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The EOSC Association is born

Cecilie Maagaard Winther
27.08.2020

While most of us were enjoying our summer vacation, the EOSC-Nordic and all other EOSC projects reached a major milestone as the EOSC Association was born on the 29th of July.

The current EOSC governance is an interim governance, and its mandate ends on the 31st of December 2020. Therefore, focus in the EOSC community has been on the future of EOSC, and making EOSC sustainable.

For partners to uptake future EOSC memberships, EOSC must be a legal entity, and the EOSC Governing and Executive Boards have been working on the establishment of the EOSC legal entity before the end of this year.

“Conceived as a co-programmed European partnership, the EOSC candidate partnership requires the existence of a legal entity to enter into a contractual arrangement with the EC,” writes Cathrin Stöver, EOSC Executive Board Co-chair in her blog for the EOSC Secretariat.

On the 29th of July this goal was accomplished. Now the community is only awaiting the issuing of the Royal Decree which formally establishes the EOSC Association. This could take a couple of months due to the summer period but also COVID-19 disruptions.

4 founding members

The EOSC Association is founded by 4 founding members: GÉANT, CESAER from Belgium, CSIC from Spain, and ICDI from Italy. But many more organisations are expected to join on the exact same terms.

“I cannot stress enough that the role of the founding members is only to go to the notary. These members have no privilege over others and plans are in place to ensure others who expressed interest are provisionally accepted immediately and become full members before key decisions are made at the General Assembly,” writes Cathrin Stöver.

At present, the call for ​expressions of interest to join​ the EOSC Association is still open. “Candidate” initial members to this new legal entity for EOSC were nominated by the EOSC GB and EB and are supporting the TF Legal Entity in preparing the draft Statutes of the EOSC Association. So far, there is an agreement to the following basic principles:

  • Statutes will contain the minimum elements required legally for the setting up of the EOSC Association.
  • All finer details will be set up in the bylaws.
  • The EOSC Association will be flexible and should be able to grow as required. Initial members will have no greater rights than other members once the association is constituted.

GA meeting in September and December

The General Assembly is planned to meet for the first time during September 2020, where all organisations will be requested to prepare the nomination of their representatives. The first EOSC Board and President can then be elected at a subsequent General Assembly in December 2020 once the Association membership has been widened.

The birth of the EOSC Association and EOSC as a legal entity is a major milestone in the life of EOSC in general and also for EOSC-Nordic in particular. Congratulations!

Learn more:
Read Cathrin Stöver’s blog post about EOSC as a legal entity here.
Read Cathrin Stöver’s blog post about the milestone reached here.