COST Committee of Senior Officials - April 1998

The 131st meeting of the COST Committee of Senior Officials was held in Brussels on 21 April 1998. The regular meetings bring together officials from each of the 28 COST members to lay down general directions for COST activities. In addition representatives from Bulgaria, Cypr...

The 131st meeting of the COST Committee of Senior Officials was held in Brussels on 21 April 1998. The regular meetings bring together officials from each of the 28 COST members to lay down general directions for COST activities. In addition representatives from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia and Lithuania, which have recently applied for membership, participate as observers.

During this meeting the Committee approved the participation of R&D institutions in non-COST countries in six current COST Actions. It also approved the extension of five COST Actions and approved fourteen new Actions in the following domains:

- Meteorology;
- Chemistry;
- Agriculture;
- Environment;
- Food technology;
- Transport;
- Physics;
- Telecommunications.

The Committee agreed to a series of administrative measures in order to ease and simplify procedures, as a follow-up to the agreements reached during the COST Ministerial Conference of May 1997. The Committee also called for a number of studies to be carried out on the following subjects:

- Database of forest research capacities in Europe;
- Assessment of scientific results on crop development for the cool and wet regions in Europe;
- Use of advanced electronic management tools in COST;
- Best practice of project management and use of tools for prospective scientific strategies in Europe;
- Prospective study of combinatorial chemistry for pharmaceutical catalysts and material;
- Prospective study on nanochemistry.

The Committee's next meeting will be held in Porto, Portugal, on 25 and 26 June 1998, and this will be followed by a joint meeting with EUREKA in Lisbon.