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Research and innovation

European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI)

What the ESFRI does, mandate, members, ESFRI roadmaps, reports and documents

What is ESFRI?

The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) plays a key role in policy-making on Research Infrastructures in Europe.

It is composed of national delegates nominated by research ministers of EU countries and countries associated with Horizon 2020. It also includes a Commission representative.

ESFRI is a self-regulated body, operating on a consensus basis and typically meets 4 times a year.

ESFRI's mandate

  • establish a European roadmap for Research Infrastructures for the next 10-20 years, stimulate the implementation of these facilities, and update the roadmap as needed
  • support a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy making on Research Infrastructures in Europe
  • facilitate multilateral initiatives leading to a better use and development of Research Infrastructures, with the ESFRI acting as an incubator for new initiatives
  • ensure the follow-up of implementation of already on-going ESFRI projects after a comprehensive assessment, as well as the prioritisation of the infrastructure projects listed in the ESFRI roadmap
  • to implement the European Research Area (ERA) - Priority area 2

ESFRI Mandate and Procedures

ESFRI Roadmap

The ESFRI Roadmap 2018 consists of

  • 18 projects in development phase requiring around €2.9 billion of investment in the coming years
  • 37 landmarks, identifying key Research Infrastructures that are being implemented or have been completed, representing an overall capital value of around €14.4 billion

Of the 18 projects, 6 were new projects in the following areas.

Energy

  • IFMIF-DONES: International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility - DEMO Oriented NEutron Source (coordinated by Spain) – a facility for testing, validation and qualification of the materials to be used in a fusion reactor

Environment

  • DiSSCo: Distributed System of Scientific Collections (coordinated by The Netherlands) – an infrastructure integrating natural history collections of major European institutions
  • eLTER: Long-Term Ecosystem Research in Europe (coordinated by Germany) – an infrastructure integrating ecosystem research sites across Europe

Health and food

  • EU-IBISBA: Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator (coordinated by France) – a multidisciplinary research and innovation infrastructure for industrial biotechnology
  • METROFOOD-RI: Infrastructure for promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition (coordinated by Italy) – an infrastructure for metrology services in food and nutrition throughout the value chain

Social and cultural innovation

  • EHRI: European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (coordinated by The Netherlands)

National roadmaps

The European Commission and ESFRI encourage EU countries and associated countries to develop national roadmaps for Research Infrastructures.

Members

ESFRI delegates are senior science-policy officials or equivalent, who represent ministers responsible for research in their country. 1 senior science-policy official represents the European Commission.

The ESFRI chair is appointed from among the ESFRI delegates, for a 2 year non-renewable term.

The ESFRI executive board assists the chair in planning ESFRI activities. This board is composed of the ESFRI chair, the Commission representative and of ESFRI delegates selected by consensus.

ESFRI key documents 

ESFRI annual reports

ESFRI strategy reports and roadmaps

ESFRI working group reports

Contact

esfriatec [dot] europa [dot] eu (ESFRI secretariat)

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