1. CESSDA – the road towards an ERIC
Kari Bjørke
Lisbon, 3 May 2017
My background:
Lawyer – solid ministerial experience, also from COM (SNE)
Started working in Dep of Research in 2011 – meet the ERIC challenge.

2. CESSDA – Brief history
1976: CESSDA (Council of European Social Science Data Archives) established as an informal umbrella organisation for the European national data archives.
2006: included in the first ESFRI Road Map in the field of social and cultural innovation:
“The present major task is ... to create pan-European infrastructural systems that are needed by the social sciences ... to utilise the vast amount of data and information that already exist or should be generated in Europe. Today the social sciences ... are hampered by the fragmentation of the scientific information space. Data, information and knowledge are scattered in space and divided by language, cultural, economic, legal and institutional barriers”
Dangerous – others here know a lot more than me.

3. CESSDA – Brief history II
2010: preparatory phase project with EU funding finalised: recommendation to establish an ERIC
2013: established as a consortium based on a MoU between participating ministries, and a legal entity as the formal vehicle. Norway is host, main office in Bergen.
15 Members, 1 observer
2015 April: CESSDA ERIC Application Step 1
2016: recognised as an ESFRI Landmark in the 2016 ESFRI Roadmap
2017: CESSDA ERIC will be established
A long way.
ERIC in Norway has been problematic – this animal "ERIC" is a very difficult thing to understand. Also for those inside the Union.
The intention from the EU to be open and
Teh Quality of the ERIC Regulation was not as good as we could have hoped for. Good intentions, not so good in legal terms.
VAT is always a very diffucult issue. I'll come back to that briefly later.

4. ERICs hosted by an EEA/EFTA State
The host State must take on all obligations according to the ERIC Regulation, including VAT exemption
Norway: OK
VAT: the Regulation and the VAT Directives do not allow EU MSs to refund VAT to ERICs outside the EU.
Gives a less favourable situation for the Norwegian ERICs. For CESSDA: limited consequences
Some differences in the "paperwork" for exemptions
A very recent non-paper on VAT from the Commission to the ERIC Management Committee had been distributed on Basecamp. Norway gives VAT exemption for CESSDA, but according to the non-paper, the VAT Directive does not give a legal basis for VAT exemption for any of CESSDA's acquisitions in EU member states. So the VAT regime for CESSDA (and other ERICs in associated countries) is less favourable than for ERICs in member states. This has to be further discussed in Norway and with the Commission. The impact of this VAT regime on the budget of CESSDA is believed to be relatively minor, but the Norwegian Ministry and the Main Office will try to identify the possible financial consequences and share this information with the GA members.
(This non-paper states that an ERIC hosted by non EU Members are not in the same position when it comes to VAT exemptions as ERICs hosted by EU Members. )
This is mort unfortunate. Only the EU can solve the problem. They have advocated that ontehr states are very welcome to be hosts – and that other states must take onthe same obligations – but do not (for the moment) themselves take onthe same obligations. This is and will continue to be a challenge for all our cooperation.
Here is a lack of reciprocity.

5. CESSDA – main documents
Statutes for CESSDA ERIC
(members agreed 2016 – final discussions with COM ongoing)
Technical and scientific description:
Vision and Mission
Objectives
Unique values of CESSDA
A user-sentric and data-centric approach
Structure of CESSDA
Activities
Data Access Policy, etc.
Statutes & TSD – hopefully well known. Are (or will be soon) available on CESSDA web page.
Statutes requires a Data Access Policy
The Data Access Policy of CESSDA ERIC shall be in conformity with OECD recommendations and guidelines on data access (OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding, OECD 2007).
Publicly funded data and metadata held by the Service Providers shall, unless provided otherwise for in Article 14(6), be openly accessible and free at the point of access for public research and education and shall be made available in a timely fashion.
All data collections shall be made available by Service Providers for access to authorised researchers for public research and education.
Service Providers shall protect the anonymity of data subjects in accordance with applicable international, European and national regulations, as well as relevant ethical frameworks.
Service Providers shall maintain fair, open and transparent procedures regarding access to the data and metadata in their custody.
The principle of open access provided for in Articles 14(2) and 14(3) shall not oblige a Service Provider to share data, metadata or data collections if this would be in conflict with national legislation, intellectual property rights or other compelling legal reasons.

