Written by the Expert Group June – 2017

Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme

BONUS

Final Evaluation Report of the Expert Group

Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme BONUS

European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Directorate F — Bioeconomy Unit F.4 — Marine Resources Contact: Sieglinde GRUBER E-mail: Sieglinde.Gruber@ec.europa.eu RTD-PUBLICATIONS@ec.europa.eu European Commission B-1049 Brussels

Manuscript completed in October 2017.

This document has been prepared for the European Commission however it reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

More information on the European Union is available on the internet (http://europa.eu).

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017

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EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme

BONUS Final Evaluation Report of the Expert Group

Edited by:

Prof Erik Arnold (Chair)

Dr Teresa Radziejewska (Rapporteur)

Wolfgang Geßner

Gunita Kakteniece

Dr Javier Ruiz

Directorate-General for Research and Innovation 2017 Bioeconomy

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Table of Contents

1 THE EVALUATION ................................................................................................ 7

2 BACKGROUND TO THE INITIATIVE ...................................................................... 9

2.1 BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................... 9

2.2 THE OBJECTIVES OF BONUS ...................................................................................... 11

2.3 THE BONUS STRUCTURE ........................................................................................... 14

2.4 THE IMPLEMENTATION OF BONUS ................................................................................ 21

2.5 FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF PREVIOUS EVALUATIONS .............................................. 30

3 EVIDENCE COLLECTED FOR THIS EVALUATION .................................................. 34

3.1 THE SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION OF THE BONUS WORK ......................................................... 34

3.2 THE POLICY CONTEXT OF BONUS ................................................................................. 37

3.3 THE VIEWS OF PROJECT PARTICIPANTS ............................................................................ 47

3.4 INTERVIEWS WITH STAKEHOLDERS ................................................................................ 61

4 ANSWERS TO THE EVALUATION QUESTIONS ..................................................... 76

4.1 RELEVANCE ........................................................................................................... 76

4.2 EFFECTIVENESS ...................................................................................................... 81

4.3 EFFICIENCY OF BONUS ............................................................................................ 85

4.4 COHERENCE .......................................................................................................... 89

4.5 EU ADDED VALUE ................................................................................................... 92

4.6 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INTERIM EVALUATION RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................... 95

5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................... 97

6 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 103

GLOSSARY ........................................................................................ 106 APPENDIX A

LIST OF PEOPLE INTERVIEWED ........................................................ 110 APPENDIX B

FUNDING COMMITMENTS OF PARTICIPATING AGENCIES ................ 111 APPENDIX C

DETAILED ANALYSES OF COHERENCE ............................................... 112 APPENDIX D

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Abstract BONUS is a programme established under Article 185 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to support joint research and influence policy in the Baltic Sea region. It aims to understand and reduce the effects of man-made pollution on the Baltic, enabling sustainable exploitation of the Sea and supporting the health of citizens living around it. These aims clearly address significant and relevant scientific and societal challenges. BONUS has successfully implemented its jointly programmed strategic research agenda, increased the quality and quantity of relevant research and contributed to building research capacity. Its impact on policymaking is more limited, though it is still rather early to expect to see significant effects. Given the constraints of the Article 185 instrument, BONUS has been implemented efficiently and its administration and management are widely praised by participants and stakeholders alike. BONUS is consistent with wider EU objectives and coheres with other relevant policy measures in the Baltic Sea region. It provides EU Added Value because its structuring and joint programming effects could not have been achieved without supra-national involvement. Any continuation should involve a real common pot, specify how BONUS will become sustainable after EU funding stops, better support capacity building in smaller states and link more effectively to policy development.

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Summary This document reports the final evaluation of the BONUS Article 185 programme by a group of independent experts. It aims to assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and impact of BONUS and its coherence with other EU Policies.

What is BONUS? As an enclosed, brackish sea the Baltic is especially vulnerable to environmental pollution with resulting consequences for sustainable exploitation of the sea and for citizens’ health. The common realisation among the Baltic Sea states of the need to mitigate the effects of human activities has triggered a series of common and European initiatives, among which BONUS has the distinction of being focused on environmental and marine research.

