To support our team we are looking for new staff members at the ICCR Vienna office. We have opened a position for a Dissemination Officer at the ICCR Foundation. We are also offering internships for young researchers.
For more information and details on how to apply, please visit our jobs page.

A group of European and Asian experts are meeting at the ICCR on 4-5 September to agree on a conceptual framework for the assessment of the costs and benefits of compliance with EU food safety regulations. The meeting takes place in the framework of the MONIQA Network of Excellence. The assessment model will be demonstrated through country case studies in Italy, Egypt, Turkey, China and Indonesia

Claude Kordon died on June 2nd 2009. First President, in 1997, of the newly created association Euroscience, he was already at the time deeply engaged in the rejuvenation of the European Science Foundation (ESF).

Claude was (with Pierre Papon) one of two French representatives on the ESF Executive Council in the 1990s (1992-1997), when some of its members believed that the Foundation should play a more strategic role in European science policy and in the building-up of what is today called a European Research Area. Claude devoted a lot of his diplomatic talent and patience (he was fluent in four European languages…) to bringing French research institutions and their European partners to take a more active part in the ESF. He himself was convinced that the scientific challenges of the turn of the century were so enormous that European cooperation on a large scale was absolutely essential. Thus he was led, after sowing seeds in ESF territory, to his commitment in the creation of Euroscience.

In the years 1995-97, when Euroscience was in preparation, and in 1997-2000, with the help of an excellent Governing Board, Claude strove to launch the fledgling association. He understood the importance of dedicated individuals for the success of our first steps, spent time in lengthy discussions with colleagues from different countries (all the Euroscience initiators used their lists of addresses and contacts) and produced, in speech and in writing, many a bright idea for the development of the association.
Euroscience certainly started modestly, but Claude gave us confidence to forge ahead, come hell or high water. He chaired a Board representing 15 nationalities in an agreeable, elegant and positive manner, and occasionally also helped raise the spirits of the secretary general besieged by material difficulties.
Thus Claude was obstinate, but always gracefully so. He put in a lot of effort when he was aware of failings in European policy. He was firmly convinced – as were all Euroscience members – that research in Europe was too dispersed and fragmented, partly because of narrow national policies, and that scientists should constitute a lobby to voice, at the European level, their common needs and common proposals for improved efficiency and worldwide advancement of science and innovation. He was a visionary in supporting, among these common needs, the cause of young researchers. For several years he advocated the setting up of a European job bank, a service which obviously Euroscience could not establish with its own resources, but which was finally picked up by the European Commission: there is now a portal for scientists’ mobility and job offers (www.europa.eu.int/eures). He also laid the foundation of the European Charter for Researchers by organising in 2002 the Bischenberg Conference on “New science- and-technology-based professions in Europe”.
These man-of-action qualities were rooted in Claude’s deep knowledge of the research system, both national and European. He had a perceptive and generous mind, and as a careful observer of the European scene, he anticipated where new actions should take place. Then he launched or helped launch new initiatives.

With Claude, Euroscience chose not to be embedded in the closed circles of pure research: we met, offering our considerations, with the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, a number of research decision-makers in European countries, and of course the European Commission.
Let us end by quoting Simeon Anguelov, a Bulgarian chemist, former ambassador of Bulgaria in France, and former member of the Euroscience Board:
“Claude did a lot for intellectual life in Europe. Not so numerous are those for whom science is not a job among others but a mission, a responsibility, a vocation. I had the fortune to know him and to work at Euroscience in his wake. During my stay in France, this was one of the most enriching experiences I had on the intellectual plane.”.

Pierre Papon, Françoise Praderie