The European Forest Institute intends to gain more regional presence and raise more core funding to enhance joint activities in the next few years by establishing new Regional Offices in different parts of Europe. This development is possible thanks to the active Associate Members and European countries willing to invest in the Regional Offices.
Procedure
The Annual Conference of EFI decided in September 2007 to open a call for letters of intent to establish Regional Offices. The call was opened in October and by the deadline of 15 January a total of seven letters of intent were submitted to the EFI Secretariat. These letters of intent were evaluated by the Scientific Advisory Board of EFI at its meeting on 3-4 March 2008 and the following week, followed by the evaluation by the Board of EFI a week afterwards.
Criteria for evaluation
The decision by the Board is based on the regional distribution and a unique focus of the proposed Regional Offices. Furthermore, the other criteria were: relevance to EFI Strategy 2022; complementarity of EFI activities (geographic and thematic), resources available for the Regional Offices (funding, staffing, facilities), and competence of the proposing party/parties (scientific excellence, network capacities, etc.).
Outcome of the evaluation
Out of seven letters of intent, a total of five potential Regional Offices were rated favourably by the Board of EFI and approved for the next stage. This means that we can expect full proposals on the following Regional Offices (in alphabetic order):
- EFICENT which is a joint initiative by Eastern France, Southern Germany and Switzerland focusing on Central-Europe,
- EFI-INNOFORCE covering the region from Baltic countries down to South-Eastern Europe,
- EFINORD initiated by Scandinavian countries,
- EFI-PLANT, which covers the region of Atlantic rim,
- EFISEE in the region of South Eastern Europe.
The Board asked the two proposing consortia EFI-INNOFORCE and EFISEE to develop coordinated proposals in order to avoid geographic overlap.
The Board also recognized specifically Russia as a region on its own and a Regional Office is thus expected to be located in Russia in the long term.
Next steps
The deadline for submitting full proposals, which include aspects such as a unique selling point, scientific focus and support of countries in the region, is 15 August 2008. After that, the Scientific Advisory Board will give its expert opinion on the proposals, which is conveyed to the Board. The Board will then evaluate the full proposals and submit its recommendation to the Annual Conference, which makes the final decision on the establishment of new Regional Offices on 15 September 2008 in Orvieto, Italy. The Council of EFI will also be informed of the progress at its meeting in the end of May.
The Board is very concious of the fact that the Board members are involved in the proposals and the process of evaluation must be very clear and unbiased. Therefore, the Board members involved in any of the proposals chose not to take part in the evaluation of the respective letters of intent.
The Board of EFI warmly thanks the Associated Members and the supporting countries for their commitment and activity in the establishment of the Regional Offices. Those Associated Members who wish to get involved in any of the full proposals, are welcome to contact the coordinating parties of the full proposals.
For more information, please contact Risto Päivinen, Director, EFI, risto.paivinen(à)efi.int, or tel. +358 10 773 43 13.