Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski participated in the Budget Committee Meeting. Ms Carvalho spoke to the Comissioner for Financial Programming and Budget and asked him one question:
"The situation of research funding requires urgent political action in order to be suited to the needs of the European research community. The huge amount of bureaucracy, red tape and administrative burden does not allow Europe to achieve its strategic goals in terms of research policy.
Currently, many institutions, universities and industries, do not apply for European funds due to their rigid frameworks. Most financing rules are not transparently applied. Also the financial regulation and implementing rules are too complex, creating a climate of mistrust. However, simple rules for funding schemes and accountability systems should be trust based.
Europe needs to have simpler and more flexible rules to finance research, mainly the frontier research (institutions such as ERC).
My Question to the Commissioner is How does the Commission see the possibility of simplifying the existing rules, such as in certain cases for frontier research, from contract to lump sums or prizes, to create a culture of trust and to concentrate the evaluation on the scientific results?"
In his answer, the Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski announced some initiatives, such as the revision of the Financial Regulation, which will be launched in June with simplification measures for the research funding.