| Posted: September 26, 2007 |
CEA signs European Charter for researchers |
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(Nanowerk News) The French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) has given its backing to the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, agreeing to apply their principles to its human resources management for researchers and scientific employment.
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Launched by the European Commission in March 2005, the Charter and Code of Conduct are considered to be key initiatives in the EU's policy to help increase the number of researchers in Europe, and to stimulate economic and employment growth.
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While the Charter addresses the roles, responsibilities and entitlements of researchers and their employers or funding organisations, the Code seeks to improve recruitment, to make selection procedures fairer and more transparent, and to introduce different means of judging merit.
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'Research in Europe will benefit from an improvement of researchers' working conditions,' said Mr Potocnik. 'It is essential that research organisations begin to offer them the best career opportunities possible,' he added.
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By subscribing to the two initiatives, Mr Bugat says, 'the CEA is certain that the ability of research institutes to offer attractive working conditions and career opportunities are key elements for taking up the two challenges of scientific and economic competitiveness in Europe.'
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Created in 1945, the CEA is a French public research body with an 'industrial and commercial character'. It is active in three main fields: energy, defence and global security, and information and health technologies. In each of these fields, CEA maintains a cross-disciplinary culture of engineers and researchers, building on synergies between fundamental and technological research. It carries out fundamental and applied research in many areas, including design of new nuclear reactors, microelectronics, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies (including genomics) and neurosciences. It has a staff of 15,000 employees, working in nine research centres spread across France and manages a budget of around €3.2 billion (2006).
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According to the CEA, most of the ideas in both the Charter and Code are already in place at the research institute, since it has long sought to improve the transparency and impartiality in the recruitment of researchers.
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Recognising the need for greater mobility, the CEA has already set up specific employment contracts for mobility in Europe. One such measure is what it calls 'usage contracts' for researchers. These contracts have enabled French or foreign (especially European) researchers to work on projects funded under the EU's research framework programmes,, under contractual conditions compatible with the rules defined by the European Commission and French legislation.
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For further information about the Charter and Code, please visit:http://europa.eu.int/eracareers/europeancharter
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For information on CEA, please go to: http://www.cea.fr/english_portal
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Source: Cordis
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