The European Court of Auditors calls for more value for the money spent on EU research, and argues that the simplification of FP7 could be more radical than originally proposed by the Commission.
The Commission’s proposal for making participation in the FP7 less costly and cumbersome suggests, for example:
- to simplify the funding schemes
- a simplified cost-based funding system
- simpler, less bureaucratic, user-friendly language
- fewer and shorter documents,
- fewer a priori checking procedures and requests to participants (light submission procedure)
- more autonomy to research consortia.
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) issued, in April 2006, a rather harsh opinion on the Commission’s proposal for regulation laying down the rules for the participation in FP7. The Court points to the excessive transaction cost per euro spent, heavy and cumbersome grants administration and lack of flexibility as the main weaknesses of the Commission’s proposal.