BONUS began life as an ERA-NET, a project ('BONUS for the Baltic Sea Science – Network of Funding Agencies') under the EU 6th Framework Programme implemented during 2003-2008, with a total funding of €3m. BONUS ERA-NET was coordinated by the Academy of Finland in 2003-2007 and by the BONUS Secretariat (EEIG) in 2008. The project brought together the key research funding organisations from all the EU Member States around the Baltic Sea as well as Russia. It was shaped as a consortium of 14 partners - eleven funding agencies, a research institute and two international organisations with an objective to establish a network and partnership of key agencies funding research to deepen the understanding of conditions for science-based management of environmental issues in the Baltic Sea. It resulted in the establishment of the BONUS European Economic Interest Group (EEIG) and the development of a vision for a Joint Baltic Sea R&D Programme to fund research.

This vision: this vision was implemented through the ERA-Net-Plus project funded by the 7th Framework Programme which launched a call and funded 16 research projects with a total of EUR 22.4 million. A total of over 100 research institutes and universities participated in the BONUS Plus programme.

In the Article 185 funding instrument that followed and which established the currently running BONUS Programme,, the EU matched national research funding Euro for Euro in order to implement a strategic research programme defined at the outset. The Article 185 BONUS programme was established by the relevant Decision of the European Council and the European Parliament. Based on the decision, BONUS progressed from a strategic phase of eighteen months starting in 2010 during which the strategic research agenda was developed, to a five-year implementation phase (recently extended to end in 2018, in order to allow unspent budget to be used up).

The overall aims of BONUS are to respond to major environmental and societal challenges by increasing the ability of the Baltic Sea states to manage and regulate, to de-fragment and coordinate research and to contribute to establishing ERA in the Baltic macro-region. It intends to achieve these by setting up a strategic research agenda, trigger more sustainable cross-border research by bringing together stakeholders and pool national funding in order to fund and jointly manage a programme of research. Projects have been selected through competitive calls for proposals.

BONUS research has improved understanding of the Baltic Sea environment and shows that there is a continuing need for research and for remediation and mitigation activities. Using the Article 185 funding instrument was an appropriate way to address the problems identified by BONUS, building on the earlier work funded by the ERA-NET schemes.

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How is it implemented? BONUS is implemented by a European Economic Interest Grouping, the BONUS EEIG, formed by national funding organisations of the participating states: Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland and Sweden. It is managed by representatives of the national agencies that contribute to the budget. There is a memorandum of understanding to enable researchers from the Russian Federation to participate in projects on a self-funding basis. The overall budget of the BONUS programme is €100m, provided in equal parts by the European Union from the Seventh Framework Programme and the participating states, of which 5% is budgeted for administration. Additional costs of administration are incurred in the national agencies themselves and within the Commission.

Following an inclusive process of developing the strategic research agenda through wide consultation with the research and stakeholder communities in 2010-12, BONUS issued four thematic calls for proposals, which together address almost all the topics identified by the agenda and has funded some 35 (and by July 2017 likely 40) cross-border, collaborative research projects. National contributions vary from Sweden’s 40% of the total down to Latvia and Lithuania with 1% each. Since the EU funding matches national contributions, correspondingly Sweden receives 40% of the European money while Latvia and Lithuania get 1% each.

The BONUS participating countries have not been able to agree to use a ‘real common pot’, which would entail putting all the national and European contributions into a single fund and using that to finance individual projects chosen in competition. In such a system there is no ‘juste retour’, so contributing nations do not necessarily take out the same share of the money as they put in. BONUS uses a ‘virtual common pot’, where countries only fund national participants. Each country also commits a specified sum of money (though Germany, Denmark Estonia and Finland have gone on to add funding beyond their original commitments), so once proposals have been reviewed and ranked the funding has to be assembled country by country. Only after that is the Commission annual advance payment to the EEIG distributed to the projects. If one country runs out of budget, a highly-ranked proposal may go unfunded. This makes project selection sub-optimal, complex and labour-intensive.

What is the impact? Bibliometric analysis suggests that BONUS has increased the volume and the quality of scientific publication regarding the Baltic Sea environment. Both the average number of citations per paper and the impact factor of the journals in which the papers were published are higher for research conducted under the BONUS umbrella than outside it or before the programme was initiated. International joint publications are also more common in BONUS-funded work.

Surveys and interviews with project participants and other stakeholders, as well as the Article 185 consultation, confirm that BONUS has increased the amount of research cooperation and coordination in the Baltic Sea region. There have been positive effects on research capacity building, scientific careers and networks. Much of the research has focused on generating new and fundamental knowledge and on developing tools and techniques, in line with the programme’s mission to understand and reduce environmental problems in the Baltic Sea.

