EIROforum supports European Magna Carta for Researchers
EIROforum, a group of seven European intergovernmental scientific research organisations, has signed a statement of support for the European Charter and Code of Conduct for Researchers. EIROforum gave their backing to the European Commission's voluntary recommendations, which aims to create an internationally competitive European Research Area (ERA) of motivated, highly skilled researchers 'working in a supportive research environment and working culture'. 'The EIROforum partners warmly welcome this valuable initiative by the European Commission,' said William G. Stirling, Chairman of EIROforum. 'This is an important step towards the implementation of the European Research Area.' The European Charter for Researchers addresses the roles, responsibilities and entitlements of researchers and their employers. It aims to ensure that the relationship between these parties contributes to successful performance in the generation, transfer and sharing of knowledge, and to the career development of researchers. As for the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, its aim is to improve recruitment, to make selection procedures fairer and more transparent and propose different means of judging merit from a wider range of evaluation criteria, such as teaching, supervision, teamwork, knowledge transfer, management and public awareness activities. In their statement, signed at the EIROforum Assembly on 15 November, the seven EIROforum organisations said that they would support the principles contained in the Charter and the Code and implement the recommendations as internal practices within their own organisations. EIROforum is a collaboration between seven European intergovernmental scientific research organisations: the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). These organisations represent excellence in European science and operate some of the largest research infrastructures in the world, enabling European scientists to engage in truly cutting-edge research and be competitive on a global scale.