At the beginning of June, EASL attended FP7-related information days organised by the Commission and held in Brussels. The information report below is of interest to EASL members regarding the upcoming 2012 Call:

• There will be further updates to the orientation paper.  Changes made on 9th June include the addition of a new topic “Setting health-related development goals beyond 2015". View the latest version of the orientation paper. The final document will be available at the end of July.
• Differently from previous calls, this Call will support innovation, industry and academia.  SME participation in consortia was also very much encouraged.
• Procedures are being simplified and for 2012 main focus would be on ageing, medical technologies and rare diseases.  The target is to have innovative European partnerships which will lead to an addition of 2 more healthy years to life.
• Genuine and ambitious collaboration in SME-led projects will benefit from accelerated procedures and are, again, highly encouraged.
• Clinical trial support, which was started in 2011, will continue, with 2012 favouring new research areas.  Encouragement of technology transfer and dissemination actions for research projects already funded will begin in 2012.

For 2012 and 2013 there will be fewer and more prominent priorities together with fewer and broader topics.  Two stage submissions, emphasis on innovation (SMEs, clinical trials), emphasis on flexibility for consortium duration and budget (focus on what is needed), will encourage international cooperation with a strategic focus.

For 2012, out of the 38 topics included, 14 will be SME-targeted and 3 industry-targeted.  For the SME-led projects, the SME is considered as such if it has less than 250 employees and a turnover of less than Euros 50 million or less than 43 million balance sheet.  The emphasis for the clinical trials topics is on ethics, patient involvement and proper statistical section.
The deadline for applications will be 27th September (4th October for the Innovation I call).  This will be confirmed by end July when the call is published.  The support structures in place for applicants include the NCPs and FitForLife.  Prospective applicants were encouraged to make use of them.

Evaluation criteria would include:

• Scientific and technical quality: S&T excellence, quality of objectives and concept.
• Implementation: quality of the consortium, competence and complementarity of partners, quality of the management, reflecting coordination.
• Impact: innovation dimension of the proposal (identify and address exploitation issues) as set out in work programme, dissemination activities and IPR management (e.g. patenting, preparing standards).

A brief overview was given of IP rules in FP7 and on the approach to be taken with project management in FP7; including the different FP7 agreements that should be entered into (grant agreement and consortium agreement).

Short-term measures for simplification under FP7 (COM Decision C/2011/174) include: revision of the acceptance criteria for average personnel cost, flat rate system for SME owners and natural persons without salary, internal mechanism for uniform interpretation and application of rules.

In an effort to harmonise the interpretation of the rules, the following are in place: internal steering committee at Director-General level.  This covers all DGs involved in FP7 management and the executive agencies, works as “last instance” (tackles only issues that cannot be solved at lower level).

Finally, there was much emphasis placed on communications, with specific deliverables and clauses for projects belonging to the health theme. The Commission emphasised that, up to now, although communications was included as a requirement, it hadn’t been given as much importance.  However, focus is now on showing results of the different grants being awarded and therefore proper communications plans should be part of the projects.

Document to download

FP7 Health Call6 Orientation Paper June 9th 2011