Belgium took over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1, 2010. The Belgian Presidency is focused on these major projects: Implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon, which comes into force on December 1, 2010; launch of the EU 2020 strategy, which will guide EU policies in the coming decade; pursuit of international climate and energy negotiations; implementation of the Stockholm Programme in the areas of justice, asylum and immigration; continuation of enlargement negotiations; and, preparation of the 2011 budget and mid-term revision of financial perspectives. and Jana Vaňová.
The Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (AS CR) established a new public research institution, the Institute of Biotechnology AS CR, v. v. i. The primary ambition of this new institute is to develop cutting-edge basic and oriented research on topics opening for diagnostic and therapeutic applicatons in human medicine. In particular, the institute was established to serve as a nucleation center of BIOCEV, the joined Biotech & Biomed Research Center of the Academy of Sciences with Charles University, to be built at Vestec near Prague by the year 2012 with the support of the European Regional Development Funds in frame of the Operational Program R&D for Innovation., Peter Šebo, -red-., and Tři otázky pro ředitele připravila -red-
CORDIS, a new service Unique Registration Facility (URF), was launched on April 27. It will facilitate the preparation of grant agreements between participants and the European Commission. Thanks to the new service, participants in the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and other programmes managed by the Research Directorate General will no longer have to submit their legal and financial information each time a new grant agreement is in the pipeline. Once participants have been validated by the European Commission´s central validation team for their existence as legal entities and their legal status they will only have to submit their Participant Identification Code (PIC). and Lenka Lepičová.
IMI is a unique Public-Private Partnership (PPP) between the pharmaceutical industry, represented by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), and the European Communities represented by the European Commission. The First Call of the IMI Joint Undertaking was launched by European Commissioner for Science and Research Janez Potočnik and EFPIA President Arthur Higgins on April 30. and Táňa Perglová.