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Northern Europe
In Germany, where agricultural research is less centralised, setting up a framework agreement with an institution similar to INRA has proved difficult. The cooperation agreement signed with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in 1986 led to some joint work but later disintegrated, as the only institutions available were those dependent on the Ministry and their research was much more applied than at INRA. Other possibilities include specific agreements with specialised institutes, such as Max Planck or Fraunhofer, or an agreement with a financing agency, such as the DFG (German Research Foundation). The initiative taken by CNRS to make a joint call for proposals with the DFG on a specific topic could serve as a model for a joint agreement between INRA and a similar partner. The bilateral cooperation between INRA and its German partners is too fragmented and therefore not very visible, with the exception of the Genoplante-Gabi agreement. There are a number of areas that could be the subject of closer collaboration or perhaps even the focus of a joint French-German research unit, or associated or twin laboratories. These areas include human nutrition and food safety, the environment and agronomy, forest sciences, natural resources and biotechnologies. The network research programme P2R was set up in 2003.
A number of high-level exchanges have taken place in 2005: the Potsdam French-German Forum and the meeting of heads of scientific research in Germany.
The United Kingdom is without a doubt the most important country in terms of scientific exchanges in northern Europe. Collaboration between INRA and UK institutions has been very beneficial, especially given the similar structure of French and UK research institutions, where agricultural research is concentrated in top-level institutes (in the UK, these institutes receive backing from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council).
The cooperation agreement signed with the Agricultural and Food Research Council and, later, the BBSRC, has proven very useful, particularly in setting up European projects. The agreement allowed INRA to receive BBSRC grants for some ten years; in exchange, INRA welcomed a large number of British grant holders into its laboratories. Activities have slowed over the last three years, but negotiations with a new team are under way to redefine the conditions of cooperation and provide renewed enthusiasm. Two other, more specific agreements, called “twin agreements”, involve the Rowett Research Institute and the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute.
On 31 January 2006, the three national research organisations, INRA, BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom) and WUR (Wageningen University and Research Centre, Netherlands) signed an agreement in Brussels to intensify their collaboration.
Our partner institution in the Netherlands is the Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen UR). The main areas of collaboration are European policy on agricultural research, genomics and rural economics. INRA and Wageningen UR work together to influence European policy on agricultural research, particularly through EURAGRI, a platform bringing together the top representatives of European agricultural research organisations. A cooperation agreement was signed in 2001 for collaboration on major research objectives between French and Dutch multidisciplinary teams involved in education and research. The agreement encourages student exchange programmes between INRA and Wageningen UR.
Two research programmes were underway in 2005-2006:
Green Piggery: launched in 2002, this programme aims at comparing two production methods (conventional and green) in two socio-economic contexts (market and sustainability) with the help of a model developed jointly by France and the Netherlands.
Multifunctionality, agriculture and land use: 2 projects are based on this concept: one concerning the multifunctionality of rural land, the other on the multifunctionality of agricultural activities. More than 30 researchers from both institutions were involved in this programme which underwent a positive final evaluation in December 2006. Two new doctoral theses have been launched in new fields.
For Sweden, scientific cooperation between INRA and FORMAS (The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning) officially began in 1992 by an agreement with the Swedish Council for Forestry and Agricultural Research (SJFR), which was at that time an independent institute. For the 1994-2000 period, this agreement focused on forest research. It initially concerned forest genetics, then expanded to include the physiology of development and later diversified to include forest entomology, silviculture, forest ecology and the study of biogeochemical cycles and pathology.
On September 27, 2001, a new INRA-FORMAS agreement was signed, for a duration of three years.
Two projects were selected in September 2006, one with the UPSC (Umea Plant Center Science), the other with the University of Uppsala, within the framework of the tender launched jointly with FORMAS in 2006 :
- Project 1: Phloem long distance signalling and homeostasis: functional characterisation of orphan genes expressed in the phloem
- Project 2: Functional annotation of vertebrate genes using chicken mutations.
Central and Eastern Europe
- Poland: an agreement was signed on March 12, 2008 with the Foundation Polonaise for Science (FNP) for exchanges for Foreign Scientists. This foundation finances programs of grants (PhD or post-docs) on its own funds or financing of the Funds Structural of the EU, as well in the direction Poland-France, and France-Poland.
See the list of the programs.
- Hungary: a cooperation agreement was signed with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2004 and another agreement with the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in 2006. In application of these two agreements, a joint call for proposals was launched at the beginning of February 2007.
- Romania: following the request of the Romanian Minister of Agriculture, an evaluation of Romanian agricultural research was carried out in February 2006.
- Slovenia: on June 1, 2006 a first bi-annual French-Slovenian call for tenders was launched between INRA and ARRS (Slovenien Agency of Research); the proposal is focused on 3 themes:
Impact of climate changes on biodiversity in agriculture and forests, food safety and quality, crop protection and emerging diseases.
Three projects were selected in December 2006.
ECO-NET is a network set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support mobility for scientific cooperation projects between France and Central and Eastern Europe, including the new member states. It replaces the previous COCOP programme and will be run as an exchange research programme. Several networks are coordinated by INRA.
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