News from the expert group on support to the strategic coordinating process

The need for a common framework for monitoring and assessment of partnerships in research and innovation as well as a central system for monitoring data has been acknowledged and addressed in the new phase of the partnerships in Horizon Europe. The European Commission set up in 2021 an Expert Group to support the Strategic Coordinating Process – a new governance framework for EU Research & Innovation (R&I) Partnerships – by developing a new framework and methodology for monitoring and evaluation of the new partnerships in close collaboration with the partnerships and the participating countries.

Apart from the methodology and the certain monitoring system that is being developed at the EC, the group will produce the first Biennial Monitoring Report at the beginning of 2022. The report will be the most visible output of the Strategic Coordinating Process, providing an evidence-based and transparent overview of the partnership landscape. In the meantime , the expert group has published its first interim report, A robust and harmonised framework for reporting and monitoring European Partnerships in Horizon Europe.

In the second interim report (planned for early 2022), the group will focus on the biennial monitoring report of partnerships. The final report with policy recommendations is planned for mid-2022.

Continuing the support to partnerships, ERA-LEARN will organise a training workshop for the new partnerships in the first quarter of 2022 to provide training in relation to the new monitoring framework under Horizon Europe in collaboration with the Expert Group. At the same time, the guidelines and advice provided by ERA-LEARN in the form of the RIPE toolkit will accordingly be updated and adjusted to support the new partnerships under Horizon Europe to apply the new monitoring and evaluation methodology and meet their own as well as the centralised, horizontal reporting requirements.