internally and the conclusions and questions proposed periodically to the partners at the end of one of the main technical meetings. The partners hence have to all do their own bookeeping and are responsabilised in this way, the co-ordinator has to encounter for internal man-power to deal with this, but usually the process is smooth and efficient without hindering the scientific interest of the projects. Also in research projects, the presence of a purely management partner can even be nuisable to the advancement of research - partners may find better things that are not in the DoW - there are delays and advances etc..the management partner does not comply with such flexibility and clashes can occur. There are also experiences that can be negative in Research projects when the co.ordinator is the manager and does not hold the partners to a common line and has management difficulties, in these cases a management partner can be very useful. A just equilibrium is to be found between the necessity of a management team and the relative weight of management activities in EC projects which should be lightened and simplified . This could be done by defining a common management action plan that is common to all projects, with standard forms for all. This would allow the co-ordinator to have more control on a mangement partner who would have a more bookkeeping scientific secretary role. 21 May 08:28 Germany University of Passau, Research Campus Reinhart Schwaiberger Simplify the modalities for SMEs to join the European Research Programs! 21 May 04:14 France Cabinet de médecine générale Wolfgang B. Lindemann I have participated/participate actuellement in scientific studies in family medicine. The work which one patient to include is so high that I have to limit my participation, 20 May 18:41 Germany HS Coburg Wolfram Haupt For small institutes and universities it is nearly impossible to handle the bureaucracy of EU projects - so the grants mainly are given to the big institutes and universities, which can afford teams of specialists in EU bureaucracy. By this not only a lot of researchers are excluded of funding but also a big share of the funds is not spent for research but for bureaucracy instead. 20 May 15:18 Romania Muzeul Regiunii Portilor de Fier Gabriel Craciunescu Este necesara o accesare mai simpla a unor fonduri care sa permita dezvoltarea cercetarii si valorificarii acestor cercetari pe plan european. 20 May 14:22 United Kingdom Medical Research Council David Moore Bureacracy is taking a major and increasing amount of time of researchers away from science. Much of it could be reduced, primarily by working with other organisations to reduce duplication in the completion of information 20 May 13:30 Germany Fraunhofer IST Jan Gäbler Too many different rules and electronic systems. The money should be spent for R&D and not for building up a mess of different legal and IT things. 20 May 11:32 Germany Georg-August-University Ernst A. Wimmer Lets not waste time and money on administration but spend it on good research! 20 May 10:26 United Kingdom Natural History Museum, London Graham Higley I run several EU projects and the cost of administration is very high compared to other grants, such as NSF in the USA and UK foundations. 20 May 10:18 United Kingdom Natural History Museum Vincent Smith EU research funding is world of administration, bureaucracy, liability, and accountability. It is unforgiving, and clashes with the very culture of science. This damages the goals of the research programs they are intended to protect. 20 May 10:10 Germany Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ Dana Kühnel Simplify proceedure, reduce time effort, increase output! 20 May 09:53 Austria Medical University Vienna Thomas Grunt I would very much like to see a significant amount of money to be spent for Bottom-Up Research Projects rather than all these Top-Down Programmes. A good example would be the FWF in Austria. 20 May 09:47 Germany Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Joerg Noack KISS - Keep it simple and straightforward 20 May 08:38 Germany Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Gert Wörheide Yes, make the application and admin short and simple! 20 May 08:34 Austria Austrian Academy of Sciences Georg Pabst Lower the administration duties and researchers will have more time to do what they are actually paid for... 20 May 03:14 Spain Universidad de Salamanca Agustin Ferraro In all my contacts and applications for funding for scientific research at EU institutions, I have been overwhelmed by the excessive formalities and paperwork. This has actually discouraged me from applying or simply keeping track of funding opportunities at EU level. Its simply too complicated. 19 May 23:02 Germany University of Bayreuth Sigrid Liede-Schumann In order to learn how to apply for EU funding, I had to attend workshops of several days. The university has a person solely for help with writing and administrating EU grants. Nevertheless, only a very few dogged individuals, not necessarily the best researchers but sure the ones best versed in following bureaucratic rules dare to apply for support. If the EU is interested in giving money to the best researcher, the support system needs to change dramatically. 19 May 17:45 Spain IDEA Agency VAZQUEZ SIMON Over the years a great deal of new paperwork has been piled up into programmes DNA to properly fulfil a Frameworks project. The aim of each one paper: to further control projects expenses, outcome, results. But most consultants and organizations have now a bigger muscle for paper producing than for projects doings. Papers can hold anything, doings are far harder to get. Allocating personnel and material resources to monitor projects doings instead of administrative readers to paper approvals would be of paramount importance. I took place in projects that were suppose to develope IT Tools and I was suppose to test in SMEs, they published books and produced demos and a lot of software that never ever worked to be tested. I participated in projects to benchmark at both SMEs level and policy makers level, the ideas were original, the paperwork too, but left behind a bittersweet feeling as if nothing had been achieved and much more could have been gotten if technicians were allowed to collaborate freely for 2 hours a day in a sort of European Supervised Free Exchange Chat Digital Hub. 19 May 17:34 Germany IZMB der Universitaet Bonn Volker Knoop 100% support for long-needed statement. EU science funding bureaucracy is an outright turnoff to apply and among the biggest time-stealers in academia. 19 May 16:31 Austria Insitute for Transpor Science Knoflacher Hermann Quality of Research x Amount of Formality = Constant Since Amount of Formality of EU-Research is close to infinte ..... 19 May 16:27 Germany Heidelberg University Michael Wink There is a unique principle called KISS keep it short and simple this should also apply for EU funding 19 May 15:01 France CNRS Laplace Gilbert Teyssedre The tremendous increase in management time and competences asked to all researchers at the various levels of organization is detrimental to the global efficiency of the system. 19 May 12:26 France Université de Provence / CNRS Pierre Haldenwang Let us time, imagination, and energy to do the job. 19 May 11:45 Italy CIRA Raffaele Salvatore Donelli A strong reduction of the time need to fulfill documents and requirements for funding is mandatory. More economic contributions to research centers and Universities for academic and applied research are necessary to make the Europe competitive 19 May 11:10 Austria Vienna University of Technology Lukas Weissensteiner Increase efficiency of researchers as well as of funding organisations through dramatically improving administration = decreasing bureaucracy! 19 May 10:09 Germany Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Holger Kersten We are currently involved in a Comenius Program and the amount of time and effort that goes into the administrative work required by the EU is outrageous. It diminishes the time and energy available for the actual project in a significant way. 19 May 09:10 Germany German National Library for Economics Olaf Siegert After participating in an EU project I definitely think, that the bureaucracy involved is too high (also compared to national funding organisations in Germany). 18 May 17:48 Other PROINPA Foundation Javier Franco I fully agree with the declaration because no European residents have more difficulties to solve EU administrative problems. 18 May 17:25 Germany Max Planck Society Ruediger Hesse The burden on the EU administration could be reduced by the grant of awards. The current practice whereby scientific contents are reviewed using a rather accountant-like approach on the basis of milestones is not likely to be any more successful in the future. In contrast, the aim should be on ex-post reviews of research results, which could, at the same time, be teamed with an incentive system for the exploitation of research results. Successfully valuated projects should be rewarded with another, unconditional award of about 25 % of the initial grant. Through this or a similarly structured incentive system, it might be possible to draw up an exhaustive public balance of the output of EU-funded research in FP8. 18 May 17:13 United Kingdom Pontydsygu Graham Attwell Financial accountability and transparency are important. But it is frustrating how much of our time is presently taken with filling in forms which ultimately seem to contribute little to this. 18 May 16:27 Austria Vienna University of Technology Alberto Castro Fernández I totally agree with this declaration. More research and less bureaucracy 18 May 15:48 Germany UFZ - Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Josef Settele If everybody wants to profit from research one also has to share the risks - and innovative research needs high degrees of freedom and at the same time is risky. Providing scientists with unnecessary adminstrative burdens (like fixed numbers of working hours or time consuming technical reporting) is a waste of public resources and severly reduces our competitiveness. 18 May 15:07 United Kingdom Precision Acoustics Ltd Terri Gill As an SME we no longer work with consortiums applying for EU funding as we do not have the resources to complete the complicated paperwork either during the application process or post grant period. We are pleased to be involved in the science but simplification of the Bureaucracy is essential if EU grants are to include the participation of SMEs 18 May 15:00 Austria Vienna University of Technology Ayse Adalan More than half of the time we could use for reseach is spent for administration - before, during and after research projects. I strongly agree with all points, lets take the initiative. 18 May 14:34 Austria Institute for Limnology, Austrian Academy of Sciences Maria Leichtfried I agree also with each word! 18 May 13:26 United Kingdom Institute of Cancer Research Ian Rivens I support the declaration. Compared to UK research council funding, EU funding is expensive for the host intitution because of the level of beaurocracy. This discourages centres of excellence from applying for such funding. 18 May 09:34 France University Rennes 1 Eric Collet We spend a lot of time writing proposal and applying for funds. Once accepted, please leave us do our job on the project itself. 17 May 19:07 Germany Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich Arthur Schuessler I am involved in one FP7 EU project and I coordinated a small FP6 MC-project, which just ended (biological sciences). The administrative burdon is 95% unnecesarry. I fully understand the need of some controlling, but the EU projects clearly overdo and by that cause huge costs (lost working time, etc.). I strongly vote for simplifying this, it really is contraproductive and hinders efficient research. 17 May 18:34 France université de rennes 1 Jean-Michel Launay The delay between a proposal submission and its funding is far too long. European bureaucracy is extremely inefficient. 17 May 18:18 France Université de Rennes I Ian Sims I have coordinated and participated in EU-funded Research Training Networks, and benefited from a Marie Curie Chair, and am convinced of the benefits of EU research funding especially in fostering collaborations and structuring research efforts. But the work now needed, not only to apply for such funding, but also to fulfil all the complex financial and reporting requirements, has reached such a level that many researchers (and their institutions) no longer feel that it is worthwhile. This must change. 17 May 18:02 France EPHE and CNRS jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel Do you think that a reading of a notice of about 250 pages, beside in English, simply to apply to an EC grant is very practical and fair? 17 May 16:25 France Université de Rennes I James Mitchell A system that requires professional companies to write the proposal in order to be successful is fine if you are Boeing or Airbus. In the University we have less time and less money to play such games. If the EU is serious about funding research equitably, they should simplify their system. 17 May 15:34 United Kingdom University of the West of England Graham Parkhurst Too many of the resources for research are being spent on administration. The budget forecast and audit processes emphasise excessive precision given the level of accuracy possible when undertaking risky activities such as ground-breaking research. 17 May 13:57 United Kingdom London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine David Baker Simplification of the procedure, especially for coordinators would be great! 17 May 13:25 United Kingdom St. Georges Hospital Medical School Sanjeev Krishna The regulatory framework is so burdensome that it is itself a major hurdle to scientific advances, which depend on applying resources swiftly and efficiently to new challenges that arise every working day. 17 May 13:10 United Kingdom university of cambridge Neil Mercer I strongly support request for procedures to be improved. 17 May 09:47 United Kingdom Coupland299@hotmail.com Paul Coupland Research in the area of the non-round cylinder has come to a standstill. This engineering facility could be explained by this inventor if liberal facilitiies were to become apparent and the dividends not occluded by the complicated process of funding. 17 May 08:17 Slovak Republic University of Žilina Dana Sitányiová Let us work on the real research! Do not overload us with useless statements! Please adopt rules, which would be fair for all the countries. 16 May 19:46 France CNRS Robert FUCHS Essentially all funding applications have become way too cumbersome. Strikingly, most applications gradually look alike as if the different funding agencies are implementing new additions by merely copying each other. Please simplify, it will help the reviewing process. Sometimes reviews turn out to be poor in quality, this can be a major problem..... How to improve and monitor the quality of the review process itself ? It may help to pay reviewers for their work. 16 May 14:23 Other Sudanese Academy of Young Sientists Abdelbadea Elhassan From the my discussion the European collegues, and young researcher around the world, the policy of funding is needed to be changed to become more flexible. This will give the young researcher greater margine for more co-operation and apply the idea of mutidisciplinarity and can help more in facing the future grand chalenges... 15 May 21:10 Israel Hebrew University Baruch Schwarz I have participated in five projects funded by the EC community, and coordinated four of them. While I consider the EC projects as extremely valuable opportunities for fostering research and development, the administrative burdens -- especially the writing of too many reports, and the difficulty for researchers to coordinate actions with their own adminsitration, make it difficult to enjoy the potentialities of the projects. 15 May 00:07 United Kingdom University of Oxford Peter Read I agree with this declaration. Accountability needs to be balanced against excessive bureaucracy. 14 May 17:27 Italy University of Milano Monica DiLuca I fully agree with this declaration 14 May 15:14 Other CLAEH Erik Salas the bureaucratic orientation / focalization of the EU is resulting contraproductive to development aid and research cooperation! 13 May 17:47 France CNRS-University Georges Lambert it is obviously necessary 13 May 14:21 Estonia Institute of Physics, University of Tartu Viktor Palm In my opinion the current rules for EU research funding are prohibiting for those applicants who prefer to spend their time on scientific research not on the research of various bureaucratic procedures. 13 May 08:40 Estonia Institute of Physics, Univesity of tartu Sven Lange It is true that innovation should bring better goods and services to the public but by financing it is based on finance plans we will eventually only fine tune existing inventions not creating anything new...One cannot create a good finance plan for a non-existing product or a way of thinking. All great inventions have (mostly) started from seemingly worthless seeds cultivated purely by scientific community (no significant finance support) up to a point when economy noticed its greatness. 12 May 16:04 Spain CSIC Emilio Muñoz Research in Europe and even more in some European countries such as Spain is suffering from strong bureaucratic burdens.Under this situation, political discourses about the need to change the economic model towards one based on scie4ntific knowledge, knowledge tranfer and innovation are not only cynical but without any sense. 12 May 15:31 Czech Republic Institute of Mathematics AS CR Jiří Rákosník Everybody who wants to support research or any other type of creative activity should watch the provocative speach http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html and reflect upon it. 11 May 18:33 Switzerland University of Geneva Peter Kündig The administrative procedures are a nightmare The evaluation processes should be made by top level researchers only and should primarily be based on scientific quality 11 May 17:08 Spain Universidad de Burgos Alfonso de la Fuente Ruiz Please do something about this issue. 11 May 14:58 Italy ARPA Emilia-Romagna Vittorio Marletto All proposals should be first screened for the scientific quality of the idea. If the idea is deemed good researchers should get help from Eu to improve the rest of the proposal (administration, management and so on). 11 May 12:59 Spain Instituto Geológico y Minero de España Eduardo Barrón The burocracy of my institution is very hard plus the burocracy that the Spanish Ministery of Science imposes the Spanish researchers obstruct us the development of our work. 11 May 10:09 Spain University of Huelva José Carrillo Sometimes time is so scarce that we do not ask for international projects because of the big amount of documents we have to fill in. 10 May 23:29 Sweden Uppsala University Tord Ekelöf I think it is relevant to note that the administrative work required to obtain research grants from by my national authorities and foundations is far less than that required to obtain grants provided by the EU, and yet, there is clearly no difference in the efficiency and reliability of the two schemes. Furthermore the counter financing of 50% or more required for nearly all EU grants, but not for national grants, is counterproductive, useless and demoralizing. By definition, all financing given to any organization executing research has been obtained by the organization to be used for for a certain purpose. We therefore all know that requesting, like EU does, that there be free funds made available by the research executing organization as counter financing for a certain EU projects is equivalent to requiring that the fund requester allocates to EU projects funds that have already before been allocated for other purposes. 10 May 19:19 Italy Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Fedora Quattrocchi The burocracy take the time for good research! It is a mean of power for other figures different than researchers 10 May 17:04 United Kingdom Institute of Cancer Research Daniel Catovsky I fully agree with the proposal 10 May 12:10 United Kingdom Institute of Cancer Research Martin Leach It is important in Europe to have a large proportino of collaborative research. This can result in relatively small grants to each participant, but with administrative requirements that are disproportional to the size of the award to each institution. The responsibilities of coordinating centres are excessive, with unrealistic financial obligations, making coordination unreasonably onerous. 10 May 11:46 Belgium Université Catholique de Louvain Glénisson Wendy To perform research, we need funds! To day the application for fund can last for 6 months or more... this is fat too long! We need shorter and easier and faster fundings procedures! 10 May 11:11 United Kingdom The Institution of Cancer Research Ian Judson The bureacracy surrounding clinical research is stifling innovation, has hugely increased the cost of doing research and makes it almost impossible to conduct investigator initiated translational studies in cancer. 10 May 11:11 United Kingdom ICR richard houlston The whole funding p[rocess needs to be straightforward. Also the calls can be too restrictive. Less manahement speak more science. 10 May 10:57 United Kingdom University of the West of England Gary Atkinson I generally steer clear of EU funding as there is too much bureaucracy involved - real shame! 10 May 10:33 Portugal INEB - Instituto de Engenharia Biomedica Pedro Granja The excessive bureaucratic components of EU grant applications discourage researchers to engage in this process, which became terribly time consuming and, most often, useless. The current standard procedure of hiring specialized companies to carry out the task of grant writing clearly shows the perversion of this system, which does not seem designed to award the most innovative proposals nor the best science. 10 May 10:30 Switzerland Inserm-EPFL Joint Laboratory Christian Doerig Having coordinated three EU-funded consortia in FP5, FP6 and FP7, and being involved in several others, I saw no simplification over the years. Streamlining is urgently needed, notably with respect to time sheets and reporting. 10 May 08:32 France CNRS Francois Lacroute I have seen around me that the most brilliant researchers heading a team were spending more and more time on writing reports and grant applications to the detriment of the research sensu stricto .A better organization of the founding administration is clearly necessary if on want to avoid the sterilization of the european research. 10 May 08:31 France CNRS Christopher Herbert The administrative burden strangles innovation in science 10 May 07:42 Austria University of Graz Richard Parncutt Creative, innovative research can only be promoted if the administrative load of researchers is minimized. This principle applies not only to EU and other research funding but also within every university. Administrators must realise that the most important output of a university ís high-quality research. It follows that the main function of administrators is to support researchers. They can do that by maximizing the time available to researchers to be creative and document the results of their creativity. To achieve this goal, administrators must themselves be creative - they must look creatively for new ways to reduce administrative loads without sacrificing output quality. Meta-administrators (those who administer administration) must explore ways of motivating their colleagues to creatively address these problems, and of appropriately rewarding their creativity. This is probably the most important problem hindering the research output of universities today and should therefore be given the highest priority. 9 May 20:50 Switzerland Université de Neuchâtel Bruno Betschart Science should have as a first priority to carry out research and teaching. It is however more and more a perverse situation that researchers are forced to become administrators who have to fulfill local, regional , national and international rules and directives in order to obtain potentially some funds. What a waste and what a shame ! 9 May 18:52 Italy University of Napoli Federico II Benedetto De Vivo There is too much bureaucracy compared to the evaluation of the scientific content of proposals. 9 May 18:17 Switzerland EPFL Marie Sudki We are all concerned with climate change, changing our habits in terms of paper, might induce a reduction of the worlds deforestation rate.... its of concern to everyone and it starts with litlle actions and grow to be a great thing! 9 May 14:28 Switzerland Geneva University of Art and Design Lysianne Léchot Hirt Everything that can be done in order to grant more freedom of thought to researchers has to be a political and administrative priority! 9 May 12:29 Germany HafenCity University Hamburg Ingrid Breckner I miss European funding for research on urban development, allthough cities have to face in a concentrated mannor consequences of the neoliberal societal development with a huge risk for Eurpean democracies. 8 May 19:06 Spain University of La Laguna Elena Sámchez Bureaucracy is contradictory to progress and hides the malfunction of states. 8 May 17:41 Spain Universidad de La Laguna Justine Tally The heavily bureaucratic nature of requesting funding discourages transnational cooperation and research. 8 May 12:42 Russia St.Petersburg State University Grigory Feofilov The present level of bureaucracy in science is extremely high and the current tendency is pessimistic, it kills time of reserachers in enormous amounts, it blocks the fast moving teams, and it makes science less and less attractive for young people, it is definitely an obstacle that should be removed, because it kills our future. 8 May 11:54 Italy Parma University Alberto Girlando When I started my University career, I wanted to science and teaching. I do not want to mess up with ridiculous rules, filling up forms over forms, by which I have to state what my reasearch will produce ! Give less money per group, but more free... 7 May 22:29 Switzerland Institute of Neuroinformatics Matthew Cook Researchers should focus on research, not bureaucracy. 7 May 18:54 France Université Lyon I, Institut Camille Jordan Francis Filbet I manage an ERC starting grant project and unfortunately spend too much time with administration tasks. 7 May 17:02 Switzerland PSI (Paul Scherrer Institute) Michel J. ROSSI We will all benefit from simplification, thus it is a win-win situation. The policy changes with every change of the relevant commissioner was disheartening and counterproductive. I sign this petition in the perspective of having a longer-term sustainable effort. Of course, the scientific community has to police itself and show professional and responsible behavior if the rules are relaxed. 