A strength of the process of developing the strategic research agenda was that it encouraged participating states to examine their existing research portfolios in order to define a common programme via BONUS. Both the policymaking community and the researchers involved believe that networking has increased within both policy and research communities. However, BONUS has not created any additional permanent structures or routines that would preserve these benefits beyond the end of the programme. Such change would be necessary in order to continue the level of joint programming achieved.

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The effects of BONUS on policy development in the region are diffuse. The BONUS EEIG claims that there are more than 50 examples of BONUS making cases that could influence regulation and policy and a further 36 suggestions about design, implementation and evaluation of policy. Policy influence is an aim but there seem to be few examples available of this happening in practice. There are examples of policy influence, such as the production of antifouling guidelines for leisure boat owners in the CHANGE project (though the take-up is unclear) and repeated inputs to the EU Common Fisheries Policy by the COCOA, BIO-C3 and INSPIRE projects. However, the nature of the research implies that the links between research and policy change are complex and indirect.

Is BONUS efficient? BONUS has succeeded in developing and later revising a strategic research agenda. It has been criticised as too fragmented and as over-focused on hard sciences but it reflects a wide consensus and has been implemented. The governance structures work well. Observation, interviews and a researcher survey all indicate that – given the constraints imposed by the lack of a real common pot – the management and secretariat are efficient. The processes for acquiring and assessing proposals and monitoring and communicating the projects funded are transparent and work well. The overall satisfaction of the researcher and stakeholder populations with the BONUS processes is very high. On our analysis, 94% of the funding has gone to the research community and 6% to industry. While spending a higher proportion than that on SMEs is an aim of FP7, this requirement does not have to be flowed down to all FP7 activities.

Is BONUS coherent with other regional and EU initiatives? BONUS takes place in the context of a large number of policy initiatives in, or applying to, the Baltic Sea region. Leaving aside the wider aspects of the Framework Programme, which are open to all, BONUS is unique in focusing on Baltic Sea environmental research. Other initiatives involve monitoring and policymaking for the Baltic marine and maritime environments including the fisheries, development of the greater Baltic Sea region, Europe-wide such as ERA and the ‘three O’s’ policy (open science, open innovation, open to the world) and a range of other policy initiatives more peripherally connected to BONUS. This report contains exhaustive analysis showing that the actions of BONUS are consistent with these other initiatives.

An important objective for Article 185 programmes and the Framework Programme more generally is to rationalise and improve the fabric of research in the EU. Devising BONUS’ strategic research agenda (SRA) involved building on the existing interest in joint programming, creating longer-term budgetary commitments in the participating states, reviewing national strategies and coordinating collaborative research and deepening research networks. This can be expected to underpin continuing joint efforts in the Baltic macro-region.

Does BONUS provide EU added value? The idea of European added value is the complement to the Union’s subsidiarity principle that the European Union should not do things that are better done at the level of the Member States. Hence, the European Union should act only where it adds value over and above what the Member States can do individually.

The scale of the BONUS effort and its organising effect on research in the Baltic Sea region were unattainable without a higher-level intervention. BONUS provides a platform for cooperation in research activities on the issues related to the Baltic Sea that could not be organised from the national level. BONUS has reduced the fragmentation of research and made it more integrated and interdisciplinary than before. It allows the scientific communities to get a wider perspective, get new knowledge from the fellow researchers from other countries and move to a transnational level. For smaller Member States it increases critical mass. BONUS pulls together the available resources, provides a greater impact from research and raises its international visibility. It stimulates dialogue among

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the Member States and with the Russian Federation and contributes to collaboration in terms of socio-cultural exchange.

Conclusions Our overriding conclusion is that BONUS has been in many ways a great success. It was and remains a relevant response to the environmental and policy issues identified in the Baltic Sea region and to the difficulty of joint programming from the national level. However, we are not convinced of the usefulness of the recently proposed extension BONUS to cover the North Sea, which does not share the specific characteristics of the Baltic Sea and which would dilute the attention paid to the urgent problems of the Baltic. Were BONUS to be further generalised, its objectives would more easily be served by the more efficient arrangements of the Framework Programme. A further complication with a North Sea extension would be that most of the relevant coastline belongs to Norway, an Associated State, or to the UK whose willingness and ability to participate in such programmes appears uncertain in the context of Brexit.

