EU streamlines the management approach for Horizon 2020 - Science|Business
The Commission has started re-organising its main department for research and innovation. The objective, Director-General Robert-Jan Smits tells Science|Business, is better policy and more efficient grant handlingAs the Horizon 2020 research programme gets underway, the European Commission is starting to reorganise its core research and innovation department to boost its efficiency at managing grants and make more time for policy planning, according to Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General for Research and Innovation.
Horizon 2020, with a budget of almost €80 billion over seven years, is the biggest-ever research programme in Europe – but although in December 2013 the EU member-states approved the 30 per cent budget increase over the current Framework Programme 7, they also ordered the Commission to cut staff by 5 per cent overall. As a result, “I had to look for new ways to manage the programmes, in a less-costly and more efficient way,” Smits said in an interview with Science|Business.(...)
