Court of Auditors calls for improvements to management of Commission mobility programme
A Court of Auditors special report on the Commission's Training and Mobility of Researchers (TMR) programme under the Fourth Framework programme (FP4) has called for improvements to procedures for proposal evaluation and the assessment of proposals for Marie Curie fellowships. The report also concluded that beneficiary and contractor satisfaction with Commission service is high. The audit, published in the 10 December 2001 edition of the Official Journal of the European Communities, aimed to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the TMR programme by analysing the management systems used by administrative services at both Commission and contractor level. On-the-spot audits and a postal survey were also used to gain information on the contractors and beneficiaries involved in the programme, and to gauge levels of satisfaction with the service received by the Commission. The Court of Auditors found that the procedure used for the evaluation of proposals sometimes lacked transparency, with an absence of detailed records on the deliberations leading to decisions. It called for full minutes to be taken of all meetings and records to be produced of the discussions behind all decisions. Although the Commission's reply admitted that there were gaps in the minutes of the stages leading to panel decisions, it said that 'this had no impact on the results nor on the financing of projects.' The Commission explained that the most important role of the minutes of panel decisions is to 'correctly reflect the results of those decisions, namely, the classification in order of priority of the proposals that the panel would like the Commission to finance.' It insisted that 'this has always been the case,' and the system 'does not compromise the final result of the evaluation.' The Court of Auditors also noted cases of potential conflicts of interest in the allocation of proposals to evaluators, including instances where an evaluator assessed a proposal in which his or her employer or association was involved. It said that no evaluator must be allowed to attend an evaluation where their organisation has submitted a proposal. The Commission reply explained that 'in an area like research, where there is often a concentration of experts at the forefront of science, the potential risk of a conflict of interests cannot be excluded from the outset.' It said that the two-stage structure of the evaluation procedure, including individual and then panel peer review of each proposal, provided a balance between the potential risk of a conflict of interests and the quality of the evaluations. The Commission explained that steps have been taken to further improve this procedure under the Fifth framework programme, including coding the status of independent experts and the introduction of a code of conduct and a declaration of impartiality. In addition, the Court of Auditors criticised the wide variations between the success rate of applications for Marie Curie fellowships in the TMR programme and in specific FP4 thematic programmes. In one case, the report said, 'the divergence was so wide that the candidate would have been three times as likely to succeed with an application in the context of a specific programme than in the TMR programme.' It added that this divergence in success rates 'is unsatisfactory and may adversely affect the reputation of the fellowship scheme.' The Commission said that action has been taken to improve the Marie Curie grant system under the Fifth Framework programme, including the introduction of harmonised evaluation procedures and criteria. The Commission added that in its proposal for the new Framework programme, FP6, all activities relating to mobility, including Marie Curie fellowships, have been grouped under a single activity line of a single programme. The report also found that levels of contractor and beneficiary satisfaction with the service provided by the Commission are high, and encouraged the Commission to keep up the good work in dealing with contractor enquiries.