News 02 December 2024

Contours of the ERIC: News from the General Assembly

Contours of the future permanent research infrastructure in the form of an ERIC are becoming clearer, as today's meeting of the General Assembly revealed. Several recently delivered deliverables thereby provided not only the starting points, but also material for further reflection and refinement.

Statutes and Technical and Scientific Description

First to pass were the first version of the ERIC’s  (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) Statutes, Bylaws and Protocols, Deliverable D1.1. This first version contains RESILIENCE statutes and the technical and scientific description; bylaws and protocols will be drafted during the next 18 months, once the process of preliminary negotiation between member states will be established. With that in mind, the document is also useful, now that RESILIENCE partners are dealing with their national governments, since establishing an ERIC requires support from European Member States and Associated Countries.

Services and Users

Service strategy came in the spotlight again in Roxanne Wyns’ presentation. RESILIENCE as a research infrastructure will offer core services, as managed by the ERIC head quarters and its members, community services (being in-kind contributions) and so called internal services, not included in the service catalogue but enabling the development of other services. The service strategy, however, as described in Deliverable D2.1, does not limit anyone to take on other priorities, in so far needed.

Alignment between what users need and what RESILIENCE as ERIC will provide again proved important, whereby the discussion among the General Assembly participants provided food for further thought.

Reporting

The first 30 months of the Preparatory Phase in which RESILIENCE now finds itself have now passed, and the contours of the future permanent research infrastructure in the form of an ERIC are becoming clearer, as the deliverables show. The periodic reporting towards the European Commission is therefore viewed with confidence: much has been done and RESILIENCE is making considerably progress towards its main objective: bringing the research infrastructure to the completion of its Preparatory Phase and making it ready for the Implementation Phase.

About

The General Assembly is composed of representatives of the partners of RESILIENCE, and its meetings are the place where strategic issues can be discussed. The General Assembly convenes twice a year.