COST Committee of Senior Officials: Report on meeting of January 1996
The Committee of senior officials for cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST) held its 122nd meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on 25-26 January 1996. COST is currently coordinating part of the national research of 25 Member States (the 15 Member States of the European Union, Croatia, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Turkey). This research is primarily oriented towards applications. A total of 125 projects are currently in progress. In the context of COST decisions to authorize R&D institutes in non-COST countries to participate in individual actions, the Committee approved: - The participation of the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of Bucharest (Romania) in Action 75: Advanced radar and meteorological systems; - The participation of the Moscow State Automobile Road Technical University (Russia) in Action 319: Evaluation of polluting emissions from transport. With regard to projects already underway, the Committee agreed to the following extensions: - COST 323: Weighing in motion of road vehicles (extended for two and a half years); - COST 325: Road monitoring (extended for seven months); - COST 511: Interaction of microbial systems with industrial materials - second round (extended for one year); - COST 814: Crop development for cool and wet regions of Europe (extended for four years). In addition, the Committee approved the following new actions: - COST 40: European Sea Level Observing System (ESS); - COST E7: Multi-phase flows in paper-making; - COST 332: Transport and land-use policies. Requests from Romania and Malta to become members of COST were greeted positively and it was decided that these countries should be invited to attend forthcoming meetings as observers pending a formal decision on their membership. A future Ministerial Conference, to be held in Prague, Czech Republic, in Spring 1997, will deal with the future role of COST, the question of enlargement and the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of COST actions. The next meeting of the COST Committee will take place in Brussels, Belgium, in April 1996.