7 May 16:32 Romania Spiru Haret University Negru Mircea I would like as this Declaration to be only first step in building of a virtual European Network, who will be able to suport ours interest in research area. 7 May 16:31 Switzerland Institute of Neuroinformatics Albert Cardona I commend Europe-wide grant agencies to read Peter Lawrences paper Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research. The granting system turns young scientists into bureaucrats and then betrays them.: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000197 7 May 15:04 United Kingdom University of the West of England Melvyn Smith Based on personal experience some simplification is needed. 7 May 14:59 Spain Inst. Biol. Mol y Cel de Plantas (IBMCP) (UPV-CSIC) Vicente Conejero Any change to decrease bureaucracy facilitating the processing and of proposals will be very wellcome. 7 May 13:14 Germany Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT Wim de Boer Filling out forms how many hours at which date a researcher has been thinking about his project is insane. Only bureaucrats can come up with such ideas. The output of a project should be measured in terms of science (publications, patents, talks, ..), not by engaging finance controllers checking how the money was spent. 7 May 12:20 Estonia National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics Risto Tanner A lot of funding instruments are focused mainly to the cross-borders cooperation of research and to promoting contacts between scientists with the pesumption, that basic research has been provided on the national level. But the latter is very unequal in member states. More projects for direct funding of research itself is needed, intending reasonable proportion of the total for cooperative purposes. 7 May 11:51 Spain Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Julio Escalona Whether at the European or national level, scientific research of all kinds is greatly hampered by a general lack of trust from administrations towards researchers, which results in the need to spend much valuable time and energy in complying with huge number of administrative requisites. The assumption seems to be that researchers are natural born delinquers that will misuse -or worse- their funding unless stopped by a super-cop-like pile of forms. Needles to say that more often than not those regulations take little notice of the actual context and needs of individual research projects, so you are forced to avoid risks and only investigate in those fields where expenses will fit nicely enough administrative expectations. 7 May 11:50 Hungary University of Miskolc Sandor Barany I tried to participate in two EU founded projects but the administration was so horrible that I gave up 7 May 11:21 Sweden Lund University Oxana Smirnova Research projects can and will lead to unpredictable results, therefore the strict EU rules on effort allocation and reporting are not appropriate, basically prohibiting research and forcing scientists to spend time on bureacracy. This must be changed, allowing freedom of research. Research projects must be allowed to fail: not every scientific study produces expected results, best results come completely unexpected. 7 May 11:01 Estonia Institute of Physics, University of Tartu Marko Kaasik The flexible and minimalistic rules, tolerant and risk-accepting practice of NordForsk (the science funding body of Nordic Council of Minsters) might be a positive example for entire Europe. 7 May 09:52 Sweden Lund Observatory Torben Andersen Couldnt agree more, after two projects we have had it ! 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. 7 May 09:35 Hungary Institute of Isotopes, Hungarian Academy of Science Zoltán Schay In the case of a consorcium, the administrative burden is annoying when the formal positon of a partner organisation changes. In the case of the CONCORDE project it took more the 4 month to get all the paperwork done when the Institue of Isotope got an independent status and was split off the Chemical Research Centre. This change hindered the EU financing of the whole consortium. 7 May 08:47 Spain Univ ersity of Barcelona Mª Isabel Trillas-Gay It is very important to simplify all burocracy in Europe in order to improve our competitivity 6 May 22:51 Spain Ikerbasque - University of the Basque Country Ezequiel Di Paolo Excessive regulation of scientific projects implies not so much distrust of researchers, but a method of control and intervention in the planning and execution of their activities. One would wish governments and public funding agencies would apply the same stringent measures in other areas of public spending (e.g., bailing out bankrupt banks). 6 May 22:35 Romania Universitatea Babes-Bolyai Liana Pop La bureaucratie des projets europeens decourage les chercheurs! 6 May 18:48 Germany Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Ulrich Nierste First steps could be the elimination of multiple reports (annual, midterm, final) for the same reporting period, replacing the tight ESR/ER definitions by PhD student and postdoc (used by national funding agencies), allow for flexibility in the use of the personnel costs (choose yourself whether to hire 3 PhD students or 2 postdocs, depending on the job market situation) and eliminate the collection of useless statistical data by the PIs (which costs a lot of time to collect and are not used for EU policy decisions anyway). 6 May 18:21 Romania President of the Societatea de Studii Clasice din Romania, afiliated on FIEC Barnea Alexandru From the Position, because it was no more place (!): chief of the Dept. of Ancient History and Archaeology from the University of Bucharest, Romania, membership of the Archaeological Institute V.Parvan, Bucharest, from the Romaniana Academy. 6 May 18:13 Spain Instituto Geologico y Minero de España Fernando Tornos It is something absolutelly important for our work. 6 May 18:13 Spain Universidad Politécnica de Marid Fernando García-Arenal Bureaucrazy often rinhibits application for EU research funds, as the amount of funds granted usually does not comensate for the compelxity of the justification. 6 May 16:32 Romania Babes-Bolyai University Radu Ardevan I agree totaly the ideea. 6 May 16:24 Hungary Chemical Research Center Hung Acad. Sci. Karoly Heberger simplify is a weak word for that. Even a draw (after pre-selection) would be more justified, more honest.... 6 May 15:23 Romania Brukenthal National Museum Dragos Diaconescu lets use the easiest way 6 May 15:08 Hungary KFKI RMKI Tamas Csorgo Decrease the burden of administration and simplify the rules as much as reasonably possible but please increase funding to science and education in the EU. 6 May 14:10 United Kingdom University of Essex Mohammed Ghanbari Eu support for research is vital, but unfortunately available resources are not sufficient and more funding is needed 6 May 13:16 United Kingdom University of Essex Martin Fleury The cost of running an EU project because of the bureaucratic overload has prevented my university from initiating any bids (it only supports joining pre-existing proposals). 6 May 11:58 Romania N/A Mihai Ovidiu Bica I fully endorse this declaration! 6 May 11:45 Italy Università di Napoli Federico II Annamaria Lima Too much bureaucracy subtracts time and energy to the research. 6 May 10:09 Netherlands Leiden University Nico Kaptein I fully agree with this statement 6 May 09:10 Czech Republic CERGE-EI Petr Zemcik I have received one grant in under FP6 and one under FP7. Compliance with all accounting and other rules has been very burdensome and distracting. Some flexibility with potential uses of the grant money is desired and the focus should be on the scientific output. 6 May 08:18 Romania Museum of Buzau County Costache Daniel I agree that idea because I am involved in a scientist project and I know how difficult it is to access European founds. Also I wish that a larger control of a European money and larger possibilities for all researchers and scientist to access this founds. 6 May 00:25 Israel Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Dan Tsafrir Requiring researchers to submit a report of their daily activities (how many hours each day) is much too much. 5 May 22:05 France University of Strasbourg Mebarek Alouani Science should be conducted, overseen, and refereed by scientists. Keep bureaucracy out. 5 May 22:02 Denmark Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute Johan Fynbo I think the goal should be to reach a level of bureaucracy similar to that known from national research funds (or smaller). It is in the interest of all to make the ERC as effective and attractive for the best scientists as possible. 5 May 21:51 France cnrs jean-louis gallani keep politics off of science. 5 May 19:03 Spain Universidad Complutense de Madrid José Ramón Mas Mayoral The researchers we have always had problems with bureaucracy, but now with online bureaucracy we really seem their slaves. 5 May 17:58 Spain University of Huelva Alfonso Vargas-Sánchez Instead of researchers, we are becoming burocracts and losing our direction. There is an amazing waste of time and talent because the excesive burden of paperwork, and this means lack of productivity and lack of European competitiveness. 5 May 17:40 France CNRS-Université de Strasbourg Charles Hirlimann Real democracy is based on trust, heavy bureaucracies are based on suspicion. 5 May 17:03 Spain Universidad de Huelva Cristina Fuentes-Audén Burocracy is a very big handicap to develop researching, because is a waste of time and human resources. 5 May 14:53 France CNRS - IPMC Bernard Mari I totally agree: excessive paperwork is killing science. 5 May 14:22 United Kingdom University of Manchester Diana Chase As Research Manager for 2 EC-funded studies, I would welcome any simplification in the administration / reduction in the bureaucracy. 5 May 13:06 France CNRS IPMC UMR6097 Simon SZMIDT Lot of time waste for untrusted researchers 5 May 12:05 Spain UNIVERSIDAD DE HUELVA Mª Carmen Cabrera I strongly support this declaration. 5 May 11:11 France CNRS Wim Crusio Please take the application forms away from the managers and make them scientifically realistic! 5 May 11:04 Spain Universidad de Huelva Mario E. Gomez Just joint the amount of time wasted in every application by all the participants and put a price on it, even evaluate the cost at minimal salary rate. 5 May 10:51 France CNRS, Muséum national dHistoire naturelle Jean-Denis Vigne The time that we waste with excessive administrative verifications is much more expensive for the European community (in terms of salaries) that the reduction of expenses that the European community obtains with these administrative verifications. 5 May 06:24 Israel Technion Yehudit Judy Dori This is a very important action the EU needs to take in order for researchers to spend time carrying out excellent research rather than paperwork 4 May 22:16 Spain CONSEJO SUPERIOR INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS Ramon Soriguer Support to reduce the burocracy in the EU scientific activities. 4 May 21:54 Germany Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich François Bry European funding programs suffer from a considerable administrative overhead. Furthermofe, reasearchers at most European universities do not get the administrative support they might expect from their employers. This situation has dramatic consequences on European research: Resources are shift from productive research to unproductive administration. 4 May 19:10 Other ITESM Miguel Gonzalez-Mendoza It is necessary that research moves with a lean (smart) policy consolidating i) fundamental research, ii) applied research iii) innovation & entrepreneurship. 4 May 18:09 Czech Republic Faculty of Informatics Masaryk University Karel Pala The EU bureaucracy eats up our time that should be used for research. Almost the same can be said about the national administration in the individual countries, e.g. in Czech Republic. 4 May 18:08 United Kingdom University of the West of England Hugo Gaggiotti I agree 4 May 17:09 Czech Republic Sun Microsystems Lenka Kasparova Simplify the whole process focused more on the projects results. In most cases I met only understanding the reporting process and all financial guidelines takes more time and energy than overall development work. 4 May 16:15 Germany Commission on Process safety Christian Jochum Complicated rules divert the focus of funding to projects fitting into these rules rather than to those which may lead to more sustainable results 4 May 15:50 United Kingdom University of Bristol Christopher Russell The current approach means scientific excellence plays a secondary role compared to spin. 4 May 15:33 Spain University of Valencia Joaquin Baixeras Paperwork and the need for huge teams is just discouraging scientists from applying for EU funds. I am sure the money is there but it is so difficult to get there. With this system we cannot really compete at international level. 4 May 15:02 United Kingdom UWE Alan Tapp Lets cut the red tape and take the handbrake off EU funded research 4 May 14:37 Spain Agencia Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas y Universidad de Sevilla Aurelio Serrano After nearly 30 years of experience in academic teaching and scientific research I can say that we lose more and more time on paperwork and bureaucracy tasks that consume an enormous effort that could be spent on real science. If this does not change soon, I am sure that together we will kill the goose of the golden eggs. 4 May 14:25 Spain Estación Biologica de Doñana (CSIC) Javier Juste Please facilitate our work not the opposite with piles of bureaucracy 4 May 14:24 Israel Technion Dov Dori Siplifying funding procedures will significantly raise Europes position in R&D. It is a must! 4 May 13:29 United Kingdom University College London Geraldine Cambridge I have recently finalised plans to coordinate clinical research with 2 simila centers in Portugal and Madrid. None of us have the time to negotiate the horrendous application EU application forms so we are back to trying to get small grants from our respective countries. What a waste! 4 May 12:58 United Kingdom University of Bristol Russell Cox The administrative burdens related to the application for funds, the administration of the grant and the post-project reporting are far out of proportion. Additionally, financial mismatches between the EU and the host organisation and severe lack of flexibility are positive disincentives to apply for EU funding. 4 May 12:48 Spain University of Alcala Angel Criado The detail asked at present in EC program reporting is becoming absurd. I wonder why adminstrative personnel in the EC need to know the exact amount (in enzyme units, for example) that was purchased by a scientist when developing the project? 4 May 12:47 Czech Republic Institute of Chemical Technology, Prague Igor Linhart Small meaningful and controllable project should be supported rather than huge ones, which are not only difficult to control from the inside but also difficult to evaluate. Formal requirements and financial regulation should be kept on a reasonable level, so that a qualified scientist does not need to hire an agency for writing project proposal and/or for project administration. The need for such an agency clearly indicates that formal requirements and administration become more important than the scientific content. It is wasting of public resources. 4 May 12:39 United Kingdom Bristol University Varinder Aggarwal Please can we focus on the important issues, which must be the science. 4 May 12:17 United Kingdom University of Bristol Paul May Red-tape is killing research, and demotivating scientists. Something needs to be done. 4 May 12:09 Spain Instituto de Medicina Genómica Manuel Perez-Alonso I strongly agree with this initiative. The paper work related with EC projects is really disgusting. 4 May 12:09 United Kingdom University of Bristol Jeremy Harvey Though it is harder to use implicit controls to enforce financial probity across a wide area such as Europe compared to the situation in a smaller country, it should nevertheless still be possible - and lightening the burden of administrative checks is definitely very desirable. Also, funding should be aimed primarily at supporting excellence in European research - not at furthering political goals linked to structuring the European research area. 4 May 12:00 United Kingdom University of Bristol Paul Pringle This is long overdue. 4 May 11:49 Italy University of Trieste Valter Sergo I have been evaluators for potential projects and reviewer of funded projects. I have found both evaluation and reviewing procedures impeccable and very simple. Conversely, the administrative and bureaucratic burden for researchers who receive funding is barely tollerable, to the point that project coordinators end up working full time on coordination, rather than on research. 4 May 11:33 Spain Instituto de Fisica Teorica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Morgan Le Delliou unnecessary complexities of the Marie Curie Grant applications have impeded many applications of worthy colleagues, as well as mine 4 May 11:06 Israel Technion Simon van Dam While basic control measures are important in order to ensure that public funding is used for the purposes it is intended for, currently the measures are an overkill and it actually deters many very talented researchers to participate. It would be a great research topic to see whether the costs of excessive measures as incurred both by the EC and the institutions, partnering in FP7, would indeed not exceed the loss of potential participation. In addition, it would be great to measure the excessive costs of the measures versus the potential loss due to fraud and other abuse & misuse. It is my gut feeling that the cure is more harmful that the illness. 4 May 11:04 Germany IfADo Michael Falkenstein This is a highly necessary and urgent initiative which will help talented and motivated scientist to apply for EU funding 4 May 10:44 Germany Max Planck institute for molecular cell biology and genetics Hyman Anthony Senior scientists are those with the experience to run the large networks. There time should be spent coordinating the science and not the red tape. Currently a coordinator is forced to wrestle with the small details rather than the big picture 4 May 10:41 Cyprus Cyprus University of Technology Christos Papachristoforou Bureaucracy paralyses research 4 May 10:10 Finland University of Helsinki Anna Mauranen Findingds and insights are more important than going to the bureaucratic motions 4 May 09:06 Cyprus Cyprus University of Technology Dimitris Tsaltas It is of our great concern that this approach from the EU authorities is also spreading to a national level. This type of management struggles research and puts second thoughts for new grant applications. All relevant authorities need to understand that it is of the researchers benefit to save the funds and use them reasonably in order to promote research further. This will result to both personal satisfaction and better promotion status. 4 May 07:25 Slovak Republic Institute of Plant Gentics and Biotechnology SAS Ildiko Matusikova Administration should not take more time than the research itself. 4 May 00:22 Czech Republic Institute of Chemical Technology, Department of organic chemistry Michal Májek It is necessary not only to reduce the paperwork requested by the EU, but in the Central Europe, the reduction of the paperwork requested by the state grant agencies is even more pressing matter. Sciencists are here to do the research, not to fill forms, after all... 3 May 22:41 Germany FU Berlin Knut Reinert It becomes more and more cumbersome to manage the administrative burden for EU proposals. Many good researchers refrain from applying for funding or are intimidated by the hurdles to take. This has to change. 3 May 21:47 Netherlands CNCR Matthijs Verhage I find the administration required by EU for my funded projects (FP6 and FP7) as well as the burden for applying for new projects too tough. It takes up too much energy from scientists who cannot focus on their core bussiness. Simplification will be a major relief and major benefit for the operations in my institute 3 May 21:40 Israel Technion Eli Ben-Sasson EU funding and reporting principles should be similar to those of leading research funding agencies worldwide, such as the those of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF). 3 May 21:25 France Univ. de Provence Julien Keller La bureaucratie, y en a marre... 3 May 20:50 Israel Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Hillel Pratt Having seen the administrative maze my colleagues have to go through in handling EU grants, I have so far refrained from submitting. I think researchers time is better spent doing what they do best - research - than handling endless paperwork. 3 May 20:33 Italy Italian Liver Foundation Claudio Tiribelli Make it simpler and more approachable. 3 May 19:26 Sweden Uppsala University Wang Yi Research is about thinking, not writing, counting and talking! 3 May 19:16 Israel The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Yoav Livney to simplify is to understand! 3 May 18:15 Italy University of Trieste Sergio Paoletti I totally agree with the Declaration 3 May 17:05 Italy Joint Research Centre, European Commission Vittorio Barale excessive paperwork is suffucating the science 3 May 16:52 Germany German Aerospace Center (DLR) Anthony Gardner The complexity of the current European funding process creates a significant overhead for the group applying. This discourages applications and reduces the funding available for research. Changing the current system will be difficult, but the amount of paperwork ideally needs to be cut to be not more than 10% of the total cost of a project. 3 May 16:30 Israel Technion Izhak Etsion I do hope that this act will indeed simplify doing research in Europe. The administrative burdon required so far from the researchers is much too much. 3 May 16:11 Israel Technion Faculty of Medicine Noam Ziv Please simplify!!! Its impossible to do science this way!!! 3 May 15:33 France HELIO International Laura Wililamson As an NGO that works on energy and governance issues we receive a number of requests to either lead or participate in EU-funded grants. Unfortunately we have to turn down a number of interesting projects simply because we dont have the internal capacity to carry out the required reporting and accounting paperwork on various projects simultaneously. Thus, despite having the technical competency and experience small organisations are at a disadvantage given current administrative requirements. 3 May 12:41 Italy Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Antonio Rovelli The cost of bureaucracy is increasingly high in scientific projects. We must reverse this trend. 3 May 10:42 Italy Politecnico di Torino Pietro Mandracci Excessive bureaucracy strongly reduces the innovation potential of research 3 May 09:49 Czech Republic Masaryk University Lenka Zajickova Scientists are people doing their job as hobby. Therefore, they should be trusted to spend financial support honestly for a good scientific purpose. Science cannot be planned and control in every detail. 3 May 09:46 Germany DLR Marc Hoefinger From experience of preparing proposals as well as participating in reserach projects of FP 6, FP 7 and the JTI Clean Sky, it is clear that the administraive process following the regulations defined by the EC needs some level of expert knowledge. The ressources associated with that process are disproportional large. This is supported by the fact that private companys exist that specialise on supporting the preparation of proposals as well as the project management of European research projects. And there is a need for this support. The administrative process definitely needs to be reduces severely. Research needs flexibility to create innovations. In addition the european research funding should not focus on large projects with massive budget like JTI. It needs the much more efficient small projects with a managable administrative process to support excellent ideas in an early stage. 3 May 09:36 Austria punkt international GmbH Brigitte Rohner The different units of the EC who are somehow involved in the support of a research project should more efficiently interact and communicate their interaction-results, e.g. with the support of an accordingly extended version of the Participant Portal (PP). These are units ranging from development of the PP to finance to audit units. 3 May 07:33 Lithuania Institute of Biotechnology Kestutis Sasnauskas On behalf of my colleagues I ask the European Council of Ministers and the Parliament to urgently simplify the financial and administrative provisions related to the Framework Programme. 3 May 00:09 Italy University of LAquila - DIMEG Pierluigi Beomonte Zobel ... 2 May 15:52 Germany University of Bremen Christian Freksa Scientific considerations must gain over administrative considerations; otherwise much tax money will be wasted. 2 May 15:27 Italy Politecnico di Torino Alessandro De Stefano administrative burden is hard to sustain and expensive Lobbying is often prevailing on research content quality Industries too often participate to promote what they already have. 2 May 12:43 Hungary Eotvos University, Fac. Sci, Institute of Chemistry Peter Surjan If a scientific project is financed, control should take care of the scientific production rather than of financial details. Never ask a researcher what he/she is going to investigate after a year. Science is developing too fast to expect a frank a serious answer to such a question. When a project is evaluated, emphasize should taken on previous scientific success of the applicant, rather than the promises written in the project, which are, by the logic of science, always tentative. 1 May 21:37 Germany State and University Library Goettingen Margo Bargheer Research projects funded by the EC increasingly are increasing to become highly unattractive to partner in or even risky. The administrative burden and over-proportional duty for extensive and highly formalised reporting creates an atmosphere of mistrust and takes up so much of the personnel power that the actual project work either suffers or is done on an uneligible basis. True innovation becomes rather difficult in such an environment. The system needs to change urgently. The policies of many European national funding organisations should be taken as examples that a mutual trust in research funding does not lead to fraud but to the contrary - effective and innovative research. 