Five European Foundations Initiate Permanent ESOF Office

Stuttgart/ Barcelona, 22 July 2008 – The Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) soon will have a “home”. On the occasion of this year’s third ESOF conference in Barcelona (July 18 – 22), the Robert Bosch Stiftung and four European foundations - Compagnia di San Paolo (Turin), Fondazione Cariplo (Milan), Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Stockholm) and Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Essen) - announced that they would establish a permanent ESOF office. The project will be conducted in a partnership with Euroscience, a European association of scientists based in Strasbourg. The new ESOF office has been assigned a budget of 1.6 million euros for the first four years and is expected to employ a staff of three persons.

By establishing a permanent hub, the partners want to ensure the European character of the ESOF conferences. The future ESOF office will assure organizational continuity and accumulate a permanent store of relevant experience. So far, the host country organizers - Sweden in 2004, Germany in 2006 and Spain in 2008 - had to create their own administrative structures. A new project team was responsible for each ESOF conference.

A new Programme Director will at first be charged with helping to organize ESOF 2010 in Turin, Italy. Additional tasks will gradually be brought under the supervision of the permanent ESOF office. A joint Supervisory Board consisting of representatives of the five foundations and Euroscience will select the host cities of future ESOF editions and appoint the members of the Steering Committee for each conference.