Mediterranean Call (CIRCLE-MED): Status Quo and next steps

The Mediterranean community within CIRCLE (CIRCLE-MED) launched a joint call in July 2007. The topic "Climate Change, Integrated Coastal Zones and Water Management" is very high on the political agenda of the Mediterranean region. By the cut-off date, sixteen proposals were received, representing a request of 3.46 million euros. Institutions applied from many countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Albania, Croatia, Turkey and Morocco. Finally eight projects were selected for a total budget of 1.65 million Euro. These projects associate research bodies from France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, Croatia, and Albania. All funded projects will be monitored and assessed over the course of their duration.  Three meetings are already scheduled:

• a kick-off meeting in Rome in November 2008, to introduce all the projects and the researchers, and build a community dedicated to the call;
• a mid-term meeting in Portugal in the fall of 2009, to review the mid-term report sent by the teams;
• a final meeting to be held in France at the end of 2010, where teams will present the results of their research.

Proposals were first sent to scientific reviewers. A Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) then met on January 15th in order to harmonize ratings across the reviewers and achieve consensual evaluation. Only projects passing all scientific thresholds were submitted to the next step. The Call Steering Committee met on January 31st, ranked the project according to their relevance for national stakeholders, and recommended what projects to fund. Blue Plan assisted the Call Steering Committee by giving insights on regional relevance. As requests from institutions did not match national pledges, solutions were found among the five institutions in a cooperative manner.