1 May 18:58 Italy Politecnico di Torino Mario De Salve I completely agree. Research is not bureaucracy. If we waste our time with admnistrative stuff less is the research time and less are the research results. 1 May 18:40 France Institut Telecom/ Telecom Bretagne Sandrine Vaton Too much time spent on bureaucracy issues. We hardly have time for research itself. 1 May 11:58 Germany Universität Erfurt Christian Lehmann The amount of bureaucracy involved in submitting a grant proposal is awesome. Especially for the humanities, where the amount of project funding asked for and expected is much lower than in the technical disciplines, the benefit-cost ratio, coupled with the ridiculously low chance of actually receiving a grant, is just daunting. The current EU regulations favor science-businessmen instead of serious researchers. 1 May 11:21 United Kingdom Kingston University Peter Hooda I agree completely, particularly the requirement of some much paperwork. It will be helpful if this could be simplified. 1 May 11:15 France University of Rouen Vic Norris Bureaucratic correctness (BC) is wasting vast amounts of our time. 1 May 10:19 Spain Faculty of Sciences, Vigo University George Dragos Zaharescu EU research founding is highly inaccessible for early career researchers (PhD and Postdocs), not to say unattractive. This is reflected mainly in terms and conditions of calls. There is far too much paperwork and requirements which are most of the time discouraging. Major reform/simplification of the system is needed for research and networking to go efficient. 1 May 08:44 Other Massey University Erik Champion More time should be spent on research and less on reading requirements. As an ex-EU researcher now overseas my sympathy goes out to my European colleagues. 1 May 01:30 Belgium KULeuven & VIB Johan Thevelein Research should be funded and evaluated primarily based on scientific performance. 30 Apr 23:27 Italy Politecnico di Torino Angelo Tartaglia The burden of complying with the European burocracy, both while presenting a proposal and afterwords in case of success, is frightening and time consuming. It requires either specialized and dedicated administrative personnel or research personnel to unproperly dedicate themselves to burocracy instead than to research. The European Union should strengthen the substance evaluation of the quality of the proposal and of the results rather than multiplying formalities. 30 Apr 22:33 Switzerland Euresearch Nancy-Lara Millan So true, and FP7 seems to be even more bureaucratic than ever... 30 Apr 21:42 Italy Politecnico di Torino Marco Cantamessa Real research is about quality work in the labs, and delivering results. When too much effort is spent with admin, forms and timesheets, you dont only have a big waste of time, but you ultimately transform researchers into bureaucrats, and Universities into something else. 30 Apr 20:48 Germany Chair of Theoretical Chemistry Lorenz Cederbaum If administration is heavy, there is much less time for research left. Obviously, this is counter productive because the money granted is for research and not for administration. Or did I misunderstand something and the money granted is for administartion and research is only an excuse ? 30 Apr 19:14 Italy Università di Trento Marco Ronchetti As a coordinator of an Asia-Link project and as a researcher, I could experience how much bureaucratic hurdles can make life almost impossible. While agreeing on the need of providing sound reporting and verification, I think it could be done in a simpler, more effective and less time consuming way. 30 Apr 18:57 Israel Bar Ilan University Andre Reznikov I support it. 30 Apr 18:10 Italy University Federico II, Napoli Giorgio Franceschetti Lets get rid of the bureocrauts, and be free scientists! 30 Apr 18:04 France INRA Bruno Fady I agree that the administrative burden for financing research and time spent for it is overwhelming and counterproductive. Time spent evaluating projects is also tremendous and thus not devoted to research. Grants should be distributed at least in part directly to recognized labs. 30 Apr 17:55 USA CNRS GRACIELA SCHNEIER-MADANES The complexity of the programsubmissions has discouraged me and many of my collaborators and young researchers 30 Apr 17:51 France Institut des Sciences de la Terre dOrléans (ISTO) Claire Ramboz All reforms increase the number of structures, the number and size of reports to produce. Please, could not Europe show show the opposite way for once. 30 Apr 17:48 Germany University and State Library of Goettingen (SUB) Ralf Stockmann This is oh so true. 30 Apr 17:31 Turkey Mediterraanean Coastal Foundation Erdal Özhan I was in charge of a SMAP III project during 2006-07. The spending of the money (purchasing) according to the EU rules was the most difficult challange during the course of the project. 30 Apr 17:15 France CNRS Sevket Sen Project too much concerned applicated sciences. Procedures of submission of projects too havy 30 Apr 16:59 Italy Politecnico di Torino Igor S. STIEVANO I completely agree. 30 Apr 16:52 Italy Politecnico di Torino Marco Mellia As a coordinator of a Strep and as a researcher, Im puzzled by the time I waste to deal with bureaucracy and depressed by the evaluation of the project research result evaluation. Europe must run against US, China and other big countries. Weight the results, get rid of the form. 30 Apr 16:50 Italy POLITECNICO DI TORINO Roberto Graglia We all should be happy that in the past century(ies) nobody ever implemented the present EU system to support researchers and basic research works, otherwise we still have to do it without electricity, radio, radio communication, telephone, computers, etc. Do our politicians really think that this grant mechanism is doing any good to our community? 30 Apr 16:42 Italy Politecnico di Torino Bruno Panella At present too much time, also by the scientific responsible of the projects, must be devolved to financing and administrative issues. A strong effort has to be addressed to simplify the management procedures, by giving more weight to the scientific and technical work. 30 Apr 16:36 France CNRS Luis Garcia-Alles Funding proposals are often discouraging due to excessive administrative demands and because over years the number of partners to gain visibility is increasing steadly. 30 Apr 16:32 Italy Politecnico di Torino Paolo Guglielmi Easy rules for easy control means more founding for research 30 Apr 16:27 Italy Politecnico di Torino Lorenzo Mamino Sono daccordo sulla proposta 30 Apr 16:06 Italy Politecnico di Torino Giovanni-Vincenzo Fracastoro This is really a worthy initiative which could improve not only the work of researchers, but society at large. Stop wasting money and time looking after the administrative matters and start considering the REALresults of our work! This is the only way in which Europe will be able to survive! 30 Apr 15:51 Italy Politecnico di Torino Marco Carlo Masoero I totally agree with the statement. Europe risks to strangle itself with too many regulations! 30 Apr 15:06 France CEMHTI-CNRS Patrick Echegut Dear European Community staff Please trust european researchers ...please visit laboratories ! Please try to live as a researcher in a laboratory ... And of course you will simplify the forms ... thyank you by advance ..... 30 Apr 14:44 Germany University Hospital Aachen, RWTH Aachen University Stefan Uhlig I have not yet seen any solid non-anecdotal evidence that the framework program has helped to promote science, european collaboration or the european industry. In the absence of such evidence I argue that most of the framework money has been spent in vain. The ERC is going the right way and a big portion of the the framework money should be given to the ERC. 30 Apr 14:38 France INRA Denis Baize Laissez nous du temps pour faire de la recherche plutot que de remplir de la paperasse ! 30 Apr 13:54 Germany TU Darmstadt Martin Ziegler May I suggest to handle applications for EU money via each countrys local dedicated science funding agency (e.g. the very compentent DFG in case of Germany). 30 Apr 13:48 Germany TU Dresden Franz Baader In addition to the burden that the bureaucratic overhead imposes on researchers, this also leads to worse rather than better control of the outcome of projects. What appears to count is - in the proposal phase: making big promises that can never be met - during the running project: writing long deliverables in time, without much concern about the quality of the content - after the project: making big claims about what was achieved, without much relationship to the actual achievements 30 Apr 12:49 Germany University of Göttingen Daniel Jackson As a recent appointment to a German University of Excellence, I am constantly dismayed at the amount of paperwork that needs to be completed for the simplest of daily operations, let alone a more significant action such as hiring someone. Most of this paperwork seems to stem from the belief that all academics are either not mature enough to manage a research budget, or are corrupt. 30 Apr 12:24 France Mueum National dHistoire Naturelle Evelyne Heyer Prodecude need to be simplify at the application level and further simplify during the project, including the possibility to take new avenue and risk 30 Apr 12:04 Russia International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kossobokov ... And Folly (Doctor-like) controuling skill, ... (William Shakespeare SONNET LXVI - THE 1609 QUARTO VERSION) 30 Apr 11:45 France Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle Jean-François Ponge Research is passion Research is endeavour Research is better world Research is not bureaucracy 30 Apr 11:13 Greece AUTH Maria Lazaridou In fact every coordinator must be supported by a manager if he wants to continue to be only a researcher. But this is impossible so a lot of his time is consummed in managing the economics of the project. 30 Apr 10:51 Germany Karlsruher Institut für Technologie Gregor Snelting Buerocratic overhead for EU projects is way too high. This damages productivity of research. 30 Apr 10:33 Israel Bar-Ilan University Aren Maeir The EU research related processes are in dire need of simplifcation - and of using simpler, and more clearly understandable language! 30 Apr 10:33 Israel Bar Ilan University Nadav Shnerb Laisser Explorer 30 Apr 10:21 Germany Universität Bremen John Bateman I have been involved in a variety of EU funding instruments over the past 20 years. The non-research orientation and criteria now applied in many (especially larger) EU projects is of serious concern: the level of scientific expertise in the review process can also sometimes be wanting. The focus of a reporting-mentality that ticks off topics in projects according to poorly conceived numerical criteria and conformance to paragraphs in contracts is not commensurate with guranteeing that the international state of the art in research areas has been adequately responded to and incoporated. All of these concerns support the need for a significant simplication and refocus on research excellence in EU research funding. 30 Apr 10:03 France CNRS Malcolm Buckle I agree with the document 30 Apr 09:45 Switzerland Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Jean-Michel Giovannoni To collaborate at the European scale is certainly complexe. However some simplifications might be possible 30 Apr 09:12 Israel Bar-Ilan University Moshe Deutsch Every minute spent on beurocracy is a minute less for research ! 30 Apr 08:32 Romania The Institute for Researching Quality of Life Stanciu Mariana It is important to get easier The Truth by scientific research and also to give it easier to the people by any media! 30 Apr 07:13 Czech Republic ICPF Jan Schraml EU bureaucracy has negative effects not only on science; overregulation in which rules have precedence over the results kills competitive chances of the whole EU in all fields. 30 Apr 05:28 Romania National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics Rodica Alexandrescu I totally agree with with the 2010Commission initiative to boost research and innovation by making it easier to apply for and manage EU grant. 29 Apr 21:59 Italy UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE - DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY PIERO BAGLIONI I completely agree. Also the reviewing process should be reformed. 29 Apr 19:07 France IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse-3) Martin Strecker European research programmes currently seem to favour huge consortia that have the means to do intense lobbying in Brussels. They consume most of their resources on management and coordination, are too large for real cooperation and have a particularly low input-output ratio. It would be more efficient to support smaller structures. 29 Apr 18:52 United Kingdom School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds Alan Watson I rarely agreed with Mrs Thatcher but she was totally correct about the bureuacracy in Brussels. I have experienced this both in writing applications and managing one grant. Too much money is spent on monitoring and reviewing in very fine detail. 29 Apr 17:20 United Kingdom University of Leeds Paul Ogden Research is an essential support for any kind of progress. Why hamper the funding the applications for funding with meaningless red tape. 29 Apr 16:41 United Kingdom University of Leeds Heather Cooper Too much red tape wastes money and time that could and should be put to better use doing actual research! 29 Apr 16:20 Netherlands VU Free University Hospital Henk Blom The amount of paperwork is ridiculous 29 Apr 16:18 France Muséum national dHistoire naturelle Jean-François Alexandre VOISIN too much administration kills administration, as well as the concerned institution. 29 Apr 16:15 France CNRS Alan Pradel The more we waste our time with administrative stuff, the less we study. 29 Apr 16:11 France IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse-3) Serguei Soloviev simplification and trust are urgently needed 29 Apr 15:46 Czech Republic Masaryk University Pavel Kubacek Bureaucracy always has followed the second law in a particular manner, namely by multiplying and promptly handling trivial matters, important matters being never solved. 29 Apr 15:39 France Université de Strasbourg Vicens Jacques no comment 29 Apr 14:52 Netherlands Leiden University Jan Reedijk The growth of bureaucrats/administrators has been much faster than the growth of funding. So regulations have grown into the absurd. Simple protocols based on past performance and exciting plans should be enough for funding, with only a final report (after which the final x% can be received). 29 Apr 14:49 France Institut de Science et dIngénierie Supramoléculaires - ISIS Appan Merari Masillamani Hope there is more funding for research and development and the stipend for researchers can be increased (which is well deserved) 29 Apr 14:44 Portugal Instituto de Medicina Molecular Tiago Outeiro We deserve to be trusted 29 Apr 14:43 France Universite de Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines Francis Taulelle The constraints for applying and for managing european projects are so heavy that it produces a loss of efficiency instead of an increase of efficiency in research. Not only risks in research but also in managing funds has to be managed properly... 29 Apr 14:41 Portugal Instituto de Medicina Molecular Federico Herrera Trust!!! 29 Apr 14:36 France Université du Maine Florent Calvayrac We end up in a situation where more than 100% of the available work time of permanent researchers (arguably, the most qualified, or at least the ones with the most experience) is allowed to writing proposals, evaluating them, and managing obscure administrative rules for someone who does not have a master degree in law and public administration. Actual research is almost only performed by PhD students and postdocs, which is a good formation for them but wastes some potentially productive years for still young permanent researchers. I am not sure that the relative anarchy of research which was practised until the early eighties was less productive or creative in the end. 29 Apr 14:02 Sweden AASS, Örebro University Achim Lilienthal I am very happy with the administrational burden and the level of mutual trust in some projects. In my experience these things are often handled extremely well. I sign this declaration since I have also experienced severe outliers deviating strongly from the generally good impression. 29 Apr 14:00 Denmark CBS Torkil Clemmensen simplication and clarity in application and evaluation procedurs to help all stakeholders to understand how to apply and how the application has been evaluated 29 Apr 13:04 Greece University of Patras Spyros Kriwas I agrre completely 29 Apr 12:19 Israel Technion Jack Lavan more freedom and trust is needed in the case of budget management of EC projects. 29 Apr 11:43 Portugal University of the Algarve Isabel Cardigos According to my experience the process involving candidateships for projects is the main obstacle for the going ahead of many worthy and interesting initiatives. If we managed to pass this main test of filling forms and sending them online, this was at the cost of enormous stress and work delayed or undone elsewhere. Ones sense of fulfilment should be invested in more creative tasks than that of filling forms with success. 29 Apr 11:22 Sweden Umeå University Wolfgang Schröder More and more administartive work is put onto reserchers and less and less time is left for research. 29 Apr 11:21 Czech Republic Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences Czech Republic Elena Buixaderas A policy in which one must spend many hours to read the instructions and fill all the application forms instead of focusing on the scientific level and output of the project is asking for, definitely HAS TO BE WRONG, please change it. We want to make science and not bureaucratic tasks. 29 Apr 10:47 Greece Agricultural University of Athens Antonis Mistriotis Most of the topics announced in the calls of FP7 Cooperation program are proposed by the corresponding Technology Platforms. The participation in the Technology Platforms (TP) further increased the burden of administrative and managerial costs for organizations competing for EU research funds, since lobbying in the TPs is now necessary for promoting a research topic into the calls. In this way, the whole procedure has become too complicated and the difficulties for a really innovative idea to reach the proposal phase have increased. It is urgent to simplify and open the selection process in future EU programs. 29 Apr 10:38 Austria Technische Universität Ulrich Schubert I stopped participation in EU calls because the time spent for bureaucracy in three EU projects was out of proportion and killed all real research. Instead of following up our research ideas we were filling pages nobody would ever read. 29 Apr 10:30 Czech Republic Institute of Hydrodynamics Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v. v. i. Pavel Vlasak Financial and administrative rules should be effective and simple, researcher have to concern mainly on his job – research and/or development. 29 Apr 10:13 Ireland National University of Ireland Galway Howard Fearnhead I have benefited enormously from EU funding with a transfer of knowledge grant and a re-integration grant, and I am very grateful. However, the adminstrative aspects are daunting and bewildering, despite professional and dedicated work by my contact within the EU bureaucracy, especially for those entering the EU research sphere after working in other systems. 29 Apr 08:56 Germany MTU Aero Engines GmbH Weiss Eugen It is really necessary, to allow to use the common -nationally und internationally acknowledged and certified accounting and calculation methodes (no parallel accounting system) 28 Apr 22:18 Canada Université de Montréal Gilles Brassard My European friends keep telling me how lucky I am to be in Canada, so that I can benefit from hassle-free NSERC, which provides my funding 5 years at a time with no obligations whatsoever to report back to them during that entire time! 28 Apr 21:25 Denmark Aarhus University Hospital Christian Wejse The signature business is getting out of hand. We have to sign budgets and obtain signatures from financial departments and prefects and a 6 page budget is rejected if only the last page with signatures is scanned, all pages have to be in the pdf. As if this signature circus safeguards anything, if they do not trust us in the first place why grant us money anyway 28 Apr 19:26 Czech Republic Institute of Molecular Genetics AS CR Petr Svoboda Its about time to take control over research from hands of bureaocratic administrators. Its about time to give the right meaning to the term administrative service. 28 Apr 18:30 Greece Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens Yassemi Capetanaki As a faculty in the USA (Baylor College of Medicine) for around 17 years I have written a lot of NIH and other grants. If I add together the time lost for the administrative part of all these grant proposals, all these years, the number is honestly less that the time I have spent for just one FP7 Proposal in which I served as coordinator 28 Apr 18:02 Hungary Chemical Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Istvan Mayer It is unfortunate that researchers often have to spend a comparable amount of time (and forces) with the bureaucracy as with the actual research. 28 Apr 16:36 Portugal Universidade de Aveiro Fernao Vistulo de Abreu Researchers should concentrate on research, not on bureaucracy. Today the most important people in research, do no research. That is a problem, isnt it??? 28 Apr 16:14 Czech Republic Institute of Microbiology of the Academy of Sciences Zdenek Kamenik Look at www.vedazije.cz (in Czech) or www.vedazije.cz/en (partially translated in English) 28 Apr 15:44 Czech Republic Institute of Microbiology, CR Academy of Sciences Karel Sigler At the same time when banks, loan sharks, construction firms in collution with ministry and local administration officals, concrete lobbies and such like bleed the countries and their budgets for billions, scientists are forced (by a similar brand of officials) to present every invoice, have validated and approved every scrap of paper or trest tube for fear they could embezzle some public money. They are forced to evaluate and re-evaluate themselves, and prove to people who are totally ignorant of the nature of research that they are worth further financing. 28 Apr 15:38 Hungary Institute of Experimental Medicine Laszlo Acsady I have already applied to Framework and it took to much of my research time. 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 28 Apr 14:06 Greece FORTH-ICS Ioannis Askoxylakis Research funding should be simple and continuous, based mainly on academic excellence. Stop creating “monster” projects (huge IPs), stop encouraging big industries to participate in research projects without real effort (based only on their names and their connections with the Commission). Create the “Researcher History profile” in EU funded projects, based on past achievements, completed projects evaluations, quality of deliverables of completed projects, impact etc, and use it (together with academic metrics like impact factor of journals, acceptance ratio of conferences, patents etc) for evaluation of academic excellence. 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 ( 28 Apr 03:02 Czech Republic University of Ostrava Vilem Novak The general assumption In communist times was: every person is a thief, wants to misuse the funds and to do nothing.This led to overregulations which led precisely what they were afraid of: people pretended to do something, wrote what clerks wanted to see but the truth was far away. With EU, the situation is repeating. But the communism broke ....! 27 Apr 21:22 Belgium University of Liege Serge Hiligsmann We also should claim for the same or similar submission forms in any funding instruments available in all european countries. 27 Apr 17:08 Italy National Council of Research Caterina De Simone Please, reduce the administrative burden of EU funded projects. 27 Apr 15:32 Belgium Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Filip Volckaert We have coordinated and participated in some 10 EU research projects, networks and coordination actions. Sadly enough the administrative burden has grown over the years to the degree that it increasingly stiffles creative research. Not any other research agency we work with distrusts so much its grantees. Dear EU administrators, parliamentarians and council members, please be sensible and reverse this trend asap. 27 Apr 13:12 Belgium University of Liege Edwin De Pauw The administrative load is by far too high and some administrative constrains are brakes for innovation. 27 Apr 12:59 Netherlands Wageningen University and Research Centre, Food and Biobased Products Hans Mooibroek Too much control is more a sign of weakness than of strength. Carefull control of Deliverables and Milestones does not necessarily lead to good science and to succesful implementation of project results. 27 Apr 12:14 Czech Republic Masaryk University Crina-Maria Ionescu I find the grant application process overly bureaucratic and genuinely depressing. I believe the conditions are too specific and the time spent on writing proper grant applications prevents real scientists from doing real research. 27 Apr 12:13 Czech Republic Masaryk university Lubomir Janda Bureaucracy stifles creative thorought and demotivates work efforts. 27 Apr 10:49 Austria Karl-Franzens University of Graz Thomas Schmickl 1000+ pages of deliverables and reports per project per year is too much. This holds for the scientists working in these projects, for the poor reviewers that have to read that stuff before reviews and for poor officers that have to read tens of thousands of pages, as they have many projects. It just slows down scientific process. As a comparison, our national funded projects in Austria (FWF) require 2-3 written pages of reporting per year and about 20 pages at the end of the project. 26 Apr 23:39 Czech Republic Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences Pavel Materna All this bureaucracy causes that it is simply impossible to work and solve the problems where one is competent. We are disturbed and we need concentration. We will never read all these pages that are of null importance for us. 26 Apr 16:13 Germany MTU Aero Engines Jochen Gier Administration should be as lean as possible to free resources (people and their time) to work on creative technical work. 26 Apr 09:59 Belgium Université catholique de Louvain Peter Van Roy The main criteria for evaluating research should be quality and innovation of the science and technology. Evaluation of management should be binary (pass/fail), not a numerical score that is added to the overall score. The experts chosen for the evaluation should be the *best* researchers in the area, not just *average* researchers, which is the current situation. 