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The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission's science and knowledge service which employs scientists to carry out research in order to provide independent scientific advice and support to European Union (EU) policy.
The JRC is a directorate-general of the European Commission under the responsibility of Iliana Ivanova, the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. [1] The current director-general of the JRC is Stephen Quest, who took office in 2020, succeeding Vladimír Šucha. [2] Its Board of Governors assists and advises the director-general on matters relating to the role and the scientific, technical and financial management of the JRC.
Composed of strategy and coordination, knowledge production, knowledge management and support directorates, the JRC is spread across six sites in five EU countries: in Belgium (Brussels and Geel), Germany (Karlsruhe), Italy (Ispra), the Netherlands (Petten), and Spain (Seville). Their responsibilities are:
A portion of the budget of the EU under the Framework Programme is allocated directly to the JRC. [3]
The Italian Centre in Ispra originally belonged to the Comitato Nazionale per l'Energia Nucleare (CNEN) and was officially transferred to the Community on 1 March 1961. [4] Since 1973, non-nuclear research evolved rapidly, especially in topics related to safety and the environment. After 16 years of research, the nuclear reactor at JRC Ispra [5] was shut down in 1983. [6]
At the beginning of the 1980s, a re-examination of the mandate and evaluation of the activities of the JRC began. Future activities were to continue to support the commission's implementations of Community policies. In 1987, journalist Richard L. Hudson published an article on the home page on The Wall Street Journal , which featured the opinions of a remote sensing expert employed at JRC, along with some insights drawn from an external report commissioned by the Directorate-General. These opinions where combined to express deep concern about the center's state at the time, describing it as a disaster hindered by dysfunctional bureaucratic constraints. The then JRC director of projects, Raymond Klersy, criticized the article, claiming they were biased and incomplete in their representation of the situation. [7]
In 1992, the results of a study led to a proposal to convert the JRC Ispra site into an environmentally-optimised model site; the "ECO Centre". The JRC employs around 2787 staff with an annual budget of 372,5 million euros for 2017. [8]
The JRC research activities are clustered into ten science areas:
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The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific Council, its governing body consisting of distinguished researchers, and an Executive Agency, in charge of the implementation. It forms part of the framework programme of the union dedicated to research and innovation, Horizon 2020, preceded by the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7). The ERC budget is over €13 billion from 2014 – 2020 and comes from the Horizon 2020 programme, a part of the European Union's budget. Under Horizon 2020 it is estimated that around 7,000 ERC grantees will be funded and 42,000 team members supported, including 11,000 doctoral students and almost 16,000 post-doctoral researchers.
The Directorate-General for Research and Innovation is a Directorate-General of the European Commission, located in Brussels, and responsible for the European Union's research and innovation policy and coordination of research and innovation activities. Until her resign in May 2023, DG RTD was headed by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel and Director-General Marc Lemaître.
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Ispra is a comune and small town on the eastern coast of Lake Maggiore, in the province of Varese.
The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the European Research Area (ERA). Starting in 2014, the funding programmes were named Horizon.
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The Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) used to be a specialised institute of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) directorate of the European Commission, based in Ispra, Italy. Its mission was to provide scientific and technical support to EU policies for the protection of the environment contributing to sustainable development in Europe.
The Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), located in Geel, Belgium, is one of the seven institutes of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), a Directorate-General of the European Commission (EC).
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The Institute for Health and Consumer Protection or IHCP, located in Ispra, Italy, is one of the seven institutes of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), a Directorate-General of the European Commission (EC).
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The Programmes and stakeholders relations Directorate or PSR, located in Brussels, Belgium and Ispra, Italy, is part of the Joint Research Centre, a Directorate-General of the European Commission (EC).
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