BONUS has also made a small but potentially important contribution to EU science diplomacy by including the Russian Federation and strengthening scientific links with the relevant Russian research community.

It is possible to imagine less cumbersome ways than an Article 185 arrangement to reach BONUS’ goals but under the prevailing circumstances Article 185 appears to have been appropriate. Whichever instrument is used, a future focus needs to be on how to reduce or eliminate barriers to joint programming at the Member State level and in particular the reluctance to use a real common pot.

BONUS has clearly made contributions to a wide range of EU policy objectives by providing research contributions, as our analyses of thematic overlaps and complementarities show. It has enhanced research capacity in the Baltic Sea macro-region and increased both the quantity and the quality of relevant scientific output. An unfortunate effect of the co-funding principle, however, is that BONUS has had the biggest effects on capacity in the countries best able to afford national contributions. In contrast, the absolute effects in the small states have been modest, even though it can be argued that capacity building is most urgent among them.

BONUS’s influence on policy has been diffuse – partly because much of the work it does supports existing regulatory and policy process rather than more visible policy changes and partly because the interface between the programme and policymakers has tended to involve communication of results rather than policymaker involvement in goal-setting, despite the involvement of policymakers in the strategic research agenda. It appears that policymaker involvement needs to be even more intensive, potentially requiring greater involvement of national ministries in order to strengthen the link from research to policy. Given that BONUS tackles problems that have both scientific and behavioural elements, there is probably a need to involve social sciences in future work.

At this stage, there is no evidence that BONUS has had a direct effect on the environment, nor is it reasonable to expect it to have done so given the short period of time involved. Improving the link to policy would increase the likelihood of environmental impact. While BONUS has increased total research capacity, some of the smaller states are in greater need of capacity building in the form of people and physical resources than some of the larger ones. BONUS’ requirement that national and EU financial contributions should match means that this imbalance is not addressed.

Given the constraints imposed by the Article 185 instrument and the lack of a real common pot, BONUS has been very efficient. It coheres well with other aspects of EU policy. The BONUS effort and its organising effect on research in the Baltic Sea region were unattainable without a higher-level intervention. BONUS has reduced the fragmentation of research and made it more integrated and interdisciplinary than before. For smaller participating states it increases critical mass. BONUS pulls together the

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available resources, provides a greater impact from research and raises its international visibility. Most of the work required partnership and there was additionality: much of the work would not have been undertaken without BONUS funding; some of the work would have been done nonetheless, but at smaller scale, more slowly, with higher risk, and so on.

Our recommendations At this stage, BONUS should be allowed to run its course without the imposition of 1.

further recommendations. One exception is that BONUS should be encouraged to consider whether the addition of a small number of projects aiming to improve its linkage to the policymaking process would be useful

Article 185, in the BONUS implementation, imposes a high degree of complexity on 2.those involved with it. The biggest cause of this is the lack of a single common pot. Working-level discussions with the participating Member States will not remedy this situation, which is prevalent also in other instruments and is a significant barrier to joint programming. The Commission should consider whether it can exert influence over the Member States at a higher level, so that regulatory impediments can be addressed from the top down

Our discussion of BONUS highlighted that it provides a temporary solution that risks 3.becoming more permanent because the environmental issues take a long time to resolve and the tolerance of Article 185 to the lack of a single common pot allows the Member States to avoid addressing ways and means to create one. This imposes a systemic risk of lock-in, so that the Framework Programme ceases to play its key role as a change agent. The Commission should consider requiring future users of Article 185 to define an exit strategy, as a condition for receiving funding. This strategy should explain how, why and when the programme will cease to be dependent upon Article 185 funding – either because it will no longer be needed or because it plans to find an alternative source of income

The Article 185 co-funding mechanism militates against differentially building capacity 4.among weaker participants. The Commission should consider whether it can introduce rules that would permit such capacity building

Any continuation of BONUS would naturally have to be consistent with the objectives 5.and rules of the Framework Programme as well as other relevant policies. The Commission should consider adding the following criteria in the case of BONUS

There should be a real common pot for funding. i)

The proposal and strategy should explain the ‘exit’: how, when and why will EU ii)funding no longer be required?

It should include a mechanism to allow more capacity building among the iii)participating Member States with limited national budgets.

