Who runs things?
The Industrial Technologies Programme (NMP) is managed by the Industrial Technologies Directorate (Directorate G) of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research. The programme is part of the Cooperation Specific Programme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
The three units specifically involved are called:
- New generation products
- Value-added materials
- Nano- and converging sciences and technologies
These units cooperate with the Administration and finance unit, which coordinates the legal and financial aspects of projects. They also work with the Horizontal Aspects and Coordination Unit, which coordinates other issues related to programme implementation.
Background to the development of the NMP WorkProgramme
Work Programmes, which are the most important documents to implement FP7 are decided by the Commission after opinion from the Programme Committees members (PCM).
The preparation of the Work Programmes can be seen as two inter related paths. The first describes the internal Commission preparation where the Commission interact with the stakeholders mainly via the Advisory Groups (AGs), European Technology Platforms (ETPs) and the Programme Committees (PCs). The other path is where different stakeholders can interact with the Commission.
The Advisory Groups, set up for the different parts of FP7, are the most important ‘single’ source for consultation on the Work Programmes. It should be noted that they are set up to give input on the Work Programmes at a strategic level and are not formally consulted on the draft texts (in practice many of the Advisory Groups do also give input on the drafts).
The Strategic Research Agendas of the European Technology Platforms have a major influence on the Cooperation Work Programme and is unique in the history of the Framework Programme.
The ‘Research DGs’ (Research, Enterprise, Transport/Energy, Information Society (ICT) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC)) have a research budget and ‘own’ their parts of FP7 but they have to liaise with the ‘Policy DGs’ of the Commission. The policy DGs (such as Environment, Health, Education, Agriculture, Fishery) do not have their own research budget but they give input on their research needs to the ‘Research DGs.’ Important input to the Work Programmes comes from ‘bilateral contacts’ between ‘Research’ and ‘Policy DGs’.
In the end a text has to be produced – and in most cases the text, for one area/topic is drafted by one Project Officer in the Commission with their Heads of Unit being the ‘arbitrators’. When a Project Officer sits down, he or she must be confident that all relevant background information is there. What it boils down to is that the Project Officer gets the right information at the appropriate time in order for it to be useful. When the first draft of a Work Programme exists, the possibility of having an input drops significantly.
The adoption phase starts with the Inter Service Consultation in which the Directorate-Generals are formally consulted and have the ‘possibility’ to block adoption if they are not satisfied. It is not uncommon that ‘Policy DGs’ come up with very detailed ‘wish-lists’ of topics to be included. The Inter Service Consultation is followed by the formal adoption of the opinion of the various Programme Committee configurations. At this stage it is very difficult to make any major changes to the Work Programme but an important aspect can be e.g. to make sure that no ‘topics’ are taken out.
There is also the possibility to add ‘key-words’ which in practice can be very important to widening the scope of the topics.
In this phase the Programme Committee members become more ‘important’ as the Commission, in principle, has closed off any other external input.
Finally, after the opinion from the Programme Committee the Commission can formally adopt the Work Programme and immediately afterwards the calls for proposals may be published.
The Programme Committee
It is the task of the Commission to implement legislation at Community level. In practice, each legislative instrument specifies the scope of the implementing powers conferred on the Commission by the Council of the European Union. In this context, the Treaty provides for the Commission to be assisted by a committee, in line with the procedure known as "Comitology". Europa Glossary - Comitology
The committees are forums for discussion, consist of representatives from Member States and are chaired by the Commission. They enable the Commission to establish dialogue with national administrations before adopting implementing measures. The Commission ensures that measures reflect as far as possible the situation in each of the countries concerned.
The NMP Programme Committee (PC) is comprised of National representatives identified as NMP National Delegates accompanied usually by a team of national Experts, in many cases coinciding with NMP National Contact Points. Members of PC delegations usually are employed by National Public Development Agencies, National Departments or Ministries and they must be appointed to the PC by an official representative within their agencies or ministries. On the Commission side are the Director, the EU Head of Unit/s, EU own experts, EU admin staff.
Expert Advisory Groups (EAG) and programme committees are quite distinct. The purpose of the EAGs is to advise the Commission, whereas programme committees have a formal role set out in the Council decisions adopting the specific programmes. Programme committees are required to be consulted by the Commission before taking certain decisions. Evidently, the work of the EAGs is of interest to the programme committees and they are informed of the EAGs' deliberations through, for example, inviting the chairmen of the EAGs to make presentations at programme committee meetings.
European Advisory Group in Future Activities of NMP
The NMP Expert Advisory Group (EAG) is composed of 25 Experts from the various RTD domains of the NMP research programme. They belong to different types of organisations (Industry-various industrial sectors, Academia, Research centres) coming from 17 countries. However, they don’t represent their organisations or their country, since they participate as independent experts. The objective of the EAG has been, through strategic thinking of NMP RTD areas, the generation of a position paper as an input for the needs of future RTD priority setting within the NMP programme. The EAG had several plenary and specific working meetings in Brussels, and has organised its activities through several working sub-groups: Economic & Impact, Nano, Materials and Production subgroups. The group meets 3-4 times a year. For more information on the NMP EAG structure and its subgroups and the participants please refer to the report
“POSITION PAPER ON FUTURE RTD ACTIVITIES OF NMP FOR THE PERIOD 2010 – 2015” at NMP Expert Advisory Group Position Paper
The report represents a very valuable and traceable source of state of the art research and contains the main technological priorities in the NMP RTD areas and of the European challenges in relevant fields. Recommendations of the EAG group and roadmap will carefully be blended and integrated by the NMP Programme Committee along with the rest of the Commission’s criteria and information sources for its strategic thinking.
The group has established that NMP programme’s science and technology policies need to be guided by four core principles:
- Promoting world class scientific and technological excellence in Nanoscience, materials and Production Systems in relation to the needs of European Industry.
- Focusing on priorities in basic and applied research in areas of strength and opportunity for Europe
- Encouraging a public private partnerships and collaborations, involving the business, academia, research institutions and public sectors at home and abroad.
- Enhancing accountability and reporting practices to deliver and demonstrate results.
Follow the link to the European Commissions Industrial Technologies website.