Brussels, 23 May 2003
Full text of Document 221/5/03 Revision 05
Suite of documents 221/5/03
DRAFT DECLARATION OF COST The Representatives of the Governments of the COST Member States and of the European Commission, meeting at the COST Ministerial Conference in Dubrovnik on May 2003,
Whereas the COST Ministerial Conference in Prague on May 1997 confirmed the continuing commitment to COST as a valuable and flexible instrument for promotion of European research and technological development by means of coordinated actions among a large number of participants, including the European Commission, in different areas of research; Whereas COST is an intergovernmental mechanism that has contributed significantly to the bottom-up creation of new European research activities both inside the 35 COST countries and beyond, through supporting initiatives for the networking of researchers with marginal amounts of seed money; Whereas COST has at its core an ethos of flexibility and responsiveness to proposals that originate from all sections of the research community and provides openness and equality of access to activities in a way that is probably unique amongst current S&T cooperation modalities; Whereas COST 'levers' several billions of euro worth of research per year and actively involves networking some 20.000 - 25.000 researchers annually with an annual financial investment in coordination of only around 1% of the research volume; Whereas COST has consistently and to a high level fostered the international coordination of national research activities in Europe - one of the priorities of the European Research and Innovation Area - and has been very successful in attracting national funding to common European research actions; Whereas COST, through its high quality scientific networks, and by promoting scientific cooperation including with non-COST countries, has strengthened the European Research and Innovation Area;
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