It should address behavioural as well as scientific problems and devise iv)mechanisms to demonstrate greater potential for policy effects. This will probably involve a greater role for social sciences.

It should continue to engage the Russian Federation. v)

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1 THE EVALUATION

The Article 185 initiative 'Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme BONUS' was set in motion by the BONUS Decision (European Parliament and Council, 2010) of 22 September 2010 on the participation of the Union in a Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme (BONUS) undertaken by several Member States. (Hereafter ‘BONUS Decision’) As the programme approaches its completion in 2017, it should - according to the Decision – be evaluated, following the evaluation procedure developed for FP7.

To this end, the Commission appointed a group of independent experts consisting of Erik Arnold (Chair), Wolfgang Geßner, Gunita Kakteniece, Teresa Radziejewska (Rapporteur), and Javier Ruiz “to analyse [the programme] implementation, identify critical issues that need to be addressed and propose, if necessary, adjustments to, and assess how the instrument can best contribute to the policy developments.”. According to its mandate, the expert group is to analyse the implementation of BONUS, the achievements (outputs, results, impacts) made and the extent to which recommendations of the Interim Evaluation were followed; in addition, it was deemed necessary “to provide an outlook on what can be expected from the initiative in the remaining time, notably the desired leverage effects of BONUS” and “recommendations concerning the most appropriate ways BONUS could further enhance integration and the quality and efficiency of implementation, including scientific, management and financial integration.” The evaluation covers the time since the inception of the BONUS programme to the end of 2016. (Where available, we have additionally included data from the Blue Baltic call of 2015, under which not all projects had been contracted at the time of writing.)

The terms of reference for this evaluation specify that it should:

• Assess the continued relevance and appropriateness of BONUS in line with Decision 862/2010/EU.

• Assess the effectiveness of BONUS and its contribution to the EU policy objectives of the Union, as well as its achievements towards the general and operational objectives of BONUS.

• Assess the efficiency (including aspects such as implementation, governance and supervision) of BONUS.

• Assess the coherence with other initiatives and actions which are thematically related to BONUS and which are aimed at supporting programme level collaboration among Member States and between Member States and the EU.

• Assess the impact of BONUS in terms of the value added:

- At European level

- At national and regional level

- At international level in line with the objectives of BONUS

• Assess the improvements and progress made towards the nine operational recommendations of the interim evaluation.

• Provide short and longer term recommendations for the future of BONUS and in particular for a potential successor initiative, taking into account the geographical scope.

The evaluation was undertaken in the period October 2016 to May 2017.

Good evaluation practice is to use a mix of methods and to triangulate among their results. This evaluation is therefore based on:

• Study of official documents related to the programme, including the BONUS Decision, the ex-ante impact assessment (European Commission SEC(2009) 1475 Final, 2009) and interim evaluation (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014),

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the programme’s strategic research agendas (BONUS, 2011) (BONUS, 2014) and other reports and publications from the programme. References to the specific documents used appear both in the text and in the Bibliography

• Analysis of financial and monitoring data from BONUS to provide a picture of the project portfolio, participating organisations and beneficiaries

• Expert analysis of project outputs and monitoring data

• An expert review of marine and maritime environmental problems in the Baltic Sea and progress made in recent years towards correcting them

• Interviews with the following (a list of interviewees is provided at the Appendix)

- The secretariat at the BONUS EEIG headquarters in Helsinki (3)

- Members of the steering committee (8)

- Stakeholders and organisations working in the same or similar fields (3)

- A selection of project leaders of BONUS projects (11)

- Relevant officials at the European Commission (4)

• Analysis of a survey sent to all (174) BONUS project participants

The Commission ran a public consultation on Article 185 programmes in parallel with this evaluation. Respondents overall were extremely positive about almost all dimensions of the Article 185 programmes. Forty-five responses were from people who stated that they were involved with BONUS. Given that the responses are from people who themselves chose to participate there is evident selection bias and we have no way properly to understand the population that did respond. Nevertheless, the provided quantitative aspects of the consultation and the textual comments sent by some of the respondents confirm the main findings of this evaluation.

At the time of writing, not all the BONUS projects have been concluded, so there will probably in future be more results from the programme than we can record here. The BONUS programme itself is well documented but inevitably much of the information we need to address the terms of reference relies on the judgements of stakeholders. We have looked for consistency among responses from different people and among the results of different methods (interviews, survey, document analysis) as one marker of opinions likely to be of value.

