RTOs call for full cost reimbursement

Leaders of several major Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) in Europe have renewed their call for an alternative funding model based on the reimbursement of direct and indirect costs (full cost option) to enable RTOs to fully gain the benefits of Horizon 2020.

A meeting attended by organisations including the Austrian Institute of Technology, Danish Technological Institute, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and TNO concluded that if the Commission’s proposed flat-rate cost-reimbursement model is the only option for Horizon 2020,  the EU’s next framework programme will fail to attract the full participation of the sector. The RTOs say the flat-rate system also accepted by the Council of the European Union will not provide sufficient compensation for the necessarily high costs of the organisation’s R&D facilities.

The full cost reimbursement option is also supported by BusinessEurope, European University Association and Science Europe. The organisations also welcomed some of the simplifications introduced under Horizon 2020 by the Commission.

In a statement, EARTO said: ‘With regard to cost-reimbursement, we propose a single flat-rate as the default – which will surely satisfy the immense majority of programme beneficiaries and simultaneously deliver huge simplification – but adapted to the needs of organisations with high-end R&D facilities by offering an alternative option on full-cost reimbursement.’

According to EARTO the Commission suggested, at a meeting of the Competitiveness Council in October 2012, that beneficiaries could ‘transform’ some of the costs of ‘large infrastructures’ into direct costs, thus raising the effective rate of reimbursement and offered to provide guidance on how this could be done, though any guidance is yet to be forthcoming.

A trialogue meeting between the Commission, Council and the European Parliament in Horizon 2020 will be held on 7 May 2013.