Abstract

Despite high success rates, France’s participation in the last European research framework programmes is low compared to similar countries, and the return on investment insufficient according to the French government. Among various measures intended to increase participation, the French research ministry issued in late 2021 an unusual call for projects in the framework of the national recovery plan. With 200 million Euros and entitled “Acceleration of development strategies of higher education and research institutions”. Its objective was “to help Higher Education Institutions increase funding to develop new projects led by their staff and teams thanks to the extra funding obtained”, particularly through European projects.

What this mysterious sentence meant was: we will give you money to hire European project officers and boost French participation in EU programmes! Specific anxiety factors were that the call was vague and stated specifically that it would be a one-shot - our one and only opportunity to hire people for European funding.

The verdict arrived in June 2023: out of 49 submitted projects all over France, 44 were selected for funding. The French research support landscape is thus going through a phase of turmoil: dozens of universities are currently hiring European project officers or managers at the same time. An unprecedented scale of simultaneous recruitment in that area, so that some fear the employment pool in the field of European projects may be used up

We will only be able to measure in three to five years’ time – end of the Phase I of the funding - whether these recruitments have made a difference in French participation in European research framework programmes. However, it is worth noting already that our ministry is betting on the potential of research support staff to leverage participation and even success, and we can ask ourselves: what impact do we have on researchers’ participation in framework programmes and how can we measure it?

This session will present the above mentioned-call and show how two completely different French universities - Avignon Université et Université Paris Cité chose to answer it to improve their participation in EU funding and help their research community in the best way possible, taking into account each institution's specificities and challenges. We hope that by sharing our experience we can help other institutions planning to reorganize their support offices. We are keen to exchange and collect feedback from colleagues that are (or have already) reorganized their teams.