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2 BACKGROUND TO THE INITIATIVE

2.1 Background

The Baltic Sea, a semi-enclosed brackish water body, supports an ecosystem the goods and services of which – while vital for people in the region - have been greatly impaired due to a range of persistent ecological problems, most of which can be traced to anthropogenic pressures. Multiple natural and anthropogenic pressures have significantly reduced the capacity of the Baltic Sea sustainably to provide the goods and services upon which humans depend, with negative consequences for the region and for the wider European Union. The poor state of the Baltic Sea environment has serious effects on the health of citizens and ecosystems.

The problems include intensified eutrophication, manifested as increased nutrient levels, due to excessive runoff from the surrounding land, which resulted in persistent algal blooms, including those of toxic cyanobacteria (Mazur-Marzec & Pliński, 2009). The excessive growth of algal biomass results in sedimentation of unused biomass to the near-bottom water layer and the bottom itself (Paerl, 1997). The decomposition of that material there consumes oxygen dissolved in the water, triggering oxygen deficiency (hypoxia) and leading to areas of oxygen depletion (anoxia), lethal to most marine life (Carstensen, et al., 2014). The persistence of hypoxic and anoxic areas in the Baltic Sea is enhanced by certain natural features, such as the permanent water column stratification due to a limited water exchange with the North Sea. Nowadays hypoxia affects not only the deepest basins of the sea, but is also encountered in shallow coastal areas (Vallius, 2006).

Another group of problems involves pollution and the release of hazardous substances, including novel (or not previously accounted for) ones such as pharmaceutical derivatives, endocrine disruptors and microplastics (Magnusson, et al., 2016). The pollution problem is related to growth of economic activities on land and indirect pollution from industrial emissions (Wiberg, McLachlan, Jonsson, & Johansson, 2009); and in the sea itself (e.g. shipping, coastal constructions; Hassler, 2011); and is also associated with changing lifestyles e.g. recreational boating (Bighiu, 2017). Still another problem is related to frequent introductions, natural and human-mediated, of non-indigenous species (Ojaveer & Kotta, 2015). Some of the introductions evolved into biological invasions, the newcomers becoming established in the ecosystem, thereby changing biodiversity patterns in many areas of the Baltic Sea to the detriment of the native fauna and flora in some parts (Janas & Kendzierska, 2014). This situation seems to be exacerbated by climate change (warming), with its accompanying risk of increased frequency of extreme weather-driven events such as storm surges (Wolski, et al., 2014) as well as by increasing human economic interventions in the sea such as pipelines and wind farms (Clark, Schroeder, & Baschek, 2014).

Growing awareness that appropriate management measures are necessary to mitigate the impacts of many human activities at sea and in the catchment area to reduce, or reverse, the negative changes which threaten the sustainable development of the entire Baltic Sea region, has resulted in a number of actions and initiatives undertaken jointly by the Baltic Sea countries at various levels.

Most notable of these, and a milestone on the road to intensified international collaboration in the Baltic Sea ecosystem, was the Helsinki Convention (Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area) of 1974 and 1992, and its executive body, the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) which, coordinates and supports joint research activities of the countries party to the Convention (www.helcom.fi). These activities, however, remained fragmented and left to the discretion of individual countries which differed widely in the scope and depth of their support and commitment to the research of the Baltic Sea environment (Terlecka & Massel, 2008).

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The Article 185 BONUS is a programme aimed at enhancing the Baltic Sea Region’s research capacity providing the necessary underpinning for the development and implementation of ‘fit-for-purpose’ regulations, policies, and management practices, responding effectively to the major environmental and key societal challenges in the region at present and in the future, and overcoming fragmentation of environmental research programming by integrating the research activities in the Baltic Sea to form a durable and cohesive multi-national programme. BONUS evolved from a succession of ERA instruments: ERA-NET, ERA-NET Plus and an Article 185 programme.

The initial BONUS ERA-NET (BONUS for the Baltic Sea Science – Network of Funding Agencies) (2004-2008) was supported by the 6th Framework Programme of the EU with a total funding of €3m. The project brought, for the first time, the key research funding organisations from all EU Baltic Member States and Russia together. The project consortium formed consisted of eleven funding agencies, a research institute and two international organisations. Workshops and meetings brought together managers of marine research programmes, science advisers, legal counsels and finance managers from the partner organisations as well as active scientists. The aim was to establish a network and partnership of key agencies funding research in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea to deepen the understanding needed for science-based management of environmental issues of the Baltic Sea and to develop preconditions for a joint Baltic Sea research programme. The BONUS ERA-NET did not fund research projects, but strove primarily to enhance cooperation between the national research funding bodies. The outcomes involved the establishment of the BONUS European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) and development of a vision for a Joint Baltic Sea R&D Programme to fund research.

