A legal framework for European research infrastructures
During the last meeting of the Competitiveness Council, held in Brussels on 28 and 29 May, EU research ministers have agreed to give a boost to Europe on their road to leadership in research.
Aiming to remedy a situation which currently does not cover the needs of the research infrastructure of this kind, the European Commission presented in July 2008 a proposal to create a new legal framework that governs, and Parliament approved in February a report on the regulation establishing the legal framework for European Research Infrastructures (ERI).
In December the member states began to discuss how to release the research infrastructure of VAT (value added tax) and consumption tax. At this meeting, suggested that the Czech president, for VAT purposes, European research infrastructures should be treated as international organizations. The proposal was accepted by a qualified majority.
Thanks to the new legal framework, Member States wishing to host a European research infrastructure, will have to declare in their applications to the Commission to recognize the new infrastructure as an international organization.
Miroslava Kopicová, Czech Minister of Education, Youth and Sport said that "the legal framework will considerably reduce the administrative and financial costs and clarify the legal conditions for the functioning of European research infrastructures"
Other topics discussed were the assessment and evaluation of the impact of the European Research Framework Programmes (FP) and the creation of the ERA (European Research Area), for which considered that the Member States and the Commission must "become more involved in ensuring complementarities and synergies between policies and instruments of the Community "