ERANet RUS

The ERA.Net RUS project was launched during the EU Seventh Framework Programme in February 2009. Its objective is to increase research funding cooperation between EU Member States and associated countries and Russia.

The 28 member organisations of the ERA.Net RUS project consortium carried out three funding calls in 2011, 2014 and 2017. The calls were exceptionally successful, which is why the European Commission decided to continue the ERA.Net RUS (Plus) project until October 2019. In 2019, the consortium prepared a fourth call, this time as a project fully jointly funded by the members of the consortium without additional EU funding.

The project strengthens RDI cooperation between the EU countries and Russia as well as the international dimension of the ERA concept. This will benefit both the European Research Area and Russian RDI actors, especially the scientific community. The Research Council of Finland participated in preparing the project from the very beginning, and also participated in the four calls. The calls provided funding for dozens of joint research projects in various fields of science. Each research project has had at least two research teams from participating EU Member States and at least one group from Russia.

ERA.Net RUS has:

• collected information on the RDI programmes of EU Member States and associated countries targeting or involving Russia: the objectives, needs, strengths and challenges of these programmes have been identified and their experiences have been utilised in the ERA.Net RUS project
• established dialogue between ERA and Russian research funders and other RDI actors
• developed a programmatic funding model suited to the needs of EU and Russian research funders in order to implement joint research projects
• organised four funding calls (2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019).