This vision took shape in the successor, an ERA-Net Plus (BONUS Plus) (2009-2011), which launched a call and funded 16 research projects with a total of €22.4m. Each of these projects was jointly managed by the participating national funding agencies. Two thirds of this funding was allocated by national funding agencies and one third by the European Commission. A total of over 100 research institutes and universities participated in the BONUS Plus programme. BONUS Plus activities were overseen by a secretariat representing ten research funding organisations from the Baltic Sea States: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.

Following these ERA-NETs, the Joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme BONUS was set up in 2010 as a more integrated initiative jointly undertaken by eight Member States with the participation of the EU, based on Article 169 (subsequently Article 185) of the Treaty of the European Community and established by the BONUS Decision. The BONUS Decision set the legal basis for the BONUS programme (BONUS) and determined that the programme was to be pursued in two phases, the strategic phase of 18 months and the implementation phase of five years. In 2017, the Commission granted permission to extend the limit for the last funding decisions in the Implementation Agreement of BONUS to September 2018, in order to allow it to use up unspent budget. Projects may then in practice run on for as much as three or four years after this date.

The present BONUS Article 185 as well as its predecessors were conceived because of serious needs stemming from mounting environmental and socio-economic and political pressures in the region that had to be addressed. Since the 1990s, there has been a shift towards integrated management approaches ensuing from legislative regulations directly or indirectly related to the European waters (e.g. fish, drinking and groundwater, bathing waters, dangerous substances, shellfish, birds, habitats, sewage, nitrate, urban waste), such as the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. These regulations stress the importance of an ecosystem-based approach as a means to achieve the full economic potential of oceans and seas through their sustainable use whilst conserving marine ecosystems and aim to achieving a good environmental status

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for the EU marine waters by 2021. The regulations require Members States to cooperate wherever possible at the level of existing Regional Seas Conventions. This cooperation, as well as excellence in marine research, technology and innovation was indispensable for the EU Maritime Policy to be pursued in the Baltic Sea Region.

The development and implementation of an ecosystem approach in the Baltic Sea necessitates a research strategy striving for a holistic, integrated, inter-disciplinary scientific approach addressing both the natural and socio-economic systems. Such an approach should foster the close collaboration of research communities across geographical and disciplinary borders and well-functioning interfaces between science and policymaking, dialogue among scientists, policy-makers and other stakeholders to ensure the policy relevance of the research and a rapid translation of research into policy advice.

Despite a long tradition of research cooperation both within and outside the Baltic Sea area, unequal economic and scientific development among countries in the region as well as highly diverse national research agendas, research themes and priorities mean that there have been insufficient resources that can be devoted to collaboration. Moreover, at the point when the BONUS ERA-NET began work, transnational research projects and programmes in the region had not managed sustainably to restructure the research landscape in the region and there had been no structured attempt to provide an effective science policy interface.

2.2 The Objectives of BONUS

The general policy objectives of BONUS set out in the BONUS Decision are:

• GO1. To enhance the Baltic Sea Region’s research capacity to underpin the development and implementation of ‘fit-for-purpose’ regulations, policies and management practices.

• GO2. To respond effectively to the major environmental and key societal challenges which the region faces and will face in the coming years.

• GO3. To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Baltic Sea Region’s fragmented environmental research programming and approach by integrating the research activities in the Baltic Sea System into a durable, cooperative, interdisciplinary well-integrated and focused multi-national programme.

• GO4. To contribute to the establishment and structuring of the ERA in the Baltic Sea Region.

The Decision specifies the following actions:

• A1. To establish a policy-driven Strategic Research Agenda.

• A2. To increase sustainable cross-border and cross-sectoral public research programme coordination and integration.

• A3. To raise the research capacity of the new Baltic Member States of the Union.

• A4. To establish appropriate Stakeholder Consultation Platforms including representation from all relevant sectors.

