EuCheMS Brussels News Updates, March 2016

General European Highlights

Join the EuCheMS Debate on #OpenScience - Science: How Close to Open?
You are cordially invited to join an event that will look into the present and future of intellectual property boundaries in chemistry research and will count with the presence of researchers, publishers and EU officials. Registration is available at http://bit.ly/20VF6AH.
The programme with abstracts for this event taking place in Amsterdam, 5 April, can be found here.
Source: www.euchems.eu/

EuCheMS Response to Public Consultation on Higher Education
EuCheMS has recently answered to the European Commission´s Public Consultation on Modernisation Agenda for Higher Education in the European Union. In its answer to this public consultation, EuCheMS provides its views on the current strengths and weaknesses of higher education in the EU, on the priority areas where those in charge of higher education should focus their attention, and on how the EU should support efforts to improve higher education. Among other points, EuCheMS mentions the importance of trans-national quality assurance of higher education and the need to take into consideration which sectors are offering more jobs in chemistry. You can read EuCheMS complete response here.
Source: http://www.euchems.eu/

Chemistry in Road Safety
Until the 18 April, a European Parliament written declaration on the serious road traffic injury target will be collecting support from MEPs in order to initiate a wider discussion on this topic. As the number of serious injuries from road traffic accidents increase, chemistry could have a central role in avoiding some of these accidents, namely when taking into consideration some health related issues.
Website: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/

Observing European Research and Innovation
The European Commission recently launched the website Research and Innovation Observatory (RIO) - Horizon 2020 Policy Support Facility.
This observatory produces detailed yearly country reports, assessing the evolution of national research and innovation systems and identifying key challenges to feed into the EU policy process. As of this year, it will also provide a series of thematic analytical reports on the impact of public funding instruments on excellence and on effective knowledge transfer mechanisms between business and academia.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

Preparing New European Research Programme
European Commission is preparing the ninth research and innovation programme and a preliminary proposal, “will be on the table by the end of 2017, beginning of 2018” according to Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General for Research and Innovation, speaking at the Science|Business Horizon 2020 conference in February. Initial studies on which areas this programme will cover are already taking place and will be followed by a public consultation which will gather input from academia and industry on what should be the main research priorities.
Source: http://www.sciencebusiness.net/

MEPs Elect Chair for Car Emissions Committee
Earlier this month the Committee of inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector (EMIS), which aims to clarify on the recent car emissions´ scandal, elected its chair and four vice-chairs thus officially starting its one-year mandate.
The chair, Ms Van Brempt said: "I'm looking forward to working with everybody in this inquiry committee in an efficient way. We should ensure that the environmental legislation in place is robust, ambitious and bulletproof; and secondly, that this legislation is properly implemented and enforced ".
Source: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/

Resisting Antimicrobial Resistance
To fight the growing resistance of bacteria to today’s antibiotics, the use of existing antimicrobial drugs should be restricted, and new ones should be developed, said the European Parliament last week. In a vote on draft plans to update an EU law on veterinary medicines, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) advocate banning collective and preventive antibiotic treatment of animals, and back measures to stimulate research into new medicines, a point which EuCheMS also raised in its answer to  the European Commission´s Public Consultation on antimicrobial resistance.
Source: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/

ERC Publishes its 2015 Annual Report
Earlier this month, the European Research Council (ERC) published its 2015 Annual Report on ERC´s main activities and achievements. The ERC calls from the 2015 Work Programme for the core ERC schemes (Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants) generated a total of 6 924 proposals, representing a 14 % decrease compared to 2014, in large proportion due to stricter submission restrictions introduced by the Scientific Council. 349 Starting and 302 Consolidator projects have been selected for funding through a rigorous peer review process bringing the total to over 1 500 ERC Horizon 2020 grantees. By December 2015, the ERC Executive Agency had collected more than 95 000 publications from ERC funded projects from both online bibliographic databases and project reports.
Source: https://erc.europa.eu/publications

Safety of Cosmetics
The European Commission´s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed a set of guidelines for the validation and harmonisation of analytical methods used for market surveillance of cosmetics. The analysis of cosmetics is challenging due to the large variety of ingredients and formulations, leading to massive matrix complexity and variability. Also, EU legislation establishes that "the sampling and analysis of cosmetic products shall be performed in a reliable and reproducible manner, a point taken into consideration in these guidelines. 
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

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Funding Updates and Awards

Erasmus Charter for Higher Education 2014-2020 Selection 2017
Deadline: 31 March 2016
Website: https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus-plus/

Erasmus 4 Young Entrepreneurs 2016-2021
Deadline: 5 April 2016
Source: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

Development of Compact Reformers for Distributed Bio-Hydrogen Production 
Deadline: 3 May 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

Development of Processes for Direct Production of Hydrogen from Sunlight
Deadline: 3 May 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

Belgium – Switzerland – Luxembourg Call for R&D Project Outlines
Deadline: 13 May 2016
Website: http://www.eurekanetwork.org/BE-CH-LU-call-for-projects

ERC Proof of Concept 2016
Deadline: 26 May 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

Eco Design: Electrocoating Process for Cr6-free Surface Treatment of Aluminium Parts
Deadline: 2 June 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

European Open Science Cloud for Research
Deadline: 22 June 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

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Consultations and Roadmaps

Consultation on the Draft Guidance on the Preparation and Presentation of an Application for Authorisation of a Novel Food
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has launched an open consultation on its draft guidance on the preparation and presentation of an application for authorisation of a Novel Food. This document aims to provide guidance on the data needed to carry out the safety assessments of Novel Foods.
Deadline: 21 April 2016
Website: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/
 
