Home >  advice European grants >  List of interviews on European grants >  Funds for Agribusiness and Biotechnology

Funds for Agribusiness and Biotechnology

Mr Eric Dufour, Ministry of food, agriculture and fishing, Expert to the Research and Education DG

1/ Mr Dufour, you work for the Ministry of food, agriculture and fishing, what is your function?
I have been a university professor on Food sciences for 11 years and I have a practical experience concerning European research projects financed by the Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP5, FP6 and FP7) within the agribusiness and biotechnologies sector. Since 6 months I am in charge of the “European Research Space” mission under the Research and Education DG. I personally lead the thematic French group (GTN) on the second FP7 theme (Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology) in order to inform the academic research labs, the research institutes and the enterprises about the FP7 - Theme 2 financing opportunities, especially about call for projects and forecasted programmes.

2/Could you give an example of your networking activity between the local and the European level?


Leading and informing means, for my daily work:

- to let know about FP7 (theme 2) call for projects to the potentially interested scientific bodies,

- to deepen needs and research topics that are requested by the French stakeholders in research fields,

- to convey to the European Commission about stakeholders’ requests in the field of agribusiness and biotechnology,

- to take part in the meetings of the FP7 – theme 2 programme management committee held in Brussels and to support French research policies in the field of agribusiness as well as the national projects.



3/ What are the French research bodies engaged in the agribusiness and biotechnology sector you work with?


The stakeholders that are building European projects and whom I regularly meet are the Europe Units within Universities, Engineering Institutes, National Research Institutes, Agricultural and Food-Industry Institutes as well as the agribusiness firms . These players often work on EU funded research projects or they wish to build up European projects participating to the FP7 under their specific research sector; for these reasons, it’s important to transmit to the European Commission’s DG Research, together with the other EU Member States, the most claimed research topics in order to make them included in the European research policy.