Spring 2007

From the Chair

Stempra AGM

Interview with Fiona Fox

How to network

Eurochat

Stempra media training day

Crystal ball gazing

Stempra newsletter

Euro Chat from our man in Brussels – Tim Reynolds

A New Year – a New Union. With the Brussels’ community of nations welcoming two new Member States on January 1st, the streets were alive with young Romanians and Bulgarians celebrating the new opportunities this is bringing to their lives. In fact the streets of Brussels have been alive with young Romanians in particular for sometime already – like a new fashion accessory every MEP seems to be adorned with a Romanian stagiaire these days. Romania and Bulgaria swelled the EU membership to 27. The EU population now stands at 492.8 million with a GDP of €11 trillion - in actual fact the new two member states haven’t made a major impact on that last figure! But the EU’s geographical centre has now shifted to the east and south. It is now (literally) in a wheat field outside the small German town of Gelnhausen according to the French National Geographic Institute. Another German town of Kleinmaischeid had held the honour from May 1st 2004 and Viroinval in Belgium marked the spot when EU membership was a mere 15 nations.

Nuclear Europe
2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Community. On March 25th 1957 three treaties were signed that began the European experiment. Of the three treaties the European Economic Community (EEC) was the forerunner of today’s EU, the Iron and Steel Community treaty has lapsed somewhat, but the Euratom Treaty is still going strong and is perhaps the ‘forgotten’ founding document of modern Europe. The original purposes for the creation of Euratom were to establish a specialist market in atomic energy and distribute it throughout the Community, to develop nuclear energy technology and to sell surplus energy to non-Community States. It was the launch pad for European co-operative research on nuclear fusion and fission that continues today with its very own five-year Euratom FP7 that runs in parallel with the EC FP7. Its (largely) unspoken (and in many nations’ view most important) purpose was to ensure that Germany didn’t develop an atomic bomb in parallel with its nuclear energy programme – at least that part worked!

FP7 launch
Now the dust has settled and FP7 (both Euratom and EC) is open for business, research managers and scientists are examining the first project calls. As an “information multiplier” – whatever that is – I’ve been invited to the EC’s launch event for FP7 to be held here in Brussels on 7 – 8 Feb. The conference is limited to 800 invited attendees only.The event promises all you ever wanted to know about FP7 and a good deal extra too. And to be frank it is all good business too as quite a few DG RTD units have suddenly realised that they might need some brochures and other information materials for the event. In addition ‘brokerage’ events are all the rage, for example the SusChem (Sustainable Chemistry) brokerage event on 24 January [ http://www.suschem.org ] . The event will see over 100 eager potential project partners eying each other up and trying to make a perfect collaborative team. Rather like speed dating for scientists – I’ll tell you how it all goes.

A bientôt
Tim

Tim Reynolds
Inta Communication Ltd
tim.reynolds@intacomm.net

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