The Commission presents a second report on the
application of Council Regulation (EC) No 723/2009 on the Community
legal framework for a European Research Infrastructure Consortium
(ERIC). To recall, the Regulation aimed to facilitate the
establishment and the operation of large European research
infrastructures among several Member States and associated
countries by providing a new legal instrument, the European
Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). An ERIC is a legal
entity with legal personality and full legal capacity
recognised in all Member States.
Implementation: at the time of the first report
(please see previous summary) 7 ERICs were established. Since then,
twelve additional ERICs have been set up.
These are:
- CERICERIC (Central European Research Infrastructure
Consortium) hosted by Italy;
- DARIAH-ERIC (Digital Research Infrastructure for the
Arts and Humanities) hosted by France;
- JIV- ERIC (Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline
Interferometry), hosted by the Netherlands;
- the European Spallation Source ERIC, hosted by
Sweden;
- ICOS-ERIC (Integrated Carbon Observation System)
hosted by Finland;
- EMSO-ERIC (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and
Water Column Observatory), hosted by Italy;
- LifeWatch ERIC (e-Science and Technology European
Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research) hosted by
Spain;
- CESSDA ERIC (Consortium of European Social Science
Data Archives) and ECCSEL ERIC (European Carbon Dioxide Capture and
Storage Laboratory both hosted by Norway;
- INSTRUCT-ERIC (Integrated Structural Biology) hosted
by the United Kingdom;
- EMBRC-ERIC (European Marine Biological Resource
Centre) hosted by France, and
- EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC (European Infrastructure of Open
Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology) hosted by
Germany.
All save for two are included in the European
Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI)
Roadmap.
The Commission considers that, due to many
commonalities in the provisions of the Statutes of the ERICs
concerning accession, decision making and liability, the
ERIC Regulation has greatly facilitated the opportunities
for Member States, associated countries and third countries to
consider joining these European Research Infrastructures. The
procedure for application for the ERIC status and ease of use has
improved but could be further optimised as Member States, the
scientific community and the Commission services continue to go
through a learning process.
The Commission identifies the following
recurring issues and policy questions:
- how to register an ERIC in the national legal
administrative systems, or in other registers which would enable
an ERIC to be recognised by the Commission services as
beneficiary or coordinator of grants and in Member States to open
bank accounts and to apply for reimbursement for VAT and excise
duties;
- since an ERIC is a public-public partnership, the
status of personnel that it employs needs to be clarified in
the national administrative systems as this will impact on salary
scales, income tax issues and personnel costs for the
ERIC ;
-
possible VAT exemption for in-kind
contributions to the ERIC as in many
cases members of an ERIC prefer to partly contribute in-kind to the
ERIC instead of providing cash-contributions. Guidelines
adopted in 2014 provide that goods or services acquired by
representing entities shall not benefit from VAT exemption but the
issue requires further clarification and guidance;
- the question of economic-versus non-economic
activities should be further clarified, especially with regard
to possible funding from European
Regional Development Funds.
The Commission is promoting ERICs and other
European Research Infrastructures in bilateral cooperation
mechanisms such as the EU-Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (CELAC). It intends, where appropriate, to invite members of
international fora to further explore the possibilities of creating
a dedicated legal instrument for establishing such research
consortia which could, as the ERIC did in the European Union, fill
the gap between the treaty based organisations and national
organisations.