Procedures of Engagement with Third Countries

At the end of August, thanks to the efforts of the Work Package 7 team, the ERIC Forum 2 project submitted a deliverable on Procedures of Engagement with Third Countries. The report combines findings from existing literature, surveys, and interviews on various models of integration for third countries and international organizations, offering a series of recommendations for engagement procedures. Here is an interview with Claudia Alén Amaro, Head of Operations at Instruct-ERIC, Lead of the group that authored the deliverable.
 
Can you describe the process that led to the creation of this document?
 
ESFRI outlined in the Third Report on the Application of the ERIC Regulation for a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, that it wanted to establish “globally integrated research infrastructure activities”, and for “better use of research infrastructures across continents”. The idea of ERICs includes the concept that they should be expanding to regions outside Europe, and collaborating with researchers in third countries. However, the practical mechanisms of how to achieve this has often been left to the ERICs themselves, which have been carried out in an ad hoc manner, without an overarching strategy or protocol. As such, ERICs across all domains have a variety of modalities of engagement with third countries. The aim of Work Package 7 (WP) in ERIC Forum 2, and specifically of this deliverable report, was to first collate all of these modalities, and then to analyse who makes use of them, their advantages and challenges, and recommendations for ERICs, ministries, and the European Commission, on how to advance international engagement. In order to create something of sufficient scope and impact, we worked with all ERICs through surveys and interviews, to establish their current memberships in Europe and beyond, as well as their mechanisms for engagement with third countries. We were pleased to be teamed with JIVE, CLARIN, and EMSO, who all have plenty of experience in collaborating with international partners.
 
What are the main challenges and insights you identified?
 
The first challenge that was found, particularly identified through the survey, was one of semantics. The word “International” created some confusion, with some ERICs understanding this to mean outside of their host nation, rather than interacting with third countries in regions outside Europe. This initial challenge did present some interesting insights: mainly, that not all ERICs have interaction with third countries as a strategic priority. Whether this is down the institutional maturity, or resource limitations, for many ERICs, expanding services, membership, or interaction to new regions is simply not feasible, as many are still growing their community within Europe, and as such do not have resource to work with institutions or ministries further afield. The main modality that ERICs use to interact with third countries are Memoranda of Understanding (MOU), which are non-legally binding agreements between ERICs and institutions, although we were also very interested to hear that some ERICs do establish paid forms of such agreements, to grow membership within third countries. Official membership is only established between CLARIN and South Africa, whilst BBMRI has Qatar as an observer. We hope that the increased connection with third countries as a result of this work package allows ERICs to increase their international membership.
 
What recommendations have you developed?
 
With the interviews we conducted, we were able to establish four key barriers that are blocking ERICs from fulfilling their international collaboration aspirations: financial limitations, lack of legal/policy framework, a lack of a strategic mandate from the European Commission, and the level of organisational maturity required, as mentioned earlier. From these challenges, we were able to establish a series of recommendations for a variety of stakeholders. For ERICs, we suggest to identify initiatives in your domain in non-European regions, and develop a clear value proposition for prospective partners, as well as using tools that are existing (or due to be completed soon) from ERIC Forum 2, RI-VIS, and similar Horizon projects. For existing ERIC members, we encourage them to support ERICs with international collaboration, even though they will not see an initial return on investment. We also appreciate that ERICs and ministries operate in different circles, so we would ask member country contacts to provide support for ERICs when contacting ministries or funding bodies in third countries. Finally, for the European Commission, we recommend the establishment of a clear and structured system for ERIC involvement with international partners, and to outline prioritisation of support for ERICs regarding collaboration with third countries – ideally a policy/diplomacy strategy for ERICs to utilise would solve many challenges.
 
To supplement the report, the WP7 team is now running a series of workshops on each mechanism of engagement, providing expertise and guidance about how and when to apply certain activities when collaborating with third countries. Check the ERIC Forum website calendar and social media to stay updated.