• A5. To mobilise additional financial resources from enhanced cross-sectoral Baltic Sea System research collaboration.

• A6. To establish appropriate implementation modalities enabling an effective implementation of BONUS through a joint management legal entity and governance structure.

• A7. To launch cross-thematic, strategically focused and multi-partner joint calls for proposals.

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It sets out the following Specific Objectives:

• SO1. The Strategic Phase shall prepare the implementation phase. It shall deal with the strategic development of BONUS to ensure that an optimal integration of Baltic Sea System research can be achieved. It shall seek to strengthen the involvement of stakeholders and user groups to ensure that the research is relevant to policy and management, and that the prioritisation of research themes is driven by policy needs and the full involvement of scientists and their respective research institutions, as well as the broad stakeholder communities shall be actively sought.

• SO2. During the Implementation Phase joint calls for proposals shall be published and carried out with a view to funding strategically targeted BONUS projects addressing the objectives of BONUS. The topics shall be taken from BONUS Strategic Research Agenda, respect as far as possible the established roadmap and cover research, technological development and training and/or dissemination activities.

At a more operational level, the objectives of BONUS (Table 1) are spelled out in the Strategic Research Agenda (BONUS, 2011) (BONUS, 2014), defined after consultation among the BONUS participating states, a broad range of stakeholders and the Commission. This broad involvement was intended to warrant that the research prioritised by BONUS be relevant to policy and management needs and identified the main environmental issues and challenges faced by the Baltic Sea environment.

These inputs were structured into a rational development of knowledge and scientific thinking aimed at integrating the research activities of the Baltic Sea region into a durable, cooperative, interdisciplinary, well-integrated and focused multi-national programme. This knowledge-generation and structuring arrangement is based on five interlinked Strategic Objectives. Each of the Strategic Objectives contains a set of themes addressing at least one of the challenges identified during the consultation phase.

This strategic design was proven to be amenable to revision following the second consultation period, the revision being already signalled in the initial SRA. The consultations conducted for the purpose of this update added new challenges (Table 2, Table 3, Table 4) in a context where the need for sustainable growth became even more important owing to the dimension of the severity of the economic crisis and the adoption of the Blue Growth Strategy in Europe. Eco-technology and eco-innovation solutions to sustain agriculture and aquaculture as well as the trade-off involved in the use of space are among the components given a particular emphasis in the updated SRA of 2014 with the aim critically to contribute to an economically and ecologically prosperous, sustainable Baltic Sea region.

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Table 1 Strategic objectives and themes of the BONUS SRA

Strategic Objective 1. Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

• Theme 1.1 Ecosystem resilience and dynamics of biogeochemical processes, including cumulative impacts of human pressures

• Theme 1.2 Causes and consequences of changing biodiversity • Theme 1.3 Food web structure and dynamics • Theme 1.4 Multilevel impacts of hazardous substance

Strategic Objective 2. Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment

• Theme 2.1 Natural and human-induced changes in catchment land cover patterns, including the role of e.g. agriculture, forestry and urbanisation

• Theme 2.2 The role of the coastal systems in the dynamics of the Baltic Sea • Theme 2.3 Integrated approach to coastal management • Theme 2.4 Eco-technological approaches to achieve good ecological status in the Baltic Sea

Strategic Objective 3. Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

• 3.1 Enhanced, holistic cross-sectoral and cross-border maritime risk analysis and management, including effects of new technologies, human factor, climate change effects in open water and in ice, and interaction with onshore activities

• Theme 3.2 Assessing the effects of air and water pollution (including noise) by shipping activities on the marine environment and integrated water management in harbours

• Theme 3.3 Improving stock assessments and resolving spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of the Baltic Sea fish stocks

• Theme 3.4 Evaluation framework for fisheries management • Theme 3.5 Sustainable aquaculture in the Baltic Sea

Strategic Objective 4. Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea region.

• Theme 4.1 Governance structures, policy performance and policy instruments • Theme 4.2 Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and well-being • Theme 4.3 Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale

Strategic Objective 5. Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea region.

• Theme 5.1 Developing and improving scientific basis for integrated monitoring programmes for continuous assessment of ecological status and human pressures

• Theme 5.2 Developing and testing innovative in situ, remote sensing and laboratory techniques • Theme 5.3 User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment,

safety and security in the Baltic Sea are

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Table 2 Main environmental issues identified in the SRA

Table 3 Main challenges identified in the