63rd Management Board meeting: EFSA Management Board adopts Multi-annual Programme 2015-2017 - Audio available
Management Board members adopted EFSA’s Multi-annual Programme for the next three years aimed at ensuring expertise, data and methods continue to serve the needs of the European Union and its 500 million citizens. The Board also adopted EFSA’s draft budget for 2015, which remains at around €79.6 million.
Board members considered a discussion paper on EFSA’s role in the field of nutrition and were given a presentation on the benefits and future developments of EFSA’s Stakeholder Consultative Platform.
The Multi-annual Programme is designed to deliver the strategic objectives endorsed by the Board in 2013: ensuring EFSA is fit for purpose by increasing its usefulness to policy makers in order to enhance food safety; stepping up cooperation with national food safety agencies and other partners; increasing transparency and openness in EFSA’s scientific work, engaging with society to increase trust in the EU food safety system, including making the system more transparent for food industry applicants in the area of regulated products.
In 2015, EFSA will deliver an extensive programme of scientific work and corporate initiatives, including the hosting of a second EFSA scientific conference in Milan as part of EXPO 2015. In addition, a portfolio of multi-annual projects will cover one or more of EFSA’s strategic objectives. Among these:
- the PROMETHEUS project – will further define principles, processes and methods for the use of evidence in scientific assessment, building on EFSA’s existing work;
- the MATRIX project – aims to provide applicants with a clearer and more efficient system for regulated products applications by improving the process, particularly the management of the application lifecycle and digital dossiers;
- Scientific Data Warehouse and Molecular Typing – aims to create a pan-European hub for data collection, access and analysis and has been expanded to include molecular typing;
- STEP 2018 – will improve efficiency, by building on the centralisation of planning and monitoring;
- OPEN EFSA – designed to take EFSA to the next level as an open science organisation, driving greater transparency and openness as an integral part of the scientific decision making process.
Following a request by the Board, EFSA prepared a paper on its role in the field of nutrition, which members discussed as part of considerations to inform EFSA’s future strategy. EFSA has been responsible for providing scientific advice on issues related to human nutrition, such as dietary reference values for nutrients, tolerable upper intake levels for nutrients, dietetic products, food allergens, nutrition and health claims on foods and safety of novel foods.
Board members discussed the functioning of EFSA’s Stakeholder Consultative Platform, which is composed of EU-wide stakeholder organisations working in areas related to the food chain, and were given a presentation on its progress and possible future developments.
The Platform chair Andreas Varlamos presented an overview of the achievements of the Platform over the past years and shared with the Management Board reflections on how to further improve the cooperation and usefulness of stakeholders to EFSA’s work. Management Board members agreed at the meeting to consider in March an extension of the current mandate of the group by one year to provide members and EFSA sufficient time to reflect on best ways to enhance stakeholder relations.
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Audiocast and documents
Welcome by the Chair and Adoption of the agenda
- EFSA progress report
Interaction between EFSA and stakeholders: The role of the Stakeholder Consultative Platform
Update on Open EFSA
EFSA activities in the field of Nutrition
Update on the IT operational strategy implementation
Single Programming Document 2015-2017
Amendments to the Art. 36 list of organisations
Feedback from the Audit Committee
EFSA’s 2014 budget execution and transfers
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