FP7 made simpler for SMEs

A simplified template agreement between project partners could make SME participation easier in EU-funded research projects. 

A project initiated by a number of industry and research organisations has drafted a simplified consortium agreement template for the projects funded under the EU’s Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7). According to one of the project initiators, Eurochambres, the new template agreement “will be particularly beneficial to SMEs” as it “simplifies the administrative and management costs of project participation for SMEs”.

The DESCA project (Development of a Simplified Consortium Agreement for FP7), showed that agreements compiled from different models by FP6 project participants often led to internally inconsistent documents. 

These provoked disagreements between project participants on issues such as voting rights, distribution of advance payments or access to project results.  

To avoid inconsistencies and to make sure that a consortium agreement takes all project partners’ (large firms, SMEs, universities, public-research institutes, research and technology organisations) interests into account, DESCA has developed a simplified model consortium agreement for FP7 projects.

The model agreement “regulates critical aspects of project governance not covered by the grant agreement between the Commission and the project consortium”. These include the internal organisation of the consortium and distribution of the Community financial contribution, management of intellectual property rights and liability and confidentiality arrangements between partners.

Research stakeholders willing to apply for an EU-funded R&D project must set up a consortium agreement but there are no specific instructions on how to draft the agreement.

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