European Partnership for Researchers: the Spanish approach

1
European Partnership for Researchers the Spanish
approach

• Dra. Angeles Rodríguez Peña
• Deputy Director General for European Programmes
• Ministry for Science and Innovation

2
A European Partnership for Researchers Key areas
Open recruitment and portability of grants
Social Security and Supplementary Pension rights
Training, skills and experience

• Attractive employment and working conditions

3
A European Partnership for Researchers Key areas
Open recruitment and portability of grants
Social Security and Supplementary Pension rights
Training, skills and experience

• Attractive employment and working conditions

4
Open recruitment and portability main obstacles

• Limited autonomy in hiring by public research
  institutions
• Internal recruitment in public sector.
• Specific mobility funding is still limited.
• Mobility is the desired outcome, portability is
  a means to that end,
• butfinancial legal and organisational obstacles
  claim for
• joint action!

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Open recruitment and portability possible actions

• Giving institutions greater autonomy in hiring
  and adopting best practice on the recognition of
  qualifications.
• Ensuring that all public positions are openly
  advertised online and improve practical support
  for mobile researchers.
• Allowing portability of individual research
  grants by national funding agencies and relevant
  Community programmes.

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Open recruitment the Spanish approach

• National and Regional Programmes
• Both open to applications from foreign
  researchers (even no residents).
• Regional Programmes targeted to a particular
  region (Catalonia, Basque Country)

Regional Programmes ICREA (Catalonia) Ikerbasqu
e (Basque Country) others (Andalusia, Galizia,
Aragón)
National Programmes Ramón y Cajal Juan de la
Cierva Torres Quevedo (to work in the private
sector) JAE doc
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Open recruitment the Spanish case
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Open recruitment the Spanish case
coming from outside Spain (20 foreing
25 nationals)
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Open recruitment the Spanish case
Spanish performance at ERC calls 92 of the
StG holders were either RyC or ICREA
researchers 28 of the StG holders were
non-nationals 77 of the AdG holders were
either ICREA or RyC researchers 38 of the AdG
holders were non-nationals
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A European Partnership for Researchers Key areas
Open recruitment and portability of grants
Social Security and Supplementary Pension rights
Training, skills and experience

• Attractive employment and working conditions

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Social security Supplementary pension rights

• Why to address researchers? Are they a special
  category of workers?
• No, but problems normally faced by other mobile
  workers can become more serious for researchers
• the high-mobile nature of research activities
• researchers often hold short/medium term
  contracts of different nature (i.e. employee,
  fellow, self-employed) that may not fit in
  general national social security co-ordination
  rules.

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Social security Supplementary pension rights
actions

• Ensure that researchers and their employers have
  access to targeted information.
• Better utilisation of existing legal framework.
• Including rules to facilitate international
  mobility of researchers when concluding bilateral
  and multilateral social security agreements with
  third countries.
• Facilitating the transfer of supplementary
  pension rights for highly-mobile workers,
  including researchers.
• Encouraging pan-EU pension schemes targeted at
  researchers.

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Social Security and Supplementary Pensions right
Spain

• Early Stage Researchers are covered with minimum
  social security during their first 2 years. After
  this training period, all researchers have a work
  contract with full social security coverage.
• Suplementary pensions are subject to private law.
  In this respect a top (COM)-down(EU27) approach
  will be more effective. Spain is looking forward
  to the results of the ongoing study "Feasability
  study of a pan-European pension fund for EU
  researchers" that will be finished by April 2010.

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A European Partnership for Researchers Key areas
Open recruitment and portability of grants
Social Security and Supplementary Pension rights
Training, skills and experience

• Attractive employment and working conditions

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Working conditions

• Complex scenario EU and national labour law
  frameworks.
• Problems relate to the low level of salaries, to
  availability of financial resources, but also to
  how such resources are allocated, in particular,
  how academic performance is rewarded.
• How to best balance stability of employment with
  flexibility deemed necessary in research?
• How to best reconciling professional and
  private/family life?

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Working conditions possible actions

• Improving the career development opportunities
  for early-stage researchers by moving towards
  "flexicurity principles", regular evaluation,
  wider autonomy and better training Research
  funders to take career development into account
  when evaluating research proposals
• Introducing more flexibility in contractual and
  administrative arrangements and relevant national
  legislation for senior and end-of career
  researchers.
• Ensuring that all publicly funded researchers
  are covered by an adequate social security
  coverage.
• Achieving adequate gender representation in
  selection and funding bodies and adopting
  policies that enable both men and women to pursue
  a scientific career.

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Working conditions Spain
Statute for early stage researchers Stipend (2
years) - minimum social security
coverage Working contract (2 years) Full social
security coverage Experienced researchers (PhD
holders) Working contract (2 years) Full social
security coverage
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Spain structured research career
Doctoral Thesis
Researcher Sufficiency
Title
10 years
3 years
Programme I3 (2005) Modification of
the Unversity Regulation Law (2007)
Ramón y Cajal
Juan de la Cierva
4 years
Pregrado
stipend / contracts (EPIF)
Technical Support
Torres Quevedo
Public Employment Tenders at Public Researcher
Organisms Institution Contracts of RD
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Spain The New Law of Science
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A European Partnership for Researchers Key areas
Open recruitment and portability of grants
Social Security and Supplementary Pension rights
Training, skills and experience

• Attractive employment and working conditions

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Training, skills and experience

• Not only entail skills for the private sector or
  interaction between academia and business, but
  also to better respond to the evolving academic
  world, with rising emphasis on multi- and
  interdisciplinary research, competitive funding
  and international collaboration (Bologna, FP7
  PEOPLE, Joint-doctorates in ERASMUS, EIT).
• National skills agendas 
• To ensure that researchers are equipped with the
  necessary skills.
• Developed in close collaboration with
  stakeholders in both public and private sector
  and with input of researchers themselves.

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Training, skills and experience Possible actions

• Amelioration of the training environment
  requires to ensure better links between academia
  and industry, e.g. by
• Support the combination of doctoral training and
  industry experience by the recognition of such
  training periods in academia (involvement of
  industry in curriculum development)
• Promoting PhDs programmes cofunded by industry
• Facilitate intersectoral mobility

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Training, skills and experience Spain

• No national initiatives so far training
  programmes are designed by each University
• The new Spanish Law for Science will reinforce
  the intersectoral mobility, allowing temporary
  leaves from the public into the private sector.