CO-REACH (2005-2010)

CO-REACH was a network of European S&T policy and funding organisations involved in promoting research cooperation with China in the natural sciences, medical and life sciences, engineering sciences, social sciences and humanities. The network intended to create coherence and synergy in Europe's S&T relations with China. It did so by promoting the coordination of China-related policies and associated research funding programmes of individual European countries, and integrating these efforts with those of other multi-lateral European initiatives, including the programmes and agreements of the European Commission.

CO-REACH aimed to develop joint European activities with Chinese science organisations and to launch joint calls for European-Chinese research projects. New opportunities were based on the existing strong bilateral China relations of the CO-REACH partners. In order to achieve this aim, CO-REACH set the following four goals:

• to work for the establishment of the European Research Area (ERA) by bringing together research collaboration (now scattered on organisational, country and regional level) to be carried out in cooperation with China
• to strengthen the international dimension of the ERA and to create a channel between European and Chinese S&T partners
• to strengthen scientific and technological relations between Europe and China by creating the critical mass needed for the implementation of new European-Chinese joint research projects
• to foster strategic and coherent policy-making on European research collaboration with China and to identify the critical research needs and priorities as well as future challenges and opportunities both in Europe and China.

The tasks of the Academy
The Academy of Finland participated in Work Package 3, which was preparing multinational European-Chinese collaboration and its coordination. The Academy worked to advance the coordination, administration and evaluation processes of funding cooperation within European-Chinese research programmes.

Funding
The CO-REACH budget was EUR 3.9 million for 2005–2010, with the Academy’s funding share of EUR 133,000. In August 2008, the CO-REACH network opened a pilot call together with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in the field of the social sciences and partly in the humanities. The funded projects (2009-2011) involved one Finnish research group.

The negotiations in 2010 for the continuation of CO-REACH network with 15 funding organisations from 16 countries did not finally yield to funding by the European Commission.