European Commission, DG Environment Unit D.2: Water and Marine Amsterdam, 2/3 December 2004 Slide 1 Item 5.4 RTD / LIFE & Science-Policy Interface Water Directors’ Meeting 2/3 December 2004

European Commission, DG Environment Unit D.2: Water and Marine Amsterdam, 2/3 December 2004 Slide 2 RTD Calls for proposals þPriority 6.3 “Water cycle, including soil- related aspects”: 3rd call closed on October 26th / New projects expected by midst-2005 þScientific Support to Policies (SSP) priority: 4th call to be closed on February 1st / Three topics of direct interest to WFD (pesticides, environmental costs, AQC scheme) þERA-NET scheme: call closed on October 5th / Selected projects known in January

European Commission, DG Environment Unit D.2: Water and Marine Amsterdam, 2/3 December 2004 Slide 3 LIFE-Environment “Efforts to promote demonstration activities in Pilot River Basins” þ Call closed on November 30th þ Message passed to PRBs that LIFE could satisfy some CIS demonstration requirements (e.g. water pricing, programme of measures)

European Commission, DG Environment Unit D.2: Water and Marine Amsterdam, 2/3 December 2004 Slide 4 Activities of the Water Supply and Sanitation TP “On-going discussions with EU experts to define the road-map at the FP7 horizon and beyond” þ Series of meetings to develop strategic research agenda, implementation plans and impact assessment for consultation before the end of January 2005 þ Available website:

European Commission, DG Environment Unit D.2: Water and Marine Amsterdam, 2/3 December 2004 Slide 5 Science-Policy interface activity in support of WFD “Developing a mechanism to transfer scientific information to WFD implementers in a coordinated, user’s friendly and interactive way” þ Workshop held on October 4-5 with PRBs, co-ordinators of RTD, LIFE and INTERREG III projects, DG RTD, DG ENV, DG REGIO Representatives þ Definition of short-, medium- and long-term research needs and how they can be linked to policy agendas – Close link with the HarmoniCA initiative to develop a webportal giving access to the most promising scientific projects þ Discussions of a coordination at EU level (see diagram)

European Commission, DG Environment Unit D.2: Water and the Marine Research policy Research development Research use, demonstration Research dissemination Research progress Research Demonstration programmes Research Integration interface DEVELOPMENT IMPLEMENTATION Water policies REVIEW DESIGN Research Policy interface Research funding programmes FP6, ERA-NET PRB, RTD LIFE INTERREG III HarmoniCA, ‘WISE’ ERAWATCH? Coordination needs