Atividade Parlamentar Preparatory meeting for experts of the Ministerial Group on Simplification

Maria da Graça Carvalho was invited by the Counsellor of Sciences and Technologies of the Permanent Representation of Hungary to the European Union, László Szendrődi, to participate in the preparatory meeting on simplification initiated by the Hungarian presidency.

The meeting took place in the European Council, and joined the Experts on research simplification from Sweden, France, Spain, Belgium, Hungary and Poland; the Officers from DG Budget and DG Research involved in the simplification process in order to conduct an open discussion on the situation, possibilities and opportunities in the field of simplification.

During the meeting, it was held an open discussion following Ms. Carvalho´s report on Simplification; the resolution adopted by the Parliament on 11th November 2011; the FP7 interim evaluation conference in Budapest on February 2011; the Interim Evaluation Expert Report; the response from the Commission on the Report; the three measures adopted by the Commission on 24th January 2011; the Council conclusions adopted last week; and the ongoing review of the financial regulation.

The objectives for the meeting were the setting up the state-of-play; exchanging of views about the requests and feasibilities of the simplification process; discussing ideas on how the simplification could be implemented under the current financial regulation in 2011 and under the revised financial regulation in 2012 and 2013; which are the most important recommendations for the next financial perspective (2014-2020); and setting up a roadmap on simplification.

The Ministerial Simplification Group will send a report to the meeting of the Council Competitiveness that will take place on 31st May.

The Informal Ministerial Expert Group on Simplification, was appointed on 12 October 2010 in order to monitor the actions taken by the Commission on simplification. The Expert Group prepared the "First Intermediary Report on Monitoring Simplification of Rules and Procedures in European Research and Innovation Programmes".