Elettra hosted the 2nd ERIC Network Meeting

On the 10^th and 11^th December Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, statutory seat of the distributed Research Infrastructure CERIC-ERIC, hosted the second ERIC network meeting. Representatives from the existing and pending accession ERICs met to share experiences and challenging issues encountered during their way to set up and to run the new Pan-European institutions.
After a first presentation of CERIC-ERIC, all the participants presented themselves and the ERICs they belong to. Currently existing ERICs act in fields ranging from clinical research to oceans’ observation, from research in material sciences, language, art, humanities and social sciences to the translational medicine. Moreover, they provide biobanks and molecular resources, as well as data on social attitudes and on population ageing.
The meeting has been a way to share experiences and good practises among more or less newly constituted ERICs, in order to face new challenges related to the access to European Funds, the recruitment processes, the provision of insurance, the pan-European Pension Fund RESAVER and more general fiscal issues.

Harry Tuinder, from the DG RTD of the European Commission, was present to answer the numerous questions about the possible actions to be taken in order to make ERICs sustainable, competitive and efficient to the utmost. He encountered the widest satisfaction from the participants, who have already agreed upon a new meeting to be held in the coming year to continue the discussion, enriching it with new topics, new issues and, surely, with reports about good results and best practises to take example from. 

By means of the Council Regulation No 723/2009, the European Commission settled a new legal framework to support the development of research infrastructures in Europe, defining the rules and the conditions to set up ERICs as legal entities contributing to the development of the European Research Area (ERA).