25 Apr 23:16 France CryptoExperts Pascal Paillier The administrative management of research projects within the EU framework program could and should be greatly simplified. The human resources one has to invest in bureaucratic tasks when being partner of a research project are dramatically high for SMEs and results in a loss of energy and precious time. We all agree that such a simplification is not easy to plan, but there must exist some middle-ground arangement to save time and effort. 25 Apr 13:24 United Kingdom European Process Safety Centre Richard Gowland The amount of bureacracy in: a) Form filling at proposal stage b) Data provision and reporting throughout projects Is grossly out of proportion with the overall objective. Smaller organisations do not have the infrastructure to cope. Industry rejects most opportunities because of the burden. It is astonishing that this degree of complexity has resulted in organisations coming into existence simply to offer the service of navigating the minefield of bureaucracy for a share of the financial outcomes! Furthermore, the various types of projects is bewidering. e.g. JTIs and shared cost etc.... I despair! Inevitably, the funds go to those projects presented by the organisations most able to deal with the bureaucracy and not necessarily to those projects with the greatest merit. 25 Apr 11:11 Czech Republic Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University Zdenek Vrbka The European Union should be inspired by financing of U.S. grants 25 Apr 00:05 Belgium ICTEAM, Université catholique de Louvain Laurent Jacques It would be a shame that public money, initially dedicated to research, would be just spend for the time taken by the EU admnistrative tasks and not for that research ... but it starts to be the case ... really 23 Apr 17:44 Portugal OPT - Optimização e Planeamento de Transportes, S.A. Joao Cunha It takes a lot of effort to make processes simple and easy to follow. 23 Apr 16:48 Ireland Dublin City University Mark Roantree More administrative burden means less time for research and a reduction in the impact of this research. It is time to change. 23 Apr 15:22 Belgium Université catholique de Louvain Pascal Dupuis I would like to invest my time and energy into performing research, not run after funding, writing financial reports, prove that buying something for two euros was done the right way, and so on 23 Apr 14:44 Czech Republic Masaryk University Tomas Pitner If bureaucracy cost only time of the administrators and overhead money, it would not be that bad. But in reality, it always costs valuable time and energy of the researchers which consequently makes them less competitive. Always. So, let us minimize it. 23 Apr 14:02 Germany MTU Aero Engines GmbH Andreas Fiala Backbone frame document (no changes for at least 10 years) Describing changes form FPn to FPn+1 only. Less changes 23 Apr 11:41 Sweden University of Gothenburg Margareta Ahlqwist The “paper exercise” (by post, by e-mail and the web) is tremendous, from proposal to negotiation and, not least, the reporting. It is necessary to reduce the administration in all these steps by a rational simplification that influences all levels of the staff at the Commission. 23 Apr 09:49 Spain Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Manuel Zúñiga Many times I have wondered whether the EU research program is about research at all or just a means of getting as many bureaucrats as possible in the payroll. I am glad to learn that many more people shared this misgiving. 23 Apr 09:19 Spain IPLA-CSIC Victor Ladero A reduction in the amount of bureaucracy that are required by EU, not only in the application but along the Project (Tons of reports, deliverables, etc) would allow much time to research and successful development of the Project within consortia. 23 Apr 09:11 France INRA Francis Martin Stop the administrative burden. Were tired of filling useless forms and never ending reports. 22 Apr 23:34 Poland ESAPROJEKT Sp. z o.o. Rafal Dunal :) 22 Apr 19:46 Belgium Ghent University Dominique Adriaens Current administrative load forms a definite threshold for even considering in engaging into a collaborative research project. 22 Apr 19:10 United Kingdom University of Edinburgh Gareth Leng The administrative burden associated with applications for European Research Funding is a serious disincentive particularly for the very best laboratories. If you want the involvement of the very best scientists, it is important that their as much of their time is actually spent on science rather than on administration or on administratively overcomplex application processes. It is particularly important to recognise that cutting edge science follows a discovery-led path that does not readily conform to pre-established protocols; overspecification of research protocols at contract stage does not necessarily make for good science and effective use of public money. 22 Apr 19:05 Germany MTU Aero Engines GmbH Stephan Servaty New regulations for financial statements in FP 7 (e.g. calculate the RTD costs based on individual personnel rates) put additional burden on each participant in the research programme. This is not considered justified since there are national price checks as well. Thus a doubling of work is induced. 22 Apr 17:58 Sweden University of Gothenburg Thrandur Björnsson Ive been participant and/or coordinator of RTD projects of the 4, 5, 6, and 7FP, and financial handling has become increasingly difficult. As a participant in a large 6FP project, Ive yet to receive final payments almost 2 years after I submitted my cost statements and audit certificate, probably because other partners (minor SMEs) in the project have not sent in their forms. At the beginning of the 7FP, there were long texts about increased trust, cutting of red tape etc, none of this has materialized. I say this as a coordinator of a large 7FP RTD project. 22 Apr 17:46 United Kingdom University of Cambridge Giles Yeo I am the coordinator of FP7- HEALTH- 2009- 241592 EurOCHIP, from the Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge. I have read and fully support this declaration. Yours Giles Yeo 22 Apr 17:27 Sweden UGOT Suzanne Dickson I coordinate an EC 7th Framework project. Between being selected for funding and the contract being signed, over 9 months were spent negotiating, involving at least 9 person months effort (it could be double that if you include administrators as well as scientists). Our science did not improve by this exercise. It was a tremendous waste of resources. Moreover, by the time the project started, we had lost the competitive edge over US researchers as they beat us to publication in several sub-projects. I wholey support any initiative that reduces the administrative burden on scientists. The whole process was a paper exercise and does not change the research we will do. It was exhauting and unproductive and prevented us from getting on with the research. 22 Apr 16:28 Belgium Ghent university kristof dierckens Concerning reporting: please do not make us write a full report and ask at the same time to get a report on each deliverable that has been met or not to be able to submit that report on line. It means more paper work without any extra info towards the EC (and less time for science). 22 Apr 16:16 Belgium Ghent University Peter Bossier In relation to the previous framework programme, the administrative burden of intermediate reporting has further increased, forcing scientists to be pre-occupied with non-creative tasks. 22 Apr 11:27 Greece CERTH Anestis Papanikolaou There is an urgent need for the development of effective (time efficient and secure) funding structures and procedures throughout the different EU programmes that will be capable of avoiding all kinds of unnecessary technical and administrative details and thus propote the real substance of the european research. 21 Apr 22:09 Poland Poznan University of Life Sciences (PULS) Janusz Olejnik Great idea (!), confidence means effective work. Simplification of administration work will save a lot of time and allows all of us to concentrate on scientific work. 20 Apr 22:11 Slovak Republic Mathematical Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences Roman Fric Read the interview with Mikhail Gromov (Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society, September 2009, or Notices AMS, March 2010). 20 Apr 18:18 Switzerland Universität Basel Kurt Kamber With the variety of rules of ERA-NETs, Joint Technology Initiatives, PPPs etc. FP7 becomes an increasingly challenging undertaking. 20 Apr 18:09 Slovak Republic Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice Stanislav Jendrol terribly many fornal requrement 20 Apr 17:09 United Kingdom CFR university of cambridge h statham so much time spent on admin that could have been better spent doing the research - if id wanted to be an accountant id have trained for it ... and been much better paid 19 Apr 10:46 France INSERM Segolene Ayme Rules should should be re-evaluated against their usefulness. My experience is that there is much more time spent by the EC administration on tiny financial details rather than on evaluation of outcomes. The objective of every rule should be re-considered as to decide whetehr it is important. 18 Apr 14:56 Portugal LNEG Fatima Abrantes Innovation is only possible if you have freedom of spirit 16 Apr 10:50 Belgium PWR Mike Parr 1. I have been a project proposal evaluator and project reviewer & helped draft work programmes. The Framework Porgramme is focused on a process not a result. There are very few projects that live on after funding funishes mainly due to this fact. The result we want is stronger companies, the result we get is mostly funding for the usual suspects. Large Euro companies tend to subsitutute government funds for their own R&D funds - they have a poor record with respect to those in the US. The FP needs to be reformed - it is a process and fails to produce any sort of real result. 15 Apr 16:36 Bulgaria National Center of Public Health Protection (NCPHP) Stefka Petrova My colleagues and me consider that the procedure related to application, financing and reporting the projects financially supported by EC are very complicated and time consuming. 15 Apr 04:17 Italy Politrcnico di Torino Sergio Benedetto I have been directing two large Networks of Excellence in FP6 and FP7; I fully share the request of a drastic simplification in funds handling procedures 14 Apr 19:07 United Kingdom PIXELearning Ltd Richard Smith Totally agree with this petition, it is holding back small businesses in Europe. 14 Apr 18:16 Italy International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) Enrico Cherubini I wish that the financial and administrative provisions related to the Framework Programme and other European funding instruments will be simplified considering their important leverage effect for the competitiveness of the European Research Area. 14 Apr 16:48 Israel Zeev Savion Ltd. Zeev Savion A to Z Israeli R&D. R&D programs initiation and coordinator. 14 Apr 16:06 France CNRS Eric J Kremer > 4 weeks of administrative work at each reporting period. We need to be held responsible for the use of public money, but the burden should not be draconian. 14 Apr 14:47 Germany Institut für Arbeitsforschung an der Universität Dortmund IFADO Patricio Godoy Working under a EU-project contract has been a new and somewhat uncomfortable experience due to the bureaucratic aspects of it. There are too many reports, charts, and uneasy policies which are counterproductive to scientific research. I whish our petition is heard and the administrative aspects are simplified. 14 Apr 12:29 Israel Feldman Brody & Associates Graham Feldman Audits should be assurance reports (known as audit reports not audit certifiactes) with resonable assurance that the figures are true and fair not 100% accurate. Beneficiaries with few satff working on project currently need up to 20 staff and 20 cost invoivces checked (per type of cost), meaning that these small projects need effective 100% audit. finacail audits should be audits of finacial procedures and control;s and limited checking of documenst to ensure procedures and controls are efficiant and adequate. 14 Apr 11:42 Norway Oslo Uniersity Hospital Per Brandtzaeg This is a important mission. Scientists should focus on science! And have time for it. 14 Apr 10:36 Netherlands Leiden University Ineke van der Hoef The money spent on administration to avoid risks can not be spent on research. It is important to accept a certain amount of risk in order to keep the balance between security and liberty (of research). 14 Apr 08:58 Netherlands Leiden University Edu Boer ... and save money for us all: less rules. less administrative burden, less control measures 14 Apr 08:30 Switzerland Paul Scherrer Institute Thomas Jung Make EU research more attractive by making the guidelines simpler, the reviewing more transparent AND INTERACTIVE, and by faster decision with no more than 2/3 of a rejection ratio at any single stage. 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. 13 Apr 22:49 Switzerland University of Geneva Robbie Loewith The Swiss granting system seems to me to work wonderfully and is far less complicated. 13 Apr 21:18 Germany Leibniz Research Centre (IfADo) Jan G Hengstler In recent years EU-funding has become increasingly important in our field of research. However, administration is very time consuming for the involved scientists. Too much energy is put into administrative issues consuming critical hours that better should be invested into scientific work. 13 Apr 16:25 Netherlands Netherlands Vaccine Institute Ernst Soethout Costs for administration are immens when compared to costs for the intended research. 13 Apr 15:09 United Kingdom University of the West of England Robert Cuthbert Appropriate regulation is vital for effective and responsible research, but heavy-handed and bureaucratic controls absorb too much academic energy, deter the most responsible and do little to prevent irresponsible research activities. We need better regulation which relies more on expert peers able to use their judgement with appropriate powers, to identify and prevent proposed bad practice. 13 Apr 10:40 Greece CERTH/HIT Evangelos Bekiaris General participation rules in many cases conflict with the specific project contract (DoW) and costs and issues specifically accepted in proposal evaluation and project review are re-assessed in terms of appropriateness and usefulness for the project by non-technical EC staff several years after the projects end. Thus, no trusted and coherent research framework. 13 Apr 09:35 Italy University of Urbino Carlo Bo Luciano Stefanini Administrative simplification is important in many project financing (objective-focused) activities; it is fundamental in research financing. Excess burocracy reduces open participation to call for projects, increases latent privileges for insiders, increases costs without improving benefits. 13 Apr 09:23 Germany MDC Jan Siemens It is highly desirable to reduce the bureaucratic burden for the administrative personel and the researcher/grant holder. I am certain that monitoring the appropriate use of allocated funds can be successfully implemented with a streamlined and reduced administrative work load. 13 Apr 08:18 Germany Max-Delbrück-Centrum Martina Bockhardt The payment conditions are very difficult and the contract differs to the normal contracts in our institution. 12 Apr 00:03 Germany Technische Universität München, Insttute for Data Processing Klaus Diepold such a motion is long overdue and would represent a major step forward in research funding policies; currently the administrative burden is often so high that universities can not act as coordinators for projects anymore; furthermore, the project proposals increasingly deviate from reality as many things are written because they are expected from the process and not because project proposers have a plan: 11 Apr 20:39 Poland Institute of Physics, West Pomeranian University of Technology Czeslaw Rudowicz I fully support this declaration. 11 Apr 17:21 Germany DLR - German Aerospace Center Christoph Günther I have personally two affiliations and roles, one at TU München (TUM) as a Professor and one at DLR as a director of the Institute of Communications and Navigation. At TUM, I did not apply for European Funding so far - it is too complex. At DLR we participate in and even lead a number of European Projects. The EU Framework plays an important role for us in conceiving new systems that must find international acceptance. In such cases, an early research cooperation eases very much the later establishment of the systems. Examples include new communication systems for aeronautics, satellite based navigation for aircraft landing, satellite broadcasting to mobile phones, and many more. Our perception is that the level of complexity in the application, and handling of EU-funded Project has very much increased in recent times. Furthermore, the transparency of decision making has diminished. In aeronautics, significant funds have been transferred to the joint undertaking SESAR, and are no more accessible to research institutions such as DLR. This although these institutions, and in particular my Institute, lead a number of developments in this area of expertise. Please simplify the processes, and regain control over the allocation of funds. The program elements FET/IST, STREPS, and IP are the right instruments for spurring innovation and research cooperation. They should be the backbone of the next Framework Programm. 11 Apr 17:06 Switzerland EPFL Anne Grapin-Botton Comparing my participation in European (6FP-7FP) and American (Beta Cell Biology Consortium-NIDDK-NIH) networks with largely overlapping teams of people, I realized how much more efficient the NIH network was. Some reporting is obviously needed while spending citizens money but administrative burden was much lighter, the network was more evolvable, more dynamic (1/3rd of the money set aside for idea-based-competitive teamwork during project time). 10 Apr 12:45 Germany Technische Universität Berlin Dieter Scherer So far, participation in European research projects is difficult for smaller research groups from universities that do not have large administrative staff available. This needs to be improved by reducing the administrative burden. 10 Apr 09:50 Russia Federal Centre of Fish Genetics and Selection (Moscow Branch) Andrey Bogeruk I sign this Declaration. Our organization participated in EU Project Eurocarp (022665) under FP6 wich took place during 01/01/2006 - 31/12/2008. And during this time we spent more than 3,5 months for preparing and proceeding our financial and activity reports and other organizational moments. The Project finished about a year and a half, but we still havent received our payment fully. Just several days ago we were informed that the problem with payment will be soled in the nearest future. So I am sure, that the financial and administrative provisions related to the FP and other European funding instruments should be urgently simplify for the scientists and specialist have mauch more time for their researh and scientific work. 9 Apr 19:58 Turkey Postdoc Researcher CENNET RAGBETLI Scientists urgently need to react and really simplify of adminstration procedures. Researchers should be able to focus on scientific work, not on administrative issues.Money dedicated to research should go to scientists, not to accountants, controllers, consultants etc. 9 Apr 14:35 Germany Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie Andrew Plested All grant applications and reporting burdens should be as short as possible. But particularly grants, because the time spent writing is not always rewarded with funding. It would, perhaps, be fairer to collect all information that is non-essential for the funding decision, only for successful applications. But gratuitous collection of data should be stopped. 9 Apr 14:16 Bulgaria Solar Terrestrial Influences Institute, BAS, Department in Stara Zagora Atanas Atanassov For one honest competition among scientific projects proposals. 9 Apr 13:15 Italy Università degli Studi Carlo Bo Nicola Panichi I agree 9 Apr 13:15 Ireland University College Dublin Kathleen James-Chakraborty Unfortunately the increasing complexity of EU funding also sets a bad example for relatively small new funding bodies such as the IRCHSS, who presume that Brussels establishes a bench mark for best international practice. I also wonder if the policy-driven focus of the relatively paltry funding in the humanities would have allowed grants to be awarded to the most influential European intellectuals of the past half-century. 9 Apr 12:19 Italy University of Urbino Mauro De Donatis Do you want to spend money for us as accountant or researcher? 9 Apr 11:27 France Institut Jacques Monod-CNRS Rosine Haguenauer-Tsapis I participated to several successive european networks. THis was a mak jor financial support for our work, and I enjoyed meeting and discussing with my colleagues. This was a rich experience that I do not regret. But we all spent a lot of time for administrative tasks far from research, moreover, trying to understand the rules, and how the work could fit with these rules. I especially think of the the coordinators of the various networks who probably suffered more than necessary. New simplified rules have to be established, with major input from the scientists, in close connection with administrative people. Research is not industry. Programs have to be established, controls have to be made, but in a different spirit. 9 Apr 09:59 United Kingdom University of the West of England John Rushforth Universities have the capacity to fundamentally improve the quality of life of all of our citizens. Making things simpler will help us to deliver this potential 9 Apr 09:45 Netherlands DAF Trucks N.V. Jack Martens Lead time between submitting a proposal and final approval is too long, this should be limited to 4 months max. 8 Apr 23:44 Belgium Universite Catholique de Louvain Shady Attia tedious effort 8 Apr 19:23 Bulgaria Ideaconsult Ltd. Vedrin Jeliazkov Principal investigators should have the ultimate authority in most aspects of project management in contrast with the current rules which empower financial and administrative departments to interfere with scientific decision making too often and too much. It would be also nice to encourage (or even prefer) younger principal investigators involvement by introducing specific policies, similar to those, dealing with the gender-related issues. 8 Apr 17:34 Belgium K.U. Leuven Antoine Van Proeyen The administrative work for EC projects takes a way a lot of energy from research. By this the European research suffers a lot, and is in a bad position e.g. with respect to the US. It should be possible to leave more time for the good researchers to do really research rather than writing many projects and administering them later. 8 Apr 13:32 Poland Nicolaus Copernicus University, Academic Entrepreurship Incubator Henryk Tomaszewski I fully aggree with Declaration statements 8 Apr 12:54 Greece National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Xenophon Moussas Europe is very rich in human resources, scientists, students, culture, and above all civilization. We continue a three millennia tradition in Philosophy and Science that were both born in this Big Country, Europe. Europe desperately needs a simple system of research funding, that will ensure a budget to any good researcher, that has new bold ideas and has proven that she/he can do research. If we continue a research road paved with bureaucracy, with earmarked research areas and subjects we simply follow the third world country way to science. Europe needs a substantial budget for research and a simple way of submitting proposal once or twice every year, for budgets of up to a few thousand euros. In this way we can ensure world leadership in Philosophy, Science, Technology, Education and Culture and Civilization. 8 Apr 12:28 Spain Universitat Ramon Llull – La Salle Oscar Garcia-Panella Paperwork is necessary and unavoidable. That is clear. But we all would like to refine the processes a little bit so that we can devote as many time as possible to the realization of the project!. 8 Apr 11:49 Spain Universitat Ramon Llull – La Salle Albert Fornells I agree and support the declaration. Let’s make things easier… 8 Apr 11:00 Poland Wrocław Uniwersity of Environmental and Life Sciences Anna Wondołowska-Grabowska I agree and support the declaration. Let’s make things easier… 7 Apr 19:19 Poland Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences Andrzej Krasinski The red tape of the EU research grants is now world-famous and is discouraging many scientists, including me, from applying for them. The procedures must be simplified. 7 Apr 17:49 Poland University of Silesia Institute of Physics Jerzy Warczewski It is a very good, democratic and creative idea. 7 Apr 16:02 Netherlands Maastricht University Sebastiaan Huntjens European funding is supposed to be invested in (fundamental) research and researchers should be enabled to do the job they were trained for: SCIENCE. Yet, due to the huge amount of management and governance of EU funded projects, a large portion of the funding is spent on accountancy and management and the time spent on research is reduced. In the end the european research area should be about European TRUST between commission and outstanding researchers throughout Europe! 7 Apr 15:33 Poland Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences Piotr Nowakowski Predictable science is not a real science. We are paid for pure research results but not for science. 7 Apr 12:39 Poland WROCŁAW UNIVERSITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND LIFE SCIENCES Malgorzata Robak I fully agree with the declaration. Research must be politically and administratively free. Researchers have to precede technical development and to be independent of enterprises interests. Negative results of one research are important for the future one. We must trust researchers! 7 Apr 12:27 United Kingdom Douglas Instruments Ltd Patrick Shaw Stewart Most of the Framework projects are highly artificial, consisting of a bunch of people doing their own research independently. Also, the calls for proposals are inconsistent and arbitrary. Targets keep on changing because the bureaucrats seem to be overly influenced by individual scientists and politicians 7 Apr 12:12 Poland The Andrzej Sołtan Institute for Nuclear Studies Grzegorz Wilk I fully endorse the proposed declaration and hope that it will have positive effect. Otherwise we are facing vanishing from the worls scientific community which will be dominated by USA and China. This will result in the future in decline of the Europe as such as well. 7 Apr 12:06 Malta Malta National Laboratory Mario Mifsud I fully support this petition. 