Consultations on FET Flagships and FET Proactive for Horizon 2020 Next Work Programme
These consultations aim to identify promising themes for future research in technological, multidisciplinary domains leading to innovations with important economic and societal benefits for Europe, in particular boosting investments for growth and jobs. This will allow the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) programme to respond better to the transformation of science and technology as the boundaries between disciplines are blurred, and data driven approaches bring digital technologies to the core of how science is done, in line with the changes we see in the economy.
Deadline: 30 April 2016
Website for FET Flagship Consultation: https://ec.europa.eu/
Website for FET Proactive Consultation: https://ec.europa.eu/
 
Consultation on the Regulatory Fitness of Chemicals Legislation (Excluding REACH) 
This public consultation is conducted in support of the fitness check on 'the most relevant chemicals legislation (excluding REACH), as well as related aspects of legislation applied to downstream industries'. Its objective is to obtain stakeholder views on the functioning of the legislative framework for chemicals.
Deadline: 25 May 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/
 
Consultation on the Development of a Comprehensive, Integrated Research, Innovation, and Competitiveness Strategy for the Energy Union
The aspect of this consultation is particularly important given the objective to drastically reduce EU’s emissions and use of energy, while at the same time maintaining the competitiveness of economic sectors including energy and transport but also industry, agriculture/bioeconomy and construction, and providing modern, user-friendly, safe, sustainable and secure solutions to EU citizens and businesses. In this sense, this strategy will provide an important element to contribute from the EU perspective to the Paris Agreement achieved on last 12 December 2015 as the outcome of Conference of Parties (COP21) under the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention.
Deadline: 31 May 2016
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/
 
Roadmap - Exploiting the Potential of Waste to Energy Under the Energy Union Framework Strategy and the Circular Economy
The European Commission has planned a Communication aimed at informing, clarifying, and providing inputs to relevant policies, especially to the Energy Union Strategy. In this respect, the output energy obtained through waste treatment processes represents a secure, renewable and possibly more affordable source of energy in line with the Strategy.
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/

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Business Updates

REACH 2018 - Share Data and its Costs
The requirement to share data between companies registering the same substance is one of the fundamental aspects of the REACH Regulation. Setting up the cooperation is the third phase of the REACH Roadmap for 2018. Companies also need to share the costs in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory way between the members of the SIEF.
If the substance is already registered, it is likely that the preparatory work has been done and new registrants can contact the SIEF to become part of the joint submission. They will have to negotiate to get access to the data they need and take part in sharing the costs.
Source: http://echa.europa.eu/
 
European Strategic Cluster Partnerships
The European Commission has selected 24 European Strategic Cluster Partnerships which will work on a joint cooperation agenda, where the aim is to support the internationalisation of their SME members towards third countries beyond Europe, and to contribute to boosting growth, jobs and investment in Europe. In total, these European Strategic Cluster Partnerships gather about 140 cluster organisations across 23 European countries from various industrial and cross-sectoral areas including health, food, energy, marine and environment, materials, photonics, micro/nano-electronics, among others.
Source: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/
 
CONNECTing Research with Innovation
The European institute of Technology and Innovation (EIT) Alumni CONNECT 2016 event will bring together more than 100 students and alumni from all five of its Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). In this event taking place in Budapest on the 24 April, participants will have the opportunity to 1) share their knowledge and experiences and discuss their entrepreneurial ideas with fellow students/alumni in a cross-disciplinary way; 2) find partners for exchange of ideas and potential collaboration (e.g. start-ups searching for people with specific skills); and 3) meet the inaugural EIT Alumni Community Start-up Board and contribute to the development of the EIT Alumni Community by building up ideas for Community collaboration and working out ways to implement them jointly.
Website: http://eit.europa.eu/ 

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Upcoming EuCheMS Recognised Events

1st European Young Chemists Meeting
Guimarães, Portugal,
26 – 29 April, 2016
http://5pychem.eventos.chemistry.pt

11^th Delegates Assembly of EYCN
Guimarães, Portugal
26 – 30 April 2016
Website: http://11da.eventos.chemistry.pt/

Analytica Conference
Munich, Germany
10 – 12 May 2016
Website: https://www.gdch.de/

IWSG - 8th International Workshop on Science Gateways
Rome, Italy
08 - 10 June 2016
Website: https://sites.google.com/a/nd.edu/iwsg2016/home

ISOS 2016 - International Summer School on Organic Synthesis "A. Corbella"
Gargnano, Italy
12 - 17 June 2016
Website: http://www.corbellasummerschool.unimi.it/

Science: How Close to Open?
Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
5 April, 2016
Register here 

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Forthcoming Events

Workshop on Risk Assessment for Natural-Hazard Impact on Hazardous Chemical Installations 
16 March 2016
Ispra, Italy
Website: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

Innovation Horizons for the European Union and Brazil - Opportunities for Investment and Funding
18 March 2016
Porto, Portugal
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

Business and Practitioners Workshop on Financial Opportunities and Legislative Barriers for the Circular Economy
21 March 2016
Brussels, Belgium
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/

Austin International Conference on Soil Modelling
29 March – 1 April 2016
Austin, USA
Website: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

Launch of the European Energy Efficiency Platform (E3P) 
5 April 2016
Brussels, Belgium
Website: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

Innovative Enterprise Conference
31 March – 1 April 2016
The Hague, the Netherlands
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/
 
Info Day on “Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation" Calls 2016
8 April 2016
Brussels, Belgium
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/

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6th EuCheMS Chemistry Congress

11 - 15 September 2016
Seville, Spain
Website: http://euchems-seville2016.eu/

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David Spichiger, SCS
16.03.2016