6. CESSDA Mission
The mission of CESSDA is to provide a distributed and sustainable research infrastructure that enables the research community to conduct high-quality research in the social sciences which can contribute to the production of effective solutions to the major challenges facing society today and to facilitate teaching and learning in the social sciences.
This requires the achievement of several objectives: The objectives will ensure seamless access to data across repositories, nations, languages and research purposes; encourage standardisation of data and metadata, data enrichment, data sharing and knowledge mobility across Europe thus stimulating increased scientific use of high quality, publicly funded data
From TSD.
Ministerial level always focuses on:
the major challenges facing society today
Seamless accesss – open sceince – EU – Moedas emphasises onthsi. Ron knows all about it

7. CESSDA Mission
The mission of CESSDA is to provide a distributed and sustainable research infrastructure that enables the research community to conduct high-quality research in the social sciences which can contribute to the production of effective solutions to the major challenges facing society today and to facilitate teaching and learning in the social sciences.
This requires the achievement of several objectives: The objectives will ensure seamless access to data across repositories, nations, languages and research purposes; encourage standardisation of data and metadata, data enrichment, data sharing and knowledge mobility across Europe thus stimulating increased scientific use of high quality, publicly funded data
From TSD.
Ministerial level always focuses on:
the major challenges facing society today
Seamless accesss – open sceince – EU – Moedas emphasises on this. Ron knows all about it

8. CESSDA – Founding Members
Norway Hungary
Austria Netherlands
Belgium Slovakia
Czech Republic Slovenia
Denmark Sweden
France United Kingdom
Germany
Greece Observer: Switzerland
= 15.
Too late to become founding member/observer.
Members to be expected:
Finland (soon – is member of the current consortium)
Lithuania (2018 – is member of the current c.)
Portugal
Ireland (prisippbeslutning juni 2016?)
Romania
Estonia (have so far said no)

9. New Members Procedures:
Application addressed to the Director who shall advise the General Assembly
Condition:
"contribute positively to the tasks and activities of CESSDA ERIC"
"can be expected to fulfil the obligations"
Membership fee
Service Provider
Promote the use of standards, access to data etc
Accession
After the entry into force of these Statutes any entity listed in Article 3(1) may be admitted as Member or Observer. The accession shall be approved by a two-third majority of the votes cast of the General Assembly. A condition for accession shall be that the entity may contribute positively to the tasks and activities of CESSDA ERIC as referred to in 2, and can be expected to fulfil the obligations laid down in Articles 3(5) and 4(3). An application for membership or becoming an Observer shall be addressed to the Director who shall advise the General Assembly on whether the application should be granted or not.
Upon request of the Director, the acceding Member or Observer shall select and propose a Service Provider responsible for carrying out the Service Provider tasks.
The Director shall seek the advice of the Scientific Advisory Board and the Service Provider’s forum before the proposed Service Provider is accepted or rejected.
The obligations of Members shall be the following:
to contribute to the CESSDA ERIC budget in accordance with the funding formula set by the General Assembly;
to designate a Service Provider that will provide CESSDA ERIC services in their country and across Europe;
to provide national funding to allow the designated Service Provider to meet the requirements set out in Annex 2;
to promote the adoption of standards in national social science data archives;
to provide the technical infrastructures to make access to data and services possible;
to promote uptake of services among researchers in the Member and gather user feedback and requirements;
to support, and when needed, to initiate the integration of national social science data archives, including the integration between national archives and those in other Member or Observer countries.

10. New Members Who may join as Member or Observer:
Member States of the Union
associated countries
third countries other than associated countries
intergovernmental organizations
Observer: a country or intergovernmental organisation that is either preparing to become a Member, or which for domestic reasons cannot become a Member but wants to make a contribution and participate in the activities of CESSDA ERIC
Associated = associated to the H2020 /current RFP
An Observer shall be a country or intergovernmental organisation that is either preparing to become a Member, or which for domestic reasons cannot become a Member but wants to make a contribution and participate in the activities of CESSDA ERIC.
They pay the same controibution/member fee – so its not meant to be a "cheap way of joining"……

11. Questions?
Kari Bjørke
Senior Legal Adviser Department of Research Ministry of Education and Research Phone (+ 47)