Researchers ‘should be trusted more’ with expenses

The European Commission should adopt a trust-based approach to its monitoring of researchers’ use of funding, the European Court of Auditors has said.

The Commission should consider moving away from its current system of reimbursing researchers for proven costs, Alex Brenninkmeijer, an auditor at the ECA, told the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy Committee on 10 November. Instead, it could provide funding in advance as a lump sum and evaluate researchers’ use of that funding based on their performance, he suggested.

Reimbursement systems are more prone to errors than lump-sum systems based on entitlements, Brenninkmeijer said. At present, errors are most often caused by researchers simply misunderstanding or misapplying the rules rather than deliberately failing to comply with them, he said.