The new template aims to simplify the consortium agreements needed for participation in the seventh research framework programme (FP7) funding system. In the past, the complexity of different agreement models led to disagreements between project participants and was often seen as a stumbling block to the involvement of small business.

The EU's FP7 was set up to fund and promote European research and technological development with a total budget of €50bn over seven years in order to gain leadership in key scientific and technology areas while stimulating and enhancing the creativity of European research and collaboration.

The DESCA project (Development of a Simplified Consortium Agreement for FP7) to simplify the FP7 template agreements was initiated by a number of industry and research organisations.

The new agreement "will be particularly beneficial to SMEs" as it "simplifies the administrative and management costs of project participation for SMEs" said a spokesperson from Eurochambres, one of the project initiators.

The DESCA showed that agreements compiled from different models by previous FP6 project participants often led to internally inconsistent documents which provoked disagreements between project participants on various issues such as voting rights, distribution of advance payments or access to project results.

The new model aims to avoid inconsistencies and make sure that consortium agreements take the interests of all participants, large firms, SME's, universities, public research institutes and other organisations, into account.