7 Apr 11:17 United Kingdom Queen Mary and Westfield Colleg, University of London Tanya Szendeffy A qualification is really needed just to begin to get to grips with the various grant types and their administrative procedures. Once they have been mastered, then new rules and regulations are introduced. Furthermore, only PIs with dedicated staff have the time and resources to put an application together and chance not winning a grant. Non established researchers, especially young researchers tend not to apply for grants other than the most accessible such as Marie Curie Fellowhips. 7 Apr 10:50 Germany Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (LMU) Lukas Schmidt-Mende Especially for young researchers it seems to be impossible to start to coordinate a new EU project because of all its administrative work. 7 Apr 08:48 Netherlands University of Groningen frans sijtsma The EU has a great potential in creating inspiring and truly helpful science. Simplifying procedures is one of the things that will support realising this potential. 6 Apr 21:55 Poland University of Environmental and Life Sciences Jerzy Hladyszowski I am strongly for the declaration 6 Apr 19:48 Turkey ATARAY Engineering,Architecture,Rail Systems,Consulting,IT Sys ,Cons.Trade Ltd. ILGAZ CANDEMIR We all support and agreed this action. 6 Apr 19:41 Poland Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Science Tadeusz Trziszka We have a lot of administrative problems connected with realizationof European projects. There is not trust to researchers. Particularlly greatest problem is connected with auctions. 6 Apr 17:43 Poland Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences Jaroslaw Bosy Bureaucracy always support bureaucracy 6 Apr 15:40 Spain CSIC-Estación Biológica de Doñana Rafael Rodriguez-Clemente Administrative burden is consuming a significant fraction of the time devoting to implement european research projects and, for this reason, it is pulling away of the Framework Programmes excellent reseachers while it is stimulating a new business of EC hermeneutic. The EC has to reconsider seriously the global picture of estimulating participation in the FP by really putting research work as the main activity in a frame of reliable and simple administrative procedures. 6 Apr 14:26 Belgium IMEC Ingrid Reynaert We believe that the Financial Regulations as they are interpreted and applied in FP7 and beyond are not sufficiently suited to the needs of the research community in general and the ERA in particular. The administrative overhead to manage all this has reached the limit and does not create any added value to the ERA. 6 Apr 14:11 Switzerland EPFL Simon Granville Dozens of pages of rules, objectives and qualifications must be read and digested before attempting to apply for EU research funding with the current system. This becomes a fulltime occupation in itself, and woe betide the unsuccessful applicant, who spends far too many hours working on such forms, hours that should have been spent on the objective of the application - doing research! 6 Apr 12:30 Bulgaria TU-Sofia Julia Popowa I fully agree and support the petition. Please also use other languages. Not only english So we can only speak about equality of languages and nations. 6 Apr 09:19 Poland Institute of High Pressure Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences Bogdan Palosz more merit and trust - less costy bureaucracy 5 Apr 19:12 Portugal Inovamais S.A Miguel Sousa Research management should be given to researchers and to industry not to policy makers. 5 Apr 13:52 Ukraine Kiev Taras Shevchenko National University Aram Shirinyan Dear Friends, I am writing in order to give you my opinion about FP Programmes following my INTAS example in past. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, INTAS became the most integrated and powerful fund for NIS, which gave scientific support and tangible benefit to scientists from the former Soviet Union and Europe as well. That is why we, scholars from Ukraine, want to express regret concerning the closing of this European organization supported the wonderful scholars from NIS. The European new bureaucracy-full rules leaded to the situation when it is not possible to bring together current scientific activities in all scientific fields with the purpose of promoting ‘state-of-art’ science and the exchange of information via common activities of teams on international basis. As consequence European scientific community loses the actively working (and young) scientists and highly qualified group of NIS, who has charisma to see deep inside the nature of things, who can suggest the bright ideas and can make independent research. For example, I can mention my previous post doc INTAS project. This project in 2004 received 96 points out of 100 and thus, our team (Aram Shirinyan and Andiry Gusak – Ukraine, Michel Wautelet - Belgium) successfully started the joint research. In the framework of the INTAS project we tried our best, published papers in peer-reviewed journals including Acta Materialia, Nanotechnology, Philosophical Magazine, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Materials Science and Engineering, Defect and Diffusion Forum and we are willing to maintain these fruitful contacts. Secondly, our Belgium-Ukraine teamwork showed high capability of INTAS effort, its public significance. To my opinion, due to the ‘direct appeal politics’ to NIS scholars and scientific group, INTAS helped in creation of common European scientific community including NIS as possessing equal rights, expanded very good human relations between the scientists and even now instigate the young scientists to open their great scientific capacities. Unfortunately, new introduced FP programmes and rules substantially restrict scientists not only from NIS but from European Union as well if last ones want to include in to their projects NIS scholars. I believe that the European Commission be able to arrive at a wise reviewed solution in this problem. I also see that the rules of FP programs should be reconsidered taking into account abovementioned criticism and new propositions. I hope in simplified paper work and reconsidered FP programs and rules for productive international research projects and cooperation. 4 Apr 12:21 France CCSTI Centre de Culture Scientifique, Technique et Industriel Michel Belakhovsky ERC should be boosted 3 Apr 15:13 France CNRS Thierry POINSOT Let us start doing research and stop writing meaningless administrative reports. We are spending more time answering all administrative requests from officers than working on the contracts themselves. The EC has been grouping projects to delegate the work to others (the coordinators). Build smaller projects and add scientific experts to evaluate them, not accountants... 2 Apr 23:25 United Kingdom University of Sheffield Roger Butlin As a participant in several EU research projects, and coordinator of two, I stronglu support this declaration. It is true that Framework 7 administration is less onerous than previous frameworks but the management burden is still unnecessarily high and takes significant time and resource away from research and training activities. 2 Apr 17:11 Switzerland Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Theo Lasser Its really time to return to research and awayfrom administrative burdens. I hope it becomes true with a mutual trustworthiness amond the acaemic partners and beyond. 2 Apr 16:01 Czech Republic Brno University of Technology, Institute of Physical Engineering Tomas Sikola Make things easier, not worse. 2 Apr 11:45 Netherlands Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre Terry Vrijenhoek Not only could the legal framework for research funding be more effective, it could also contain more fleixibility to react on emerging research themes instantly. The gap between research policy and actual research developments is still large, and should be closed to ensure true innovation. 2 Apr 09:33 Bulgaria CENTRAL INSTITUTE FOR ROAD TECHNOLOGIES NATIONAL AND EUROPEAN NORM AND STANDARDS Dafinka Pangarova Iam completely agree that the administrative burden of EU funded projects is too HIGH. With signing this declaration I hope to contribute in simplifying the process of funding R&D. 2 Apr 05:35 Romania Centrul EPHES al Universitatii Stefan cel Mare Viorel Guliciuc Bureaucracy is not only based on the presumption of guiltiness. It also is based on the belief that research is unnecessary. In the Knowledge Society it untrustworthy treat the European citizen. 1 Apr 20:51 Germany University of Tübingen Jörg Strübing The nightmare is not only the European Research Bureaucracy but also - at least in Germany - the ever growing amount of administrative routines in all parts of university. 1 Apr 19:59 United Kingdom Ability Europe Limited Mounib MEKHILEF It would be nice to think it would have some effect 1 Apr 19:55 Turkey Ege University Izmir Ataturk School of Health Esin Ceber I am working about women health, reproductive health and cancer prevention. 1 Apr 16:39 Ireland University College Dublin Eugene OBrien Its not just the bureaucracy (which is very poor) but the Commission are also notoriously slow in paying. We can survive it in the universities but its very hard to persuade SMEs to get involved. 1 Apr 14:18 France Institut Curie Nathalie Amzallag I really think the simplification of the financial and administrative provisions related to the Framework Programme and other European funding instruments would induce collaborations between european entities in Research and improve the competitiveness of the European Research Area. 1 Apr 10:42 Belgium Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences Isabelle Schon As a PI of a Marie-Curie Research and Training network I got first-hand experience of the unnecessary administrative obstacles scientists have to constantly fight these days when being involved in a larger European project. I agree that there have to be certain rules that need to be obeyed. However, we should not loose track of the most important task of European Scientific Projects, namely to support and conduct science. The increasingly complicated rules to manage European research projects are counterproductive, especially when compared to the aims of the ERA. The equal participation of financially weaker participants, e.g. from Eastern Europe or from non-profit organizations, is furthermore jeopardized because of the complicated financial rules and their implantation. 1 Apr 10:10 Netherlands VU University medical center Jan De Munck Procedures to acquire fundings should be simplified and more funding should become available. 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. 1 Apr 08:51 Turkey Digitech Hitech Systems Ltd. Hamdi TAVSAN Digitech works in the fields of Analog and Digital electronic, Embedded systems, Software, Mechatronics with regard to specification of customer needs. Common services are : • Electronics and Mechatronics Production • Software Development • Test, Control and Measurement Systems • System Integration • Thin and Thick Film, Hybrid Circuits • Temperature, Humidity, Climate • Chambers and Rooms www.digitech-ltd.com 1 Apr 07:11 Czech Republic Institute of the Czech Language, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Karel Oliva I do understand that control is an essential tool against misusing the funds allocated for research, on the other hand, too much control has the same effect as misusing: the money is wasted for non-research purposes. (e.g., if a scientist has to spent a considerable - let us say over ten perecent - of her/his time writing proposals or reports, instead of performing research proper). In addition to this, too much control causes frustration which not seldom leads to diminishing Europes scientific potential, since talented people either leave leave Europe or leave their scientific career. Definitely, new schemes of control should be sought (and found !). 1 Apr 01:11 Turkey ASİAD AYDIN BUSINESSMAN ASSOC. TURKEY AHMET CELAL KAVCAR laissez faire, laissez passe I THİNK THE BEST COMMENTARY FOR NEW BUSINESS WORLD 1 Apr 00:03 Poland Opole University Jerzy Dryzek I support the declaration. 31 Mar 21:20 France Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Dominique Ulma Japprécierais, simplement pour favoriser la diversité, et bien que je sois bilingue, lusage dautres langues que langlais, y compris pour cette pétition ! I would appreciate, simply for the sake of diversity, although I am bilingual, the use of other languages than English, this declaration included ! 31 Mar 19:49 Turkey DRIVEDATA ENGINEERING INDUSTRY AND TRADE-TEMEL PARLAK Temel Parlak - the administrative burden of EU funded projects is too HIGH? - Our valuable time should not be wasted for studying hundreds of pages Financial Guidelines... 31 Mar 18:13 Germany University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Florian Marquardt Hold us accountable for spending taxpayer money reasonably, but not by requiring a lot of forms to be filled in. Rather, use peer review, have a look at past and present research results, and employ common sense cross checks. 31 Mar 17:32 Poland Nicholas Copernicus University Jaroslaw Meller As somebody working in US, and at the same time collaborating with many colleagues in Europe, I see huge differences between a relatively streamlined and focused on research ideas American model (NIH, NSF, private foundations) vs. very bureaucratic and focused on research unrelated criteria EU model. Time to change that if Europe wants to compete effectively. 31 Mar 16:38 France Diltec Kenza Cherkaoui Japprécierais, simplement pour favoriser la diversité, et bien que je sois trilingue, lusage dautres langues que langlais, y compris pour cette pétition ! I would appreciate, simply for the sake of diversity, although I am trilingual, the use of other languages than English, this petition included ! 31 Mar 16:25 France universite Sorbonne nouvelle Maria Candea very well, but why this petition is only in english ? de ce petitia aceasta este numai in engleza ? pourquoi cette petition figure seulement en anglais ? porque esta petiçao foi escrita so em ingles ? 31 Mar 15:59 France Paris 8 Joseph ARDITTY The inumerable declarations as to the priority given to research by both the EU and the member states will sound ridiculous without adequate funding and with bureaucratic corseting instead. 31 Mar 15:48 France Université Rennes 2 Philippe Blanchet I would also appreciate, as a multilingual European citizen, the use of several languages in a supposedly multilingual Europe, in official documents (tending towards English only) and... this present declaration! 31 Mar 15:25 France UFRT Pierozak Isabelle Une version de ce site dans dautres grandes langues que le seul anglais aurait été une idée judicieuse... 31 Mar 15:25 Turkey Componenta Can Demir Yes, I agree with this declaration. 31 Mar 15:13 Poland AGH University of Science and Technology Jaroslaw Bulat Bureaucracy cost a lot! Please reduce it!! 31 Mar 14:41 Turkey Dokuz Eylül University Hasan Tahsin GURLEK Everything simple will encourage people and pave the way to more academic and scientific studies. 31 Mar 14:26 Turkey PINARBASI ESNAF VE SANATKARLAR ODASI Nurcan Coban We are one of a great number of Proposal for Open Call for Proposal PROMOTING YOUTH EMPLOYMENT (PYE) GRANT SCHEME with the deadline for submission of applications: 14.09.2009. Till now we dont have any information about developments. It was a hard working time untill we had completed all the required formalities. And now; we are waiting without any information about... 31 Mar 13:40 Belgium Royal Belgian Institute of natural Sciences Koen Martens I am coordinator of an EU MC RTN project which ended October 2008. At this stage (March 31 2010) the final report is still not approved... 31 Mar 13:36 Czech Republic Institut of Animal Physiology and Genetics, AS CR Jan Kopecny I believe the simplified criteria will improve quality of the EU research. 31 Mar 13:26 Turkey Universitey of Cukurova ibrahim ortas I hoe this will help all of us to do more research. 31 Mar 13:25 Switzerland Collegium Basilea Graham Holt Terser language and more emphasis on research objectives rather than impact and programme details would help. 31 Mar 13:16 France IUT dAngoulême, University of Poitiers Lucian Dascalescu Projects should be attributed to reasearchers who are able to contribute to the progress of science, no matter what are their abilities to fill in financial forms. 31 Mar 13:14 Poland Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences Piotr Zieliński Better knowledge on scientific contents of projects may reduce formal obstacles. This can better serve both the research and the society. 31 Mar 12:50 Norway NOVA - Norwegian Social Research Lihong Huang I submitted an application in 2008 and did not get grant. The application process took three times so much time and labour as any usual project application in our country research council and two third of the work was on studying the guidelines. 31 Mar 12:49 Lithuania University of Šiauliai Virginija Šidlauskienė STOP Bureaucracy in EU! 31 Mar 12:45 Belgium RBINS Erik Verheyen The European Council of Ministers and the Parliament should understand that the present state of affairs actually discourages scientists to use EU funded R&D schemes, this is probably unintentional, but nevertheless a real issue. 31 Mar 12:36 France FM Consultants Associates Fulcieri Maltini It is absolutely essential that the bureaucratic procedures shall be reduced to a minimum for all approvals and financial support to EU research as research cannot wait and shall progress fast if we want a competitive Europe. 31 Mar 12:28 France Université François-Rabelais de Tours De Robillard Didier Japprécierais, simplement pour favoriser la diversité, et bien que je sois trilingue, lusage dautres langues que langlais, y compris pour cette pétition ! I would appreciate, simply for the sake of diversity, although I am trilingual, the use of other languages than English, this petition included ! 31 Mar 12:12 Serbia Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences Danka Savic The guides should be more clear and tailored for readers in science (that are not familiar with administrative and juristic language). The weight should be moved from administration to the scientific side of the projects - the impression is that it is more important to fill the boxes in the forms than to obtain valid research results. 31 Mar 11:50 France Cemagref Sylvain Labbé Please, prefer a two step selection processes of research projects in order to avoid that a lot of consortium consume a lot of time in writing huge proposals. 31 Mar 11:17 Germany MPI-CBG Marino Zerial A simplified administration would allow the better allocation of resources for supporting high quality and innovative research. 31 Mar 11:17 France LAM jean-luc gach better searching than filling out forms ! 31 Mar 11:12 Portugal University Beira Interior Jose Manso I think its urgent to simplify these process in order to improove our productivity and free researchers to do what they know: to do research 31 Mar 10:38 Switzerland FELA Management AG Thomas Kallweit We have participated in several EU projects since 1997. With the latests project, administrative burden is simply gone mad. On top of that, the payment delays of more than a year are simply unacceptable and an affront against anybody delivering excellent work, even more so for SMEs. 31 Mar 09:55 Netherlands VU University medical center Niels van Strien Give researchers the possibility to focus more time on research and education and less on bureaucracy. 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. 31 Mar 08:11 Poland Jagiellonian University MC, Department of Pathomorphology Wojciech Dabros no comments 31 Mar 00:44 Poland Warsaw University Władysław Turski Officialese and pedantry attract mediocre minds and repel bright ones. 30 Mar 23:17 Switzerland Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Andrzej Kulik i) strictly limit number of pages - let start with ONE page A4 ii) financial support - not stiff contract iii) instructions and rules - as well one page A4 iv) experts should come to the lab and discuss each project at least one hour. It may eliminate pseudo-experts of EU. 30 Mar 21:51 Poland Warsaw University Bozena Choluj It is the first important initiative!!!! 30 Mar 20:31 Other R&D Maroc SMANI Mohamed I agree with the statement 30 Mar 16:53 France CNRS / Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle Mathieu Joron Scientists do not go through the hassle of applying for grants solely for the bureaucratic beauty of spending the money according to EU rules (however appealing that may be). The purpose of a grant is of course the research and scientific output, which should be the primary criterion to evaluate the spending, and which can only be assessed after the research is done, or at specific times during a project. A proposal goes through a harsh selection and budget evaluation before being accepted. Trying to continue evaluating the spending during the course of a research project through real time bureaucratic control is counterproductive, and a real burden to the process of achieving the scientific goals for which the money is allocated in the first place. 30 Mar 16:35 Poland Jagiellonian University Joachim Szulc As Director of Institute of Geological Sciences I express our common impression that hypertrophy of the bureaucratic procedure accompanying every application discourages many natural scientists for preparing and realising projects. We should focus on science not on bureacracy!! 30 Mar 15:57 Poland University of Lodz Adam Busiakiewicz no risk = no science and no fun! 30 Mar 15:32 Poland Agricultural University Maciej Murawski I egree with this Declaration. Rules should be simplified. 30 Mar 15:18 Poland Jagiellonian University Stanislaw Knutelski The simplification of the bureaucratic procedure concerning European Union investigative grant projects would economize the effort and time of research workers. 30 Mar 14:58 Poland Medical University Wieslawa Agnieszka FOGEL Wins fight who believes in victory 30 Mar 14:53 Poland Poznan University of Life Sciences Dorota Cieslak finally a good movement! 30 Mar 14:47 France LESIA, Observatoire de Paris - CNRS Pierre Colom as a former EU FP6 task coordinator, I fully understand your concerns, and support your declaration. 30 Mar 13:33 Germany Deutsches Museum Paul Hix The amount of administrative work, from proposal through negotiation to project management (reporting, time keeping,...) is very high in relation to the funding amount or the project content. 30 Mar 12:54 Poland Jagiellonian University Karol Zyczkowski Scientists use more and more time for administrative duties at the expense of time devoted to their research. We shoud try to stop this trend. 30 Mar 12:02 Belgium Vrije Universiteit Brussel Jan Lemeire Researchers are best in doing research. 30 Mar 10:14 Germany University of Munich (LMU) Ulrich Gerland I agree with the urgent need to reduce the amount of formalities in European funding. The time is better spent doing research and teaching. 30 Mar 09:59 France Observatoire de Paris Stéphane Erard The level of detail requested in budget justification is counterproductive, and is extremely time-consuming. This should be negligible compared to research activities, and this is not. Restrictions concerning founding utilization are tough but do not insure that the objectives will be met. 30 Mar 08:49 France Laboratoire dAstrophysique de Marseille Michel MARCELIN Research is already complex enough that it does not seem appropriate to add more complications with administrative problems... 30 Mar 07:55 Netherlands VU University medical Center Hans Brolmann the natural inclination of men to overregulate important processes should be counterbalanced 29 Mar 19:07 United Kingdom Newcastle University James Bathurst In my last project the EC finance officer would not accept submissions containing discrepancies of 1 cent. The cost in staff time for locating the source of this discrepancy was out of all proportion to the discrepancy itself. This is too pedantic. A less demanding accounting procedure would be very welcome. 29 Mar 17:28 Portugal Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro Luís Barbosa Please reduce burocracy. 29 Mar 15:55 France LESIA-CNRS-Paris Observatory Jean-Louis Bougeret I am convinced that the present financial and administrative provisions related to European research funding seriously limit the competitivity and efficiency of European Research altogether. 29 Mar 12:31 France LESIA - CNRS - Observatoire de Paris Zoltán Hubert I especially agree with: Risk taking : Research and innovation are risk taking activities. An appropriate level of tolerable risks is vital for success and should be supported by European research programmes. 29 Mar 11:23 Austria KWF Kärntner Wirtschaftsförderungs Fonds Jürgen Kopeinig Simplification and standardization must be the targets. Thanks on that initiative. 29 Mar 11:20 France Observatoire de Paris & CNRS Laurent Pagani Heavy bureaucraty kills the creativity. Be light! 29 Mar 11:07 Portugal IPIMAR, National Institute of Biological Resources carlos vale The effort on research and development should be focused on knowledge and scientific innovation. Administration should be maintaned as simple as possible. 29 Mar 11:03 Austria KWF Andreas Starzacher more transparency regarding the eligible costs (overhead etc.), more transparency regarding state aid rules FP/ compared to community framework. guidelines for SMEs regarding the effort it takes to take part in FP7 29 Mar 10:07 Germany Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd. & Co KG Arne Sturm I hope the resolutions no. 117 and no. 118 made by the European Parliament on the 23.04.2009 will be implemented into FP7 guidelines quickly. Average hourly rates per cost centre should be claimable (also without CoM) if they are audited by national price audit authorities. This applies also to the calculation of the indirect costs percentages. This procedure would not lead to an increased administrative burden - currently FP7 rules create to much burden in times where all industries and branches are looking for decreasing such kind of costs. 29 Mar 09:13 Austria S.O.L.I.D. Sabine Putz S.O.L.I.D. is an Austrian solar engineering company specialising in all aspects of large-scale solar thermal energy plants. Since 1992, S.O.L.I.D. has been planning, building, delivering, assembling and operating large-scale solar plants (exceeding 100 m2) around the world, providing hot water, heating rooms, and supplying process heat, including district heating. SOLID also designs and builds solar chilled water plants, including the largest commercial solar cooling projects currently in operating. With its unmatched experience in design and operation of large-scale solar plants, S.O.L.I.D. is both a pioneer and one of the world’s leading companies in the solar industry. 29 Mar 03:56 United Kingdom University of Wales, Newport Georgios Pierris Bring fun back to researching...! 28 Mar 21:12 Italy Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria Vincenzo Tamburino Byzantine empire collapsed because of burocracy. The ever increasing burocracy explains the main part of italian decline of the past 4 decades; in South Italy burocracy has been assessed to determine a bigger damage than mafia. The responsability of excessive burocracy is often claimed on the European Community; symplify administrative procedures in european research could be a good starting point to be extended to all other fields of EU activity. 28 Mar 20:19 Netherlands University of Groningen Muhsin Harakeh I have coordinated a number of EU funded projects and I find it quite cumbersome to deal with all the complicated procedures before and after securing the project. Simplification of the procedures as suggested in this declaration. 28 Mar 17:50 Italy Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria Andrea Caridi I think that the administrative burden and the financial regulation of European research funding may be simplified very much. 28 Mar 09:06 Italy Dept. Agroenvironmental Sciences and Technology, University of Bologna Roberto Tuberosa Having coordinated a project myself and being presently engaged in EU-funded projects, I fully agree that the complexity of the administrative work is excessive and discourages from coordinating new proposals. I truly hope that it will be possible to simplify the administrative management of EU-funded projects. 27 Mar 19:35 Croatia University of Zagreb, Faculty of Agriculture Tomislav Pogačić Finding might happen during research, but might not as well. Therefore, how to plan in advance expected outcomes? 27 Mar 14:27 Germany Technische Universität München Nils Kammenhuber (1) Reduce bureaucracy! No more time sheets! (2) Completely reverse your proposal acceptance guidelines: Do not accept any research proposals that rule out in great detail with time plans and man-month accounting what research problems the project will start solving in three years. You build houses or commercial software that way, you develop a new commercial product this way. But by its very nature, real research is about exploring the Unknown -- and the Unknown usually does not comply with detailed time plans that you set up two years ago. Alas, it is widely known that a proposal will not get accepted if it does not contain such over-detailed descriptions of how to tackle the Unknown. This is such a waste of academic resources. In summary, does the EU really want researchers to spend months and months of their working time on writing and polishing ornate research proposals the size of novels, only so that upon acceptance they have to fill in time sheets and Form Cs, and will discuss in numerous e-mails and telephone conferences the contents of the next deliverables for the upcoming deadline? Or does the EU want researchers to concentrate on innovative, challenging, ground-breaking research? 27 Mar 11:32 Germany Freie Universität Berlin Marie-Theres Strauss Europe needs less red tape and more dedicated cooperation between researchers and policy makers. Anything that helps to achieve this is worth fighting for. Please help establish the foundations for a truly European scholarly community. 27 Mar 08:45 Sweden Volvo Aero Corporation Magnus Hörnqvist It is my opinion that the normal accounting methods that are used by large companies and audited though the normal auditing procedures for those companies should be approved for use also in EU funded R&D projects. 26 Mar 21:19 Sweden Volvo Aero Bengt Pettersson More duct tape, less red tape = more growth! 26 Mar 20:32 Germany WZB Tim Flink Cutting Brussels red-tape has been a continuous pledge by researchers ever since the establishment of the FPs and its precursors since the 1980s. The policy process leading towards the European Research Council in 2007 was partly a response to this upswelling of the scientific community with the bureaucratic burden, and the artificial justification of everything else but science. While the scientific reputation of running EU projects has increased, theres still a bitter taste to it. 26 Mar 18:28 Portugal INEB-Instituto de Engenharia Biomédica, Universidade do Porto Mário Barbosa Too much administrative hurdles render science less effective. And this costs a lot of money and opportunities. 26 Mar 16:01 Slovak Republic Univerzita Komenskeho v Bratislave John Peter Barrer I have successfully undertaken research in Australia and over there they trust researchers. Research bodies focus on output (seminars, conferences and publications) when auditing researchers activity rather than demanding they account for every hour spent on a project. The European approach is ridiculous; research activity necessarily fluctuates from month to month and can not be standardised in a truthful manner in some monthly timetable of hourly activity. I think the bureaucratic requirements over here for research projects are paranoid and paradoxically actually force dishonesty. Once again, its ridiculous and a waste of our time. 26 Mar 13:08 Greece Hellenic Centre for Marine Research Louisa Giannoudi It takes a lot more time to fill in forms than to produce experimental results!!!! 26 Mar 12:52 Cyprus European University Cyprus Iacovos Psaltis Apart from the very complex and bureaucratic system of the procedures for obtaining funding for any European Research Programme the other factor that is forbidding for an academic to get seriously involved in research or even writing any papers is the heavy teaching load. And heres the story of the chicken and the egg. What should the priority be of an academic institute? Excellent teaching that produces graduates of high stndards or academics with excellent CVs? Doing both is rather either exhausting or ...impossible! 26 Mar 12:23 Denmark Danish Technological Institute Jeremy Millard I have been involved in EC research since the early 1990s and have been arguing since that time to reduce the adminsitrative burden. However, it has become considerable worse since then. There is of course a need to stop cheating and fight corruption, but there are simple ways of doing this without increasing the adminsitration. For example, focusing strongly on evaluating the quality of the research and its contribution, rather than on bean counting hours, travel, etc. The latter just means that both research and EC staff waste research resources. The former enables these rfesources to be used on, yes, actual research! 26 Mar 11:53 Germany IFM-GEOMAR Rainer Froese In my last FP6 project, the existence of one SMS was threatened because they were unable to fulfill the bureaucratic requirements of the Commission. They had advanced the funds but did not get a full refund, although they had delivered all their deliverable. 26 Mar 11:20 Sweden Volvo Aero Robert Limmergård Improvements has been done over the years to simplify the administrative procedures, however more is needed especially in regard to JTIs/Clean Sky and the introduction on reporting requirement that has been imposed. 26 Mar 11:18 Sweden Volvo Aero Patrik Johansson It is my opinion that the normal accounting methods that are used by large companies and audited though the normal auditing procedures for those companies should be approved for use also in EU funded R&D projects 26 Mar 10:59 Sweden Volvo Aero Robert Lundberg It is the opinion of Volvo Aero that the normal accounting methods that are used by the company and audited though the normal auditing procedures for the company should be approved for use also in EU funded R&D projects. 26 Mar 10:56 Portugal IGOT - UL Maria Aurindo We should balance the need for control and justice in what concerns fundind and the usual excess of procedures that delay when not make impossible for some research to be developed. Is not the quantity and the control that help high quality to emerge. There has to be some flexibility within continuing to pursuit excelence. Why not ask the ones that have to deal with all of this (in the different levels of responsability, hierachy and functions) to give their structured opinions, expectations and wishes (maybe through a questionaire online) so that decisions may be made with a significative participation of those whose work is daily influenced by al of this. 26 Mar 08:52 Belgium Vrije Universiteit Brussel Roger Vounckx The unbalance between the number of researchers in Europe and the available funding that permits them to actually work is extremely harmful to our research capacity, to the creation and -more importantly- to the safeguarding of know-how. Since Europes wealth is essentially based on brains, the present scientific policies with their ridiculous administrative overheads and their obsession with over-competition are nothing but destructive to our economy. 25 Mar 21:52 Spain University of Vigo - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Kais Jacob Mohamed Falcón Ever increasing administrative paperwork Ever increasing peer review requirements Less time for research 25 Mar 18:37 Italy Univertiata di Roma Tor Vergata Carlangelo Liverani As a recipient of an Advanced ERC Grant (call 2009) I can testify that in the first months, due the administrative burden, I had actually less, NOT more, time for doing research and the future does not look very promising. This cannot be considered a reasonable state of affairs. Research should be judged by its output, not by checking if expenditures are formally consistent with a complex set of rules often devised for the public administration at large and hence ill suited for research related activities. 25 Mar 15:55 Spain Jesus Jesus G. G. Boticario As researchers we are doing our best in pursuing clearly stated research objectives. Please, let us work and support our goals achievement once they have been approved instead of distracting and diverting us through administrative requirements. Further, when monitoring and controlling research projects please do establish generally accepted research evaluation criteria focused on results instead of just trusting a review process where results are to be “reinterpreted” by a reduce panel of people who, obviously, are not able to digest in a few hours, much less to assess, the value of a whole year of hard work. 25 Mar 15:40 Belgium Optrima Andre Miodezky Commission research programs should be more focused and open gates to more innovative SMEs in cooperation with Universities and simplify KNOWHOW needed to avoid projects attribution based on specialized writing skills as PROFESSIONAL EUROPEAN COMMISSION PROJECT WRITERS. 25 Mar 15:31 Belgium Vrije Universiteit Brussel Adrian Munteanu EU research funding opportunities are much appreciated. However, the administrative burden and over-bureaucratic procedures associated with EU-funded projects are really discouraging and many are not motivated to participate in such initiatives because of these reasons. I think that the EU administration should better concentrate on assessing projects in objective terms (scientific results, IP generation, prototyping, industrial valorization, etc) and much less on filling-in tables with irrelevant data. 25 Mar 15:15 Russia Kotelnikov Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics RAS Viatcheslav Meriakri If it will be some positive result due to this Declaration we will have much more time for scientific, not bureaucratic work 25 Mar 15:15 Belgium VUB johan stiens 1) If you treat academics like industrials... dont forget to pay them like that. 2) If Europe wants to be at the forefront of research @ global level, give the means, freedom and thrust to the creative minds of the European region, who can bring ideas for future employment. 3) if you frustrate these creative minds, forget about the future of Europe 25 Mar 13:37 Italy Università Roma Tre Leopoldo Nuti I once submitted an application to the FP7 as main leader of a 5 country-network. In spite of the excellent support from the specialized office in my university, it was a harrowing experience which took almost 3 full months. And we did not get it - we passed the first screening but not the second one. I believe the system to be too cumbersome and too much oriented towards a kind of practical research which makes it hard for those working in the humanities to come up with a suitable research project 25 Mar 12:06 United Kingdom UWIC Len Arthur Academic freedom and peer review are at the heart of the academic engine that has its own dymanic and beneficial impacts for our societies. 25 Mar 11:15 Turkey TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center Energy Institute Atilla Ersöz The amount of paper work should be reduced, both for the proposal and for the deliverables.Financial regulations shoul be simplified for research projects. Evaluators should be precisely selected according to the R&D project proposal subjects. 25 Mar 11:12 Denmark Copenhagen Business School Ravi Vatrapu As a junior researcher who was trained in the US, currently pursuing an academic life in the EU, and a consortium partner on a EU integrating project proposal, I admit that I have a very limited experience with the admisnitrative and financial regulatory aspects of EU funded projects. Even with that very limited experience, in my opinion, the administration and regulatory aspects of EC projects are worrying and discouraging burdens and ultimately, it might be counter-productive burdens. As reseachers we have enough technical and social issues to attend to. We all can appreciate not having to constantly worry about the administrative and financial aspects of the grant. This is not a call to remove all regulation but to make it actually conducive to research and development rather than a burden. 25 Mar 11:11 Netherlands Wageningen UR Peter Jongebloed I agree fully with the need for further simplification, although in FP7 some improvement has made compared to FP6. We should find a better balance between trust and control. So we need a more trust-base approach to realize the full potential of the ERA. Furthermore, to realize the 15% target for participation of SMEs in FP7-projects, further simplification is conditional 25 Mar 10:32 Denmark copenhagen business school niels bjørn-andersen it is clear that the administrative burden is getting higher and higher. this is due to examples of fraud. obviously society can not tolerate fraud, but to totally avoid fraud is a massive undertaking (elimination of the last 1% fraud probably costs 100 times as much. we have to somehow put fraud into perspective and only go for the larger amounts. a stupid example is VAT. If I eg go to the Netherlands, and book a hotel inexpensively on the net, the city tax of Amsterdam will be collected by the hotel. it this case, it will be a seperate bill that is not deductable. if I buy it more expensively prepaid through a travel agent, the city tax might not show, and the full bill will be covered. only problem seen from tax payer point of view is that hotel is this case is higher. biggest problem is that raising this issue, if anybody takes any notice, will create a huge effort, maybe even a consultancy investsigation, which again might lead to a stricter control of VAT payment on hotel bills. but did anybody think about how much this extra administration costs? I will bet that it is much more than the enforcement of the rule that the EU should not cover tax out of EU budgets. 25 Mar 09:58 Poland Gdansk University of Technology Lukasz Kulas European projects should be more focused on real innovations, therefore I fully approve this action. 25 Mar 09:51 Belgium Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Christian Kesteloot If the EU would control the banks like they control us, the world would be better ... 25 Mar 09:09 Greece Athens University of Economics and Business Diomidis Spinellis I have participated in many EU-funded research projects. The administrative burden of those projects is so great that my corresponding publications are consistently mediocre. None of my papers I consider important was directly derived from EU-project results (although I often acknowledge EU funding for the indirect support it provides, such as computing facilities). This seems to be the case across the board. If you look at papers published in top journals and conferences they rarely indicate EU funding. Collaborative research following a prescribed two year plan and detailed requirements for deliverables simply does not work. 25 Mar 08:36 Poland Gdansk University of Technology Andrzej Dyka Each researcher affiliated with an appropriate EU research institution should be awarded a regular, small grant per year upon his application. After a certain period of time,(3 - 4 years), his results should be reviewed , and the decision, (upon further financing his research), made. This is the only way to provide a chance to the youngest generation of researchers, and a chance to bring some new, fresh ideas to practice. Larger projects should be financed through the Excellence Centra , where completing a necessary critical mass of manpower is possible. 24 Mar 23:22 Austria Vienna University Walter Schachermayer As an awardee of an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant I particularly appreciate the intentions of the present declaration. 24 Mar 22:59 Portugal Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade de Lisboa Joao Daniel The application process, but still more burdensome, the administrative process, are unduly heavy and time consuming, so that the actual scientific work and the mentoring of post-grads and post-docs becomes an impossible task. 24 Mar 22:40 Other Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco Ana Maria Dubeux Gervais Even if I am from an outside Europe country, I work with researchers from many european countries and the difficulty of getting european finacement is always present in ours discussions. So I support my collegues in this temptative of simplifying the formalitys for having financial support from european comunity. 24 Mar 22:25 France CNRS Javier Escartin Administrators of science should be at the service of science. Now scientists are at the service of EU administrators instead. 24 Mar 22:12 Portugal Universidade Nova de Lisboa Joao G. Ferreira I was recently involved in three FP6 projects, one of which as coordinator. Two (SPEAR and ECASA) have now been successfully closed, one is still outstanding. All ended at least two years ago, and only very recently were closed. The supporting documentation is unacceptably laborious to assemble - as an example, a description of major cost items was required from SPEAR, I assembled a list of items in the >50K euro range (for a project funding of 2MEuro), and was asked to provide far more detail, but the financial officer refused to let me know what the EC understood as a major item - one of our Dutch partners ended up reporting items down to 30 euro cost as part of the major item list. A Kafkian experience. 24 Mar 21:43 France University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille Abdelillah Hamdouch During the last 10 years or so, bureaucratic tasks and administrative burden imposed on researchers have become so heavy that they have literally cannibalized the time devoted to research itself. Even worse, this evolution has been counterproductive as it has created a real repulsive attitude of researchers as regarding submission of new projects for EC funding. As a result, I believe that many good researchers have become reluctant to seek European funding, as well as public funding in general (as many European countries have replicated and sometimes gone beyond silly EC rules...) and prefer increasingly look towards private funding, at the heavy (scientific) cost to give privilege to very applied and more business oriented research. Basic and prospective research, the very source of creativity expression and of genuine new knowledge production, are therefore sacrificed or threatened not by market logics, but thanks to the myopia of bureaucrats and political decison-makers who very often even ignore what is genuine research, and the very commitment of researchers in what they do. The US, China and some other countries are not so silly: they have understood that researchers must do research first, not fill silly-crazy administrative files (and, in addition, be suspected of misusing the few money they receive), even if reasonable control (preferably post control) is needed. Cheers! 24 Mar 20:00 United Kingdom Scottish Association for Marine Science Kenny Black Unreasonable lack of trust is wasting public money on trivial paperwork and seriously reducing productivity. 24 Mar 17:54 France Institut Curie Mohamed Husain Besides the Points in the declaration, funding for the students persuing research should be made irrespective of Nationality, and must be solely based on the merit. 24 Mar 15:34 Netherlands Wageningen University Lijbert Brussaard I totally agree 24 Mar 15:32 Poland Gdańsk University of Technology Agnieszka Landowska Research funding is more and more complex and it seems to me, that theres lots of companies doing business on that fact in Europe . They make money for proposal preparation and project management. Researchers prefer to do research rather than plans, budgets and reports. 24 Mar 14:59 Germany University Eye Hospital Tim Krohne The burocratic burden prevents me from applying for EU research grants. 24 Mar 14:52 Denmark DBL Parasitology, Health and Development, Dept. of Veterinary Disease Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of C Thomas Krogsgaard Kristensen I coordinate the FP6 project CONTRAST and agree with the complains leading to this initiative. 24 Mar 14:33 France INSERM Sarang Dalal I lost three months of salary because the European Commission took three months to sign their own contract. 24 Mar 14:19 Denmark Technical University of Denmark Jesper Ferkinghoff-Borg I have participated in one EU-application related to 7. framework programme. The amount of non-scientific work pertaining to writing such application is far larger than the actual scientific part of the proposal. As a consequence, I (as well as my collegues) have become quite reluctant to invest time in the future to write EU applications. 24 Mar 14:18 Czech Republic Institute of Mathematics, Academy of Sciences Tomas Vejchodsky The level of bureaucracy prevents me to ask for any European support. I rather invest my time to the research instead of reading hundreds pages with mostly absurd and irrelevant rules. 24 Mar 13:51 Germany Adam Opel Jens Hüser EU fundings are to complex compared to local funding. To enhence the european R&D exchange that needs to be corrected. Local process can serve as benchmark. 24 Mar 13:21 Spain Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Ramon Josa Absolutely agree with the call for simplification of the administrative burden for research. 24 Mar 13:20 Ireland University College Cork Ned Dwyer I have expereince in a number of FP projects. I find that the administrative and financial issues take a lot of my and other colleagues time. THese procedures are burdensome and do not help with providing better oversight of the project. The procedures should be simplified which will encourage more people to participate in the FP and also reduce the administrative burden on instiutions and SMEs that do participate. 24 Mar 12:27 Slovak Republic Technical University of Kosice Tomas Sabol Trust is vital for any efficient collaboration. 24 Mar 12:21 Czech Republic Agentura pro evropské projekty a management (EPMA) Irina Zalisova Absolutely agree with the call for simplification of the administrative burden for research, which may help to save effort and finances for the research work itself, which is for the moment impossible without a lots of reporting, declairing, confirming, truecoping, accountant and other assistant works. 24 Mar 12:11 Ireland University College Cork Eileen O Herlihy Definitely need to cut back on the paperwork involved 24 Mar 12:09 Ireland University College Cork Michel Schellekens It is encouraging that the EU supports its researchers. Still the red tape is staggering, taking away valuable research time. I hope Europe will evolve to a model that has been upheld in Ireland. Science Foundation Ireland provides grant support with minimal red tape for researchers. 24 Mar 12:07 Ireland School of History, University College, Cork Mike Cosgrave The current practice requires researchers to invest a great deal of time building partnerships and preparing applications which may come to nothing - working out how to play that game and get on the inside track is almost a waste a time. The call--driven nature of practially all EU funding means that it is practically impossible for people with interesting research proposals which dont fit in a neat box of the current buzzwords to find a place to apply for funding. The research agenda is driven by whatever short-term issues are politically attractive, and has little room for encouraging people to pursue and develope their own research paths. In the Humanities, when a Phd candidate applies with a decent proposal, we dont expect a month by month work breakdown and time budget for the next four years, and we do expect that the final product will have moved ground from the initial proposal - that is one of the indicators that they have learned something about their field. And to make it worse, I have a suspicion that most of the detailed paperwork submitted by many successful applicants is simply done by cut and paste from their previous applications. The process seems to be more about research offices filling up spreadsheets, to which you will be bound to for the next 4 years, than about pursing interesting research questions. 24 Mar 12:05 Spain Techforce SLU David Esteban Theres a profound need to clarify target and scopes for Research, Development and Innovation. Mixing them up as a single concept is not really helping to produce significantly challenging proposals 24 Mar 11:59 Ireland University College Cork Liam P O Murchú Declaration needs to be signed by many many more acdaemics 24 Mar 11:44 Italy Politecnico di Milano Stefano Crespi Reghizzi The cost of project proposal preparation is too high; the imposition to plan the work into detailed work packages, tasks and deliverables clashes with the risks and uncertainties inherent in advanced research. 24 Mar 11:40 United Kingdom Cancer Research UK David Ish-Horowicz Scientific research is the study of the unknown and, hence, cannot be micromanaged. It needs to be judged by the outcome, and not by daily work plans and the ability to complete endless forms that measure nothing. 24 Mar 11:30 France Institut de Recherche pour le Développement Rigas Arvanitis Most difficult aspect concerns pre-financing in particular wth non-european partner in developing countries. 24 Mar 11:25 United Kingdom Interaction Design Ltd Frank Wilson Continued growth and peaceful collaboration in Europe requires continued sharing of knowledge and energy addressing shared problems and concerns. Forward together or chaos separately. A simple choice. 24 Mar 11:20 Denmark Technical University of Denmark Hans-Heinrich Bothe Compared to the total budget spent in EU research projects, the actual scientific output and technical impact are depressingly low. The necessary administrative effort (including paper work and travel to ineffective meetings instead of video conferences) is usually high; but as most researchers agree to dislike too much burocracy, respective rules are often not taken serious and followed strictly. As a results, i) too much of the budget is unnecessarily burnt-off instead of being used for real project work and ii) many administrative rules mainly reate a burocratic bubble rather than preventing any potential monetary irregularities. I believe that there should be a constructive research administration and also some powerful tools for monetary control, which should rather assist the majority of the researchers who want to create good scientific/technical results and create papers for the scientific public than keeping them busy with producing paper for the EU administration. 24 Mar 11:04 France CNRS Didier STIEVENARD please, simplify the administrative control (time sheet). Give time to people to perform research and not administrative tasks. make severe control on the scientific results and on the use of money à posteriri. 24 Mar 11:00 Poland Gdansk University of Technology Michal Mrozowski Outside EU procedures are much simpler. If Europe wants to be competitive it must get rid of most of the paperwork - let the researchers do the research and not waste their time! 24 Mar 10:42 France IMEP Béatrice CABON To compete with other Asian countries who do not have such administrative burden in reporting research in their national contracts, evolution towards simplification is mandatory for EUROPEAN researchers. It will boost efficient research. 24 Mar 10:37 Hungary Budapest University of Technology and Economics Tibor Berceli I think it would be very important to keep a well established consortium together for a longer period than the duration of a 3-4 year long project. 24 Mar 10:30 Denmark Technical University of Denmark Cheol-Ho Jeong I am currently working at Technical University of Denmark as an assistant professor from October 2007. 24 Mar 10:02 France CNRS Jean-Pierre VILCOT Bureaucracy is killing innovation!! Time is not compressive, whatever the amount you spend!! Research work shall be targeted to increase European competitiveness in a worldwide scope and not to feed an internal inflationary bureaucratic system. 24 Mar 09:55 Latvia University of Latvia, Department of mathematics Janis Buls There is only one possibility: if the specific bureaucrat invents new idiotism his salary must be cut. 24 Mar 09:37 Netherlands Institute of applied social research (ITS), Radboud University Nijmegen jeroen winkels lets introduce a simple rule for all European research proposals: the total number of questions and answers does never take more than one page. 24 Mar 09:20 United Kingdom Newcastle University Colin Harwood EU funded research has transformed research activity in my field and been of direct benefit to the European companies with which we collaborate. However, increasing amounts of time are spent administering grants. In my case this is done by my university as well as the EU. Why does the EU not authorize certain EU institutions to administer is funds on its behalf? The EU could then focus on the scientific outcomes of the research. 24 Mar 09:17 Russia JSK Tekchnopark Kremenky Ivanova Margarita The main airm of research is consists in wisely using harmonious technologies of the nature in which there is no concept - waste 24 Mar 08:47 Poland University of Gdansk Danuta Makowiec The pile of papers needed prevents me from taking part in the program. 24 Mar 08:47 France CNRS Dominique PACOT Let people continue to do their job and focus on research. Dont penalize those who work the most. 24 Mar 06:50 Israel Tel Aviv University Felix Frolow Kids from Beskydy mountains, 12 minutes after finishing university, are positioned as scientific officers of the projects and overrule scientists with the highest international credentials 23 Mar 23:22 Portugal Universidade de Évora Manuel Mota Please cut the administrative burden. The EU needs it! 23 Mar 23:19 United Kingdom Newcastle Univesity Kenn Gerdes It is highly important the the complicated and alienating administration related to the FP programmes and to the ERC as well, be simplified. Both the application and the auditing procedures are highly bureaucratic and takes away focus and efforts from what is central to the highly demanding tasks to which we are committed: to generate new knowledge and to exploit that knowledge to the benefit of society. Adminstration in it self is worthless and has no benefit to society but alas, is cumbersome to many. The rules of the EC research programmes basically reflect mistrust to researchers that have already, via their merits, proven to be productive, ambitious and creative. Lets all petition that the procedures be significantly simplified thus to allow us focussing on productive and competitive work. Kenn Gerdes, Professor, Newcastle University. 23 Mar 22:52 Portugal Instituo de Tecnologia Química e Biológica Manuel Pedro Salema Fevereiro It is ridiculous to realize how much time we spend with burocracy. I am usualy so sumerged I haveno time to study, nor to think. This is the wrong way to do our job. Any reduction in paper work will be mostly welcomed! 23 Mar 21:19 France ENS Lyon Pradeep Das I had a Marie Curie fellowship a couple of years ago, and had to struggle through 3 different files of about 60 pages to fill out the administrative parts of the application. I can only imagine how much worse it is for large international research grants. Science needs to take precedence. 23 Mar 20:04 Hungary Botany Department of Eger College Tamás Pócs It is deteriorating, when we have to spend more time for writing applications and reports than for the research itself. 23 Mar 19:40 Austria AC2T Austrian centre for competence in Tribology Enrico Corniani Marie Curie students in Action 23 Mar 19:29 Austria Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology Stefan Fischer Research should be hanicapped due to bureaucracy. It should have a necessary amout of paper work. Scientist are not paid to organizing money they are paid to produce knowledge. 23 Mar 19:03 Turkey Middle East Technical University Osman Gulseven It took months for me to get the paperwork done so that I can start my research. I hope the paper burden would be reduced for future researchers. 23 Mar 19:00 Denmark DBL - Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen Christian Gregart Coordinating several FP6-programmes (STREP) and have especially experienced financil/administrative reporting difficulties and challenges in the actual acceptance of a reporting. Extremely high demand in the detail level of each reporting is especially a challenge when having African partners in the project. Also experiences with different demands in the detailed level of the reporting both in between different projects and reporting periods. 23 Mar 18:50 Italy Università di Sassari Paolo S. DAquila I pledge that along with the paperwork it will be abandoned also the absurd pretence of european burocrats & politcians to control scientific research, which, as any form of free expression of the human creativity, cannot thrive withouth freedom of mind. What would anybody say if a political body decided that in the next four years filmakers should gang up in order to concentrate, say, on love dramas? Simply ludicrous. 23 Mar 18:12 Latvia University of Latvia Valdis Pirags We have to hind more effective control mechanisms instead of increasing burden of unnecessary formulars, deliverables, reports etc. 23 Mar 18:06 Italy Dept. of Mathematics - University of Pisa Giuseppe Buttazzo The applications forms have to be simplified too! Also, we do not need few huge financements but many small ones. 23 Mar 18:04 Belgium University Gent Patrick Van Damme enough administration, and if you want us to deliver, then: pay for it.. also: avoid duplication... 23 Mar 17:57 France CIRAD Alain RIVAL As a former Marie Curie Fellow, I acknowledge that a lot has yet to be done in order to facilitate resercahers mobility inside and outside Europeans borders. Topics like social security and salary taxation are still headaches and their are hampering a lot of moblity projects. Thus I strongly support the present initiative. 23 Mar 17:32 Russia Shirshov Institute of Oceanology Konstantin Korotenko Now I see that it was an ugly idea to run such big, awkward projects as FP6 and FP7. They gave more profit to bureaucratic structures than scientists. My opinion: collaborations in EU mostly must be bilaterian and and based on personal communication and scientific interaction. That is the way to get rid of administrative ‘monkey business’. 23 Mar 17:27 United Kingdom UNIVERSITY OF SURREY ANGELA DANIL DE NAMOR As Coordinator of several EU Contracts under various Framework Programs I am strongly of the view that the bureaucracy involved has a negative impact on the main objective of the Program which is related to research and technological developments. This situation is even worse particularly when during the course of a Contract , Administrative and Scientific Officers are changed and these changes are translated in delays, different interpretations of rules and regulations regarding the presentation of reports, ill manners in dealing with the Scientific Community and threatening statements. Supporting evidence can be provided. The paperwork involved is out of context and simplification is urgently required. 23 Mar 17:05 Spain Ministry of Science and Innovation Gloria Villar Acevedo The level of bureocracy associated to the justification of the EC programmes is way too much to handle. It takes more resources than the project itself, which is a pitty, as we could be concentrating our efforts on the activities themselves. 23 Mar 16:51 Latvia University of Latvia Alexander Sostaks My personal experience shows that during recent years the bureaucratic regulations (at least in the aspect with which I had to encounter) grew up as a tumour. I think that finally one has to cut it! 23 Mar 16:36 Greece University of Patras Medical School Dennis Synetos EU research needs to decrease bureaucracy and must stop favouring the same research groups or consortia repeatedly. 23 Mar 16:29 France INRA David Barker During recent years the EU scientific administration has gone down a catastrophic path leading to the progressive elimination of small-scale novel research programs due to excessive and obsessional control. There is no better way to discourage young and talented researchers who want to do science and not endless and pointless form-filling. In addition, the current situation of research in the plant sciences is particularly alarming. 23 Mar 16:17 Italy University of Roma Tor Vergata Daniele Guido European bureaucracy about research projects is too heavy, some rules (e.g that about VAT reimbursement) are simply crazy, the preference for pre-doc grants as opposed to post-doc grants have negative effects, at least in some disciplines. 23 Mar 16:11 Italy Università di Firenze Ugo Bardi Useful initiative. The regulations as they are a way of stifling innovation 23 Mar 16:09 Netherlands Hubrecht Institute, KNAW and Utrecht Medical Center Wouter de Laat great initiative, hope this will simplify this unrealistic bureaucratic exercise 23 Mar 15:54 Austria Municipality of the City of Vienna - Waterworks Gerhard Kuschnig especially financial reporting makes it nearly impossible to proceed with the activities as it would be best for the project and the envisaged results. the inflexibility of the time frame of the planned budget makes a smooth working progress impossible 23 Mar 15:51 FYR of Macedonia University Ss Cyril & Methodius, Faculty of Natural Sciences & Mathematics, Institute of Chemistry Biljana Minceva-Sukarova As a coordinator of already completed FP6 project I will not recomend any of my collegues to repeat my mistakes. The application procedure too complicated, writing the reports also, but financial reports are just a nightmare. I was trained to do science, not accouning. 23 Mar 15:16 United Kingdom Bournemouth University Adrian Newton I have been a significant beneficiary of EU research funding over the past 20 years, but in each round of funding the administrative burden has become heavier, to the extent that it is now not always cost-effective to bid for such funds. This burden has become a major disincentive to engage in EU-funded projects, particularly for researchers in developing countries. 23 Mar 15:12 Spain University of La Coruna Alexander Mikhailov The actual system is plain burocrasy, let us find new ways to save our research: less a stupid exelence - more possibilities to do a good work. 23 Mar 15:12 Denmark Forest & Landscape Denmark, University of Copenhagen Anders Ræbild As the coordinator of a project you end up using the majority of your time on administration rather than on research. Much could be done simply by providing exact and easy-to-understand guidelines about the information needed in relation to reporting. I believe this would be a big help for everybody, including the administration of EC. 23 Mar 14:21 Austria Fed. Ministry for Economy, Family and Youth Gerhard Burian This declaration in not only directed to th EU-Comm. but alsoto the National Authorities dealing with this mattter. Aa joint urgent action of Me,ber States and EU Comm. is needed to attract more institutions, persons and companies to apply for funds. 23 Mar 14:05 Hungary Plant Protection Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Levente Kiss As a participant in an FP7 project, I had to spend long weeks to get a simple ID number (PIC) from the FP7 system and had to face other bureocratic obstacles which did not help in any ways to achieve the goals of the project. 23 Mar 13:54 Cyprus European University Cyprus Georgios Christou Bureaucracy kills research, as instead of spending our extremely valuable time on research, we have to fill in forms on forms, just to prove that we have done research... Vicious circle? Well... 23 Mar 12:48 Spain IDIBELL Cristina Muñoz-Pinedo We spend more time doing paperwork than science. It is the people with best/more secretaries, rather than the people with best ideas/abilities who get the European money. 23 Mar 12:39 Latvia Riga Teacher Training and Educational Management Academy Dace Markus Too many restrictions and piles of paper work which shall be done slows down the resultativity of research. 23 Mar 12:30 Germany Universität Konstanz Suzanne Kadereit The submission process is disproportionately complicated and impossible for someone with grant experience but who has never submitted at the EU. Many grants with potentially good research proposals are not even reviewed because the forms are not filled out properly. The ensuing scientific paperwork is too time consuming and distracts from actually performing the work and the financial paper work is too demanding and small institutions do not have the resources to dedicate a person to EU grant administration. And the requirement to fill out time sheets is simply preposterous and demeaning. Even more preposterous is the requirement for registering with passport number, birth date/place if one wants to VOLUNTEER for the tedious job of grant reviewer. The EU should try to emulate the NIH grant application/handling format. 23 Mar 12:13 Germany Albert-Ludwigs-University Mareike Wurdack Since Id like to find my professional future in Europe I have participated in workshops preparing young scientists for the framework application process. I found the structures overly complicated and discouraging. 23 Mar 11:47 Poland Warsaw University of Technology Tomasz Adamski I totally agree with this declaration !!!!! 23 Mar 11:43 Spain CIC nanogune Alexander Bittner I read a few comments, and found each single one reflecting my experiences. One thing to add, there are some research groups that deliberately do not take part in EU programmes because of the cumbersome application and administration procedures. 23 Mar 11:40 Netherlands WUR herman van keulen The complex administrative procedures discourage participation in EU projects and thus is a threat to knowledge generation 23 Mar 11:27 Netherlands Wageningen University Robert Kraus The fact that European money makes it often neccessary to appoint full time project managers to cope with administrative rules makes we worried. Not only is overlay cost increasing in the politicial and administrative organs of the EU, but also it is now introduced in Science, where traditioanlly a maximum of focus is set to the work of the motivated and the honest. Black sheep are everwhere, but especially in Science people work in teams rather than in competition - even though we all do compete, we like collaboration more. 23 Mar 11:10 Netherlands Leiden University Medical Center Robert E. Poelmann It should be possible for scientists to write applications without hiring external experts to handle the many rules imposed by the burocratic rules. 23 Mar 11:06 Portugal LNEG Joao Carvalho To understand the rules of some European funded projects (e.g. FP7) is an awesome task. Simplification is a must! 23 Mar 10:58 Netherlands Utrecht University Willem van Eden The administrative burdens keep me away from being pro-active in EU research. 23 Mar 10:21 France Insttut Curie/CNRS Marie Dutreix Administrative tasks are using up 20% of the research time (filling complex papers and reading the one filled by colleagues). It is useless and unproductive... 23 Mar 10:09 Netherlands Vrije Universiteit Andreas Ehlers Studying sciences is not enough to get funding from the eu 23 Mar 09:44 France Institut Curie Mihaela Lupu Financing goes down while paperwork goes up, it has to be a limit to paperwork as financing has one! 23 Mar 09:44 Italy Università di Milano Paolo Plevani I totally agree to semplify the procedures 23 Mar 07:25 Italy University of LAquila Anna Tozzi We are expert on programmes and are used to write projects within many programmes. Recently burocracy is increasing penalising the ideas and supporting only formal facts. Most is due to the managing authorities which are using agencies whose staff does not know anything about preparing a project and takes care only of estetical facts. An example is the recent change of rules in TEMPUS. But the list is becoming long. 23 Mar 01:46 Netherlands Utrecht University Cor Langereis The huge administrative load of EU projects makes them less appealing for trying to get funding. It is definitely a burden that you wish to avoid. 22 Mar 23:14 Bulgaria Institute of Botany, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Teodora Ivanova The administrative work in EC funded science programs is a swamp of endless conditions, pretentions and useless paper work, that not only frustrates and demotivates scientists to apply but additionally creates a twisted reflection of the scientific work. There is no logic EC to fund administration and management at 100% but to give less for the rest that ultimately brings the important part of the project idea. The Commission should stop making the people in science hostages of their abilities to write better and better explanations so to satisfy EC bureaucrats. 22 Mar 22:15 Italy Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - IAC Gianfranco Mascari Many years ago (1985) i have been selected by the European Commission as Project Officier within the ESPRIT Task Force: yes it was a Task Focre ! Nowdays, as a Researche since 1986 at CNR (Itally) and several very successful projects submission, including the famous DataGrid project its quite difficult for me to recognize the Force of the ongoing Tasks asked to researcher to manage European Projects ! 22 Mar 20:53 France University Nice Sophia Antipolis Bernard Rousselet Thank you for organising this declaration 22 Mar 18:35 United Kingdom University College London Andrew Clegg Researchers do not record every days activities to half-hour resolution, and to ask them to do so would cause a ridiculous quantity of paperwork. Therefore, asking them to report these at the end of a year, for every working day over that year, is pointless, and just leads to inaccurate figures and tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear syndrome. Furthermore, the spreadsheets provided for this purpose frequently do match up with the organisational structure of the projects they are used in (work package naming conventions etc.). 22 Mar 16:44 France CEFE Philippe Jarne Any solution that may simplify the current jungle, any solution trusting what researchers are doing (i.e. excluding working report every months), though not going in a pure ERC direction (huge grants to few persons) is welcome 22 Mar 15:57 France CNRS Thierry Boulinier If some politician and/or administrative person high up in the European bureaucracy reads these comment, I sincerely hope that they can realize what they actually mean...This is serious stuff: the system can be much improved by being simplified !! Not the reverse... 22 Mar 14:35 Belgium University of Liège Dominique Dehareng I chose Science to make Science, not a lot of reports and administration, otherwise I would haven chosen Administration. 22 Mar 14:34 France INRA Vincent Vedel Research is a demanding job; being fairly paid with sufficient funding to work properly without spending 80% of our research time to look for money would be a big advance in Sicence. 22 Mar 14:11 Netherlands Wageningen University Jelier Vervloet A good initiative, although I dont expect it will help. Bureaucracy is too powerfull. 22 Mar 14:06 France CNRS Marcel Lambrechts The rules applied at ESF is a nice/efficient example. Administration is minimised, so researchers can focus on research. Why wasting time on progress reports. Progress reports are too often judged by non-specialists in the field who have not the competence to judge the reports correctly, or are hardly red. Results should be published in scientific journal tracked/judged by specialists in the field. 22 Mar 14:05 France Ifremer Sophie ARNAUD-HAOND The amount of time and funds dedicated to bureaucratic processes is much more costfull than the money it is supposed to help saving. Costfull for research funds, costfull in term of researcher time -lost for science-, and eventually costfull for researchers will and dedication to science. 22 Mar 14:04 France INRA Jacques Cabaret When will we get financing for a project with full autonomy (credit card, dispaching of funds into salaries, travel, equipment) and avoid the hassle of planning too much in advance and possibly inadequately the funds? 22 Mar 13:40 United Kingdom Scottish Association for Marine Science Fran McCloskey The EU programmes have lost sight of what they are trying to achieve and have totally failed to identify policies and procedures targeted at the overall objectives. There will come a point where researchers, and their supporting organisations, will need to seriously consider their involvement at EU programme level and that can only hurt the science. 22 Mar 12:52 Spain Centro de Biologia Molecular Severo Ochoa Francisco Wandosell We need more effective, reliable and stable funding for improve R&D in Europe. 22 Mar 12:33 Italy IMATI - CNR Franco Brezzi We all know it, they (the beaurocrats) all know it; please dont force me to talk.... 22 Mar 12:20 Poland Institute of Electronic Systems, Warsaw University of Technology Konrad Hejn I have been waiting very much indeed for years! 22 Mar 12:06 Belgium CIP, University of Liège Jean-Marie Frère In addition to an increasingly heavy administrative burden when you obtain one, the EU grants have become the objects of competitions in which the best scientist and the most promising projects are not always the winners. Some colleagues spend more time lobbying in Brussels than working in their labs to try to orient the calls to their favourite fields. You can find private companies which offer their services to help you answer the sometimes ridiculous questions in the application forms. It is noticeable that these forms contain more non scientific questions than scientific ones. The number of pages devoted to a detailed description of the project is strictly limited while you are asked to describe at length how the network will be managed. Scientists knew how to collaborate before most of the Commission civil servants were born! As far as I know, the scientific productivity of previous EU financed networks managed by the coordinator does not seem to be important in the evaluation of an application. The involvement of SMEs (even if it is completely irrelevant to the goal of the program, e.g. Marie Curie Networks) appears to be a more important factor. 22 Mar 11:46 Italy scuola normale superiore pisa federico cremisi Simplifying FP7 financial and administrative procedures is crucial: every useless administrative effort spent by a scientist is both a scientific opportunity missed by the scientific community and a waste of social resources. 22 Mar 11:45 Netherlands Academic Medical Center Stephan Kemp There are just way too many bureaucratic duties in EU projects. It takes away time that should be dedicated to the science of the project. 22 Mar 11:32 Netherlands Academic Medical Center Maria Siebes The administrative burden of EU funding requires researchers to spend too much time on bureaucratic duties and accounting, to the detriment of actual time spent on research. Budget requirements need to be more flexible in order to not unduly restrict discovery two or three years into a grant. 22 Mar 11:28 Germany Alfred-Wegener-Institute Roland Neuber A minute spent on administration is an hour lost for science, as said by Hartmut Hellmer, AWI 22 Mar 11:14 Poland Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology Jan Jacek Żebrowski Although control is necessary, the extreme amount of paperwork is taxing heavily the resources of scientific groups and drastically slowing down research and creativity. 