The European Commission has recently adopted two major initiatives that will see changes to the financial regulations and a simplification of the procedures surrounding the EU's research Framework Programmes, in order to cut red tape and focus on research results. As well as making it easier for researchers to gain access to EU funds, the new rules would also help fuse more public and private funding, giving investment a stronger punch.

Europe's research community has long been campaigning for the simplification of bureaucratic burden for research, as evidenced by the thousands of researchers in Europe and elsewhere who have signed the “Trust Researchers” Declaration, a petition recently presented to Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn and the European Parliament that raises a critical voice for change.

As highlighted by Janusz Lewandowski, the European Commissioner for Budget and Financial Programming, the revised financial regulation will facilitate access to EU funding, resulting in more innovation and stronger growth. The main goal of such initiatives is for EU funding through EU's research Framework Programme to stimulate innovation and growth by making it more accessible to European business, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), researchers and other beneficiaries.

The Commission is proposing measures that will reduce their costs and workload caused by excessively heavy procedures. In the short term, simple solutions such as scrapping the obligation to open separate bank accounts and pay back interest on upfront payments will lighten the administrative burden for the beneficiaries involved. Eventually, EU funding should shift from just reimbursing bills to rewarding performance.

Changes that the European Commission has proposed include raising the ceiling under which grants entail simpler administrative procedures from the current EUR 25,000 to EUR 50,000. Beneficiaries should also be allowed to use their grant to pay other project partners.

In terms of simplification measures, businesses are targeted. For example, the European Commission accepts the one-off submission of legal documents via the Unique Registration Facility (URF) rather than requesting them for each subsequent application.

The European Commission has also proposed the removal of the requirement for timesheets, a reduction in various funding rules across the different programmes and amendments concerning pre-financing interest claims.

The changes would help streamline measures and guarantee effective control of taxpayers' money, resulting in a solid balance between the two. In the long run, the European Commission hopes these changes will help shift the emphasis of the grant system from reimbursing cost claims to paying for the delivery of results.

The proposals must be adopted by the Council and the European Parliament.

Meanwhile, Dr Olivier Küttel, the co-founder of the Trust Researchers Initiative, and the Swiss National Contact Point for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and Director of Euresearch Head Office in Bern, has said that a restructuring of Europe's funding programmes is needed if they are to be effective. Too often, researchers rifle through mountains of paperwork when applying for EU research funding.

The “Trust Researchers” Iniative

The “Trust Researchers” Declaration outlines five key principles: mutual trust; focused on research; consistency; reliability; and risk taking. On mutual trust, the researchers note that the funding of research in Europe should be based on mutual trust and responsible partnering.

Dr Sabine Herlitschka, an initiator of Trust Researchers, and the Austrian National Contact Point for FP7 and Director of the Division European & International Programmes at the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) in Austria, noted that the majority of the researchers are not against the rules but what they want are the right rules.

For her part, Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn agrees with the message put forward by the Trust Researchers initiative, and even referred to it when she presented the European Commission's Communication on Simplification of EU grants on 29 April of this year.

The Communication has not fallen on deaf ears, the European Parliament recognises the need for simplification and researchers have also expressed the Communication goes in the right direction.