2454 final report.pdf - Agra CEAS Consulting

Evaluation of the Community Plant Health Regime: Final Report
DG SANCO Evaluation Framework Contract Lot 3 (Food Chain)
This is evidenced by the fact that national programmes are, as would be expected, usually
confined to national priorities being part of larger more general national programmes and
therefore there is a weak linkage between the MS scientists, research funded at national level,
and the EU policy maker. This network needs therefore to be reinforced. Moreover, EU-funded
research projects often act as crucial seed money for attracting national funding.
Plant health ideas and priorities for informing the scope of EU Framework Programmes are
currently fed to the European Commission (DG RTD) through fairly uncoordinated means; this
is either through direct approaches by MS, or from the Commission‘s DG SANCO, which has
responsibility for plant health. However, the EU R&D Framework Programmes are able to only
tackle a small number of specific needs and are not usually able to respond rapidly to changing
needs and priorities, especially in emergency situations.
For the majority of respondents to the survey (10 out of 20 MS CAs and 10 out of 23
stakeholders; 8 MS CAs and 11 stakeholders do not know, Q8.3.a.5), EC funded research is
considered to have only partly led to scientific responses to new challenges and in the
anticipation of the future needs. This is due to the following main reasons:
The objectives of research topics are in line with research needs but the deliverables and
the newly developed knowledge is not always applicable for policy makers and end users:
Availability of results is delayed until long after signing of the project;
There is often inefficient and/or insufficient dissemination;
The Research Framework Project strategy gives preference to large multi-year projects,
which is not in line with the requirements of the plant health sector in terms of timing, and
especially in cases where an emergency response is needed; and
The research programmes are not sufficiently leading to the development of concrete tools
for pest risk assessment and management.
The list of EU projects is regarded as covering the issues related to plant health quite well and no
specific theme is considered as being forgotten by the respondents to the survey. On the other
hand, there were complaints of over-focus on certain subjects.
A new project called QDETECT, focusing on 15 HOs, will perform research on detection
methods for HOs on imports at border level. However, several stakeholders have reported that a
great deal of effort and resource (more than €10 million since 1999) have been devoted to PWN
(PHRAME, PORTCHECK, PRATIQUE, QBOL, QDETECT, EUPHRESCO), leading to a
certain lack of attention for other more general/horizontal subjects e.g. early detection, PRAs,
etc.
3.9.1.3 Coordination of MS research and EUPHRESCO
There is a strongly-perceived and expressed need for effective coordination of MS, transnational
and EC research efforts and the funding thereof in order to ensure that strategic issues on plant
health are well tackled. Funding of EC research on plant health should further develop with a
focus on strategic issues with broad application in the EU. This objective is promoted by the
ERA-Net EUPHRESCO project.
Food Chain Evaluation Consortium 159