22 Mar 11:06 Poland Polish Academy of Sciences / Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Lukasz Kaczmarek We want to make good research and create international and interdisciplinary collaboration links not to become the administrative clerks and our accountants slaves. Therefore we need good and comprehendable infrastructure and support and we dont need months wasted on struggling with beurocratic system. 22 Mar 10:35 Italy Department of Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology - University of Milan Katia Petroni I fully support this initiative 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 22 Mar 10:03 Italy university ol laquila aldo lepidi Thank you for promoting such an administrative semplification. We need it. Let me suggest another problem of european concern. The EU researchers are submitted to different employment contracts according to the various countries and to the public or private nature of the employer. There is already a statement of the Commission favorable to an unique european job contract for researchers which is largely ignored. I suggest you to promote the awareness of reseachers about this situation and about the advantages of having the same job legal order for research in every european country. Thank again Aldo Lepidi 22 Mar 09:52 United Kingdom University of Cambridge Chris Jiggins European funding is notorious for the bureaucracy involved, which generally just ends up detracting from the scientific output of the research. I therefore support all efforts to streamline the process of awarding and administering these funds, for the benefit of taxpayers and scientists alike. 22 Mar 09:46 Netherlands Alterra Berien Elbersen EU research funding is of key-importance to bring EU cooperation further and to improve our scientific standards EU wide. The administrative burden during execution of projects makes time and resource investment in the project inefficient however. 22 Mar 09:24 Germany DLR Florian Weyrauch I know from SME how not join FP7, because of administrative afford 22 Mar 09:00 Turkey Bogazici University Amitav Sanyal Keeping it simple will encourage more researchers to participate! 22 Mar 08:42 France CNRS GOURBILLEAU Fabrice We are no more doing research, job for what we are paid and that we like.. We are just wasting our time to fill EC forms and documents and thus loosing efficiency. 22 Mar 08:26 Spain Carlos III Institute of Health Pablo Martinez-Martin Putting together the time spent along the year to complete forms for grant calls, some teams lose months. An example: curriculum vitae forms are (even within the same country) completely different among institutions. Main dedication of scientists should be science, not bureaucracy. 22 Mar 08:20 Sweden Stiftelsen Teknikdalen Erika Hinz We are absolutley positive about a simplification of EU-bureaucracy. Our experience is in the field of structual funds, interreg programs, CIP and other EU-financed activities. 21 Mar 22:44 Switzerland Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research Dirk Schuebeler The high administrative burden involved with applying and administrating EU grants keeps many from competing for these grants. Reducing the red tape seems a necessity. While scientists ask for more trust they need however acknowledge that part of the problem is that EU citizens do not trust Bruxelles that it can manage money efficiently. In turn the EU provides heavy oversight aiming to avoid that money is misused. This applies to farmer subsidies as well as research funding. 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. 21 Mar 19:11 Spain Faculty of Economics. University of Santiago de Compostela Maria-Carmen Guisan Due to lack of support my team has experienced too many difficulties. I have reached a top position among 20 most popular Economics researchers, out of more than 20000 economists at the international bibliographic net Ideas.Repec, by the total number of downloads of my articles, in spite of lack of support from European Union. I am in favor of more transparency, more fair distribution, more support to researchers and less bureaucracy in European Funding activities. Economics research is important for European Development and should be supported by EU as we request in our Blog: http://euroamericanassociation.blogspot.com 21 Mar 16:18 France Cirad Emmanuel guiderdoni Being partner of several EU projects from FP4 to FP7 I found that the administrative tasks and reporting, including financial has become with time unaffordable for a scientist, without the tesupport of a financial officer. I would rather prefer a system like US NSF where an a posteriori but thorough review of the outcome of the project is made but leaves the scientist with only scientific issue to address and light reporting during the course of the project. 21 Mar 15:19 Poland Faulty of ETI, Gdansk University of Technology Bogdan Wiszniewski Innovation becomes riskier and more costly as global competition intensifies. A belief that risk could be eliminated in collaborative research with bureaucratic procedures is naive and utopian. Shared risk partnership in FP should imply responsibility of all consortium members and the Commission alike, which should be ready to accept a certain level of uncertainty regarding the final project result. For otherwise it would not be an innovation (meaning discovery of new facts) but mere implementation of existing ideas. 21 Mar 11:29 Germany Helmut-Schmidt Universität Hamburg Michael Breuer Research should gain more importance, not administrative tasks! 21 Mar 11:06 Other Agricultural Research Corporation Gamal Elbadri For the scientists to be more productive, things have to be more simple. 21 Mar 09:33 Germany Universitaet Stuttgart Claus-Dieter Munz I agree that the administrative burden and the financial regulation of European research funding should be simplified. 20 Mar 21:25 Ukraine Lviv Polytechnic National University Oleh Matviykiv Total support the Declaration. 20 Mar 19:59 France INSERM Gerard Chaouat I totally agree with HG Rammensee: too much lobbying (even if we did not lobby for our NoE, I afterwards -a a trade union memeber- saw or was told stories or examples of lobbying in action forthe calls) and much, too much, focused calls. As a consequence, several priorities or decreted as such by the European Parliament are just omitted: see , for what I know the best, the status of research in Reproduction, theoretically a priority. Several calls are obviously pre targeted to a single lab, thus preempting the result and limiting competition. As for the administrative rules, yes, they are much too complex. This call is timemy 20 Mar 18:50 France CNRS Emmanuel Balanzat I have more than 30 years of experience as physicist doing research in France. I am convinced that years ago we did much better Science with much less money. The obvious reason is: we did what we are supposed to do, Science and not filling forms and constructing schemes and collaborations with the only purpose to be “EC like”. The EC founding system, and to some extent, also some national systems (ANR in France for instance) leads to an indecent misappropriate use of public finance and to a clear decrease of the efficiency of our community in producing good quality Science. 20 Mar 18:42 France collège de france and université de Strasbourg jean-Marie LEHN drastically simplify administrative red tape for proposal submission and reporting keep scientific evaluation in the hands of competent scientists evaluate program officers 20 Mar 18:28 United Kingdom University of Sussex Antony Carr Almost everying imaginable is wrong with the current system. 20 Mar 16:44 France University of Strasbourg Thomas Ebbesen In addition to the broad statement of the declaration, the programme officers that oversee the projects should all be scientists, and they should be evaluated for their effectiveness by the project coordinator after the closing of the project. 20 Mar 16:26 France Institut Henri Poincare Cedric Villani The European administration of science is legendary for being complex and heavy. My experience with it has fully confirmed this reputation. We are missing what seemed a historical opportunity for a new, powerful organization of science in Europe. 20 Mar 15:37 United Kingdom Universidade de Lisboa Maria Amélia Martins-Louçao There is a need of simplification although I entirely agree with accountability 20 Mar 15:30 France INRA, UMR for Grain Legume Research Richard Thompson Any measure that reduces the sapping bureaucracy associated with EU research funding would be most welcome. Calls for proposals that allow the applicants to develop their own ideas are also very necessary. 20 Mar 13:38 Germany CRTD, TU-Dresden Christian Boekel Framing research funding in terms of contracts that describe research results as deliverables is missing the point. By its very nature innovative research will NOT yield results that are readily predictable when the funding is applied for. The consequence is vagueness in the desciption of research goals (... will have gained insight into XYZ by .....), most likely the opposite of the intended outcome from the side of the funding body. As a result, the proposed research cannot be judged on its own merit. 20 Mar 13:17 Netherlands Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences/Hubrecht Institute Hans Clevers The bureaucratic burden surrounding EU grants has become heavier with each new round, ever since I acquired my first under FP3. It has now reached a level where the costs start outweighing the benefits. As a result, I find myself actively declining invitations to participate in several FP7 networks. 20 Mar 13:14 Poland Silesian Technical Uniwersity Stanisław Waluś More administration - less scientific work 20 Mar 12:47 France CNRS Jacqueline de Bony Its a pity to ask a researcher more and more management time and competences instead of more and more time for developing research 20 Mar 10:06 Turkey FREELANCER SUHEYLA ASLAN I totally agree in simplifying the burocratic and administrative procedures. Since 2004 I have been involving with the EU projects and I think that the administrative and burocratic works takes the most of our times during the implementaion process of the projects. Actually I had stated my opinion to the local authorities before. Especially the detailed hard copies we have to submit to the related authorities after completion of the project is massive and useless. On the other hand can you imagine that how many projects documents should be kept for at least 10 years by the contractors and the beneficiaries. This is waste of time, money and etc.... Because you have to consume a lot of paper, ink, time (this is the most important thing...). At least half of the project time are being consuming by filling this form and that form; and by writing a lot of reports which are just papers. The best way is to simpilfy the rules as soon as possible. And it would be better to have everything on-line. I hope very much that in a short time the rules will be changed. With my kind regards, 20 Mar 09:50 France URGV Plant Genomics Heribert Hirt After 20 years of EU projects with a constant increase in administrative nonsense and a corresponding decrease in scientific contents, many institutions have now reached the point to dissuade researchers to participate in EU projects. The reasons for this position mainly lie in the fact that the amount of administrative tasks and involvement has surpassed a critical threshold beyond which scientific funding has become of limited interest in comparison to other funding possibilities. This is a deplorable state for European Research and requires immediate and courageous action to reset this structure into the steam engine of European research that we all wish to have. 20 Mar 09:14 Switzerland FMI for Biomedical Research barbara Hohn I agree that the application formalities for European funding are too time-consuming; they take a lot or time from the scientists which they better invest in research. 20 Mar 03:53 Poland WSK Rzeszów Jacek Sowa We need to digest between burden on researchers and benefit for EU 19 Mar 23:12 Germany University Freiburg Klaus Piontek Too much effort, time and money is wasted just for the application and administration of EU-grants. This should rather used for the actual target, the research and development. 19 Mar 19:38 Switzerland University of Zurich Josef Jiricny I have co-ordinated a 5th framework program, have participated in the 6th and am now participating also in the 7th. Although I recognise the need for scientists to be accountable to funding organisations in general, the procedures implemented by the EU are far too complex and thus difficult to understand and follow. Most importantly, the concept of Deliverables and Milestones may be applicable to industrial research, but it is not suitable for cutting-edge basic research. If we could foretell our results years in advance, we could write the papers now and save ourselves the time and trouble of doing research. Having to adhere to pre-defined Deliverables and Milestones stifles the freedom that is essential for new discovery. The holding back of the final installment is also problematic, especially for those of us outside the Eurozone, due to fluctuating exchange rates. 19 Mar 18:57 Poland West Pomeranian Business school Rozwadowski Stanisław Jerzy First of all,the last legal and financial regulations related to the projects reporting are insulting a mankind inteligency.Many requested documents ,details ,proofs,proofs the proofs,banking documents confirming operations on the private accounts,double reporting forms with a diffirent data request,one for so called First level Control and completly diffrent for Project Financial Manager/twelve reports within three years-example BSR Programme/.Time consumption by reporting with a big losses for the project merit.It has no sense to participate in so bureaucratic projects in the future. 19 Mar 17:10 France Institut Pasteur Jacob Seeler As scientists, we might better apply to EU Regional or Agricultural funds, instead of framework programs. First, because the budgets are *much* bigger, and second, because administrative control is much less! Are we all too dumb? As it is, the best and brightest will soon stop applying for EU funding, or will quit Europe altogether, leaving the EU to administer mediocrity. Curbing bureacracy therefore has strategic importance: lets keep our smart people here! 19 Mar 16:27 Poland Warsaw University of Technology Stanislaw Adaszewski I wholeheartedly support the idea of minimizing formalisms necessary to receive European funding for research! Europe should focus more on punishing fraud criminals really hard (stop putting them into air-conditioned cells with access to gyms, television, libraries, etc. and make them pay back for what they stole!) not on making everything difficult from the very start for honest people. 19 Mar 16:23 France IGBMC/INSERM/CNRS jean marc egly The flexibility obtained by the ERC grant is destroyed by the rules in which we have to justify every thing, every day; This is rather ridiculuous. 19 Mar 16:22 Poland Politechnika Warszawska Andrzej Filipkowski I was coordinator in FP5 Project SEWING and partner in FP6 project WARMER. I found the bureaucracy increasing from one FP to another. I was scared to participate in FP7 project seeing how formalities are becoming involved. Both application with a proposal and later fulfilling all reporting formalities take more time than substantial work on the research. 19 Mar 16:14 Poland Warsaw University of Technology Bartosz Papis Formalisms and administrative burden consume lots of time, potential and resources. Student presence and identity verification is a weak and redundant procedure, which also puts personal data at additional risks. 19 Mar 16:06 France LTDS, Ecole Centrale de Lyon FOUVRY SIEGFRIED Please turn back to more simple system with less administrative time consuming processes like it was with the original BRITE project (beginning of 90s) Small, fast and efficient research projects ! 19 Mar 15:56 Belgium Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Gregory Maes The current administrative burden for project coordinators results in nobody wanting to lead a project anymore (unless by paying a full-time secretary for such purpose on EU budget), while project partners spend a tremendous time in project management rather than research (the pmrimary focus of an EU project in my opinion) ! 19 Mar 15:22 Italy Sincrotrone Trieste Werner Jark I have nothing to add to other comments about excessive paper work. However, I would like to address in particular the last point in the declaration - the risk taking, on which only few colleagues commented thoughtfully. Research is the systematic study of the unexplored/unstudied! Who is really able to schedule the milestones with this boundary condition AND to predict the reaction to unexpected results? Are we sure that the weird guy, who cannot explain his ideas clearly and thus does not find a powerful collaboration, will really do nothing good? I do not feel well answering with a convinced “YES”! Based on this I would like to reword the last point to “taking chances” and to make a related proposal. Why not give everybody, i.e. also colleagues with less experience, little time/talent for lobbying and difficulties to clearly express ideas/strategies, equal chances by assigning part of the available budget, something of the order of 5%, in a lottery, in which ALL submitted proposals will participate, even those full of formal errors. After all researchers want to do research! 19 Mar 15:20 Germany ARTS DS Dieter Schmitt Especially in FP7, the administrative burden from the EC services has become a monster. You get no single person responsible for anything! A lot of services from the EC are aölways involved and time is passsing by before any decision or answer is taken. The rules for financing, especially the Overhead is a new masterpiece of incompetence and sophistication! 19 Mar 15:19 Germany University of the Bundeswehr Munich Michael Pfitzner Requests for extensive deliverable reports by the EU often reduce possible outcome of the project due to the time spent for the preparation of these reports. The time spent for administrative work within a project should stay at a small fraction of the total research time. 19 Mar 14:47 Poland Warsaw University of Technology Jerzy Szabatin I fully support this initiative 19 Mar 14:08 Netherlands Leiden University Medical Center Louis Havekes Hereby I declare that the EU research application rules should be simplified extensively 19 Mar 13:54 Austria CTR AG Jochen Bardong Bureaucracy is necessary, but not at this detail level in R&D. The funds have to be used to do R&D, not to oversee it. 19 Mar 13:47 Germany Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd& Co Kg Jan Lieser EU research projects should focus on scientific output and limit overhead caused by administrative and legal issues. 19 Mar 13:18 Canada Saint Marys University Krystian Dudzinski Take Canadian NSERC as an example 19 Mar 13:14 Turkey Zirve University Bulent YILMAZ I would like the procedures to be simplified for the application and finances in EU grants. 19 Mar 13:05 United Kingdom The University Court of the University of Aberdeen Crystal Anderson In my role as European liaison officer, I have found that there are two main things that stop researchers from applying for European funding. The first is the fact that it takes months of researcher time to write a competitive proposal that is unlikely to be funded due to low success rates, and the second is the amount of bureaucracy and repetition/redundancy of information that needs to be entered into the various electronic reporting tools (e.g., the section on explanation on the use of resources in SESAM). I can confirm that both of these factors are causing seasoned EU PIs to seriously re-think applying for EU funding as a coordinator. Although the ability to hire an administrator to the project alleviates some of the work from the PI, it is not a proper solution to the excessive administrative load. 19 Mar 13:04 Germany Department of Pediatrics I Ursula Felderhoff-Müser The large amount of bureaucracy involved in the administration of an EU grant is in strong contracdiction to the quality of science. The money for staff which is required to meet the current administrative EU expectations should be rather invested in upscale research. 19 Mar 13:02 Netherlands Alterra, Wageningen University and Research Centre Theo van der Sluis ridiculous amount of bureaucracy for those applications... 19 Mar 12:57 Poland Warsaw University of Technology Lukasz Bartnik If things dont change were never going to catch up with the rest of the world... 19 Mar 12:52 United Kingdom Glasgow Caledonian University Ole Pahl The INTERREG auditing requirements are a lamentable duplication (to say the least) of national and international effort, and imply that all researchers are not to be trusted. I hope that some more common sense can be inserted into the mechanisms. 19 Mar 12:47 Poland Warsaw University of Technology Krzysztof Kulpa It would be nice, if more effort can be directed toward research than to paper-work both during proposal preparation (more focus on science than management and other less important issues and during other part of work on grants. 19 Mar 12:42 United Kingdom University of Leeds Constanze Bonifer The amount of bureaucracy involved with coordinating an EU proposal is absolutely prohibitive. It basically ensures that only institutions and consortia who have specialized administrative support can lead such an application. Nobody else can even dream about it. It means that only certain groups can apply, and these are not always the ones that do the best science. The result is an inbreeding culture that locks out people who are not part of the breed. 19 Mar 12:39 France CIRAD Guy HENRY The cientific incentives for coordinating FP projects are being outweighted by the administrative burdens. Hence, good people are not interested anymore in coordinating important and relevant projects !!! 19 Mar 12:37 Netherlands University of Groningen Caspar van der Wal The balance between work and investments aimed at controlling malconduct, and actual risk of malconduct, is far too much on the side of administrative checks. 19 Mar 12:19 Belgium Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Carlos Dotti further problem is that local (country) funding institutions have copied the EU bureaucratic regulations. 19 Mar 12:07 Germany Nomor Research GmbH Eiko Seidel Besides the red tape during the project as mentioned before, also the preparation and coordination of the proposals take a huge amount of time. The chance for actual funding at the latest calls was rather small left for those using professional help in drafting such proposals and doing lobbying for it. 19 Mar 12:07 Austria Boku Katharina Paschinger It is obvious that people who write the calls are primarily driven by regulatory items. Here I suggest a simple way to reduce the effort and to increase the scientific output. Just hand the money directly to the national science trusts, in the first round according to the population in each country. The national agencies can then fund single projects and to a certain percentage infrastructural improvements at the universities or research centers. This ensures the increase in research output since on small basis the cooperation works well and furthermore no lobbying is then nessesary to get the resarch field into the call. Repeat the procedure every year. Then after five years due to the output the next tranche of money will than be directed to the countries with the higher scientific output in order to support the most competitive researchers. 19 Mar 12:01 Germany Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) Uwe Fey If we could spend all the time for research and development which is now dissipated by excessive administrative paperwork, Europe could be the worlds leading centre of science. 19 Mar 11:49 United Kingdom University of Sussex Alan Lehmann I have co-ordinated and participated in many EU consortia over the past 30 years. The bureaucratic nature of the forms and reports is a real hindrance. One has to repeat the same information many times in different ways. The one-size-fits-all nature of the applications and contracts are inappropriate. Carrying out basic research is not the same as building a machine. 19 Mar 11:33 Netherlands Erasmus MC Elaine Dzierzak Reporting needs simplification. This will allow us as scientists to perform our functions as researchers more effectively, instead of taking enormous amounts of our time to fill out forms and reports. 19 Mar 11:28 United Kingdom Cambridge University Martin Korth Give young researchers a chance; dont let just fossils (people and/or institutions?) decide that they will anyway keep it in the family ... ;-) 19 Mar 11:27 Portugal IBMC Teresa Summavielle Bureaucracy consumes a large percentage of my daily schedule. 19 Mar 11:24 Poland Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion Pawel Gasior The reason should prevail, not regulations. The guidelines for preparation of a publication should not be longer than the publication itself. Scientist should be focused on their research and not on constant form filling and documents preparation. 19 Mar 11:17 Netherlands Wageningen University Bas Van Vliet Recent experiences with EC bureaucracy in starting up or finalizing projects made me hesitant to initiate new EC funded projects. Time spent on administration was many times higher then time spent on doing research. 19 Mar 11:13 Ireland National University of Ireland Galway Noel Lowndes I fully support this initiative aimed at simplifying the considerable, and excessive Eurocracy involved with EU funding of science. 19 Mar 11:11 Poland Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences Jan W. Owsinski Simplicity breeds effectiveness 19 Mar 10:52 United Kingdom University of Cambridge Michael Payne There needs to be an independent review of whether funding is going to the very best researchers in Europe, as assessed by their number of publications, citations, h-factors and other internationally recognised criteria. We need to understand that only the very best research leads to the paradigm shifts that generate new industries and hence new employment opportunities and acknowledge that, ultimately, creating employment is crucial for ensuring cohesion across Europe. 19 Mar 10:28 Finland Åbo Akademi University | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||