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COST Governance

This section is devoted to the governance of COST as implemented by the COST Committee of Senior Officials (CSO), the main decision-making body responsible for the strategic development of COST.

The current CSO President is Dr Ángeles Rodríguez-Peña and the CSO Vice-President is Dr Primož Pristovšek.

COST Position Paper

On 19 March 2012, the CSO approved COST’s position paper ‘The COST Framework - A cornerstone of the ERA’ (COST 4106/12). This initiative aims at underlining COST’s valuable role in the European Research Area (ERA), as it has been recognised throughout the years by consecutive reviews and assessments – including the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) mid-term evaluation of COST in 2010. The position paper is available for download and was also further explained in a news item.

COST Action Plan

As a follow-up to the above-mentioned position paper, the CSO approved COST's 'action plan to increase inclusiveness in COST activities while fostering scientific excellence throughout Europe' (COST 4156/12) by written procedure in June 2012.

The Action Plan is available for download and consists of five elements for immediate implementation:

  1. Information sharing for best management and practices
  2. Capacity building
  3. Preparing the future: young talents / next generation leaders
  4. Connecting research infrastructures to all potential users
  5. Targeted Actions i.e. policy-driven targeted COST Actions (based on the Plan for Strategic Activities (COST 4107/12)).

COST Mission and Goals

In June 2011, the CSO approved the updated 'COST Strategy' (COST 4157/11) which lists COST's strategic goals. The strategy was approved as a follow-up to the updated 'COST Mission Statement' (COST 4152/11) in May 2011.

Key Documents

COST-EC documents

Last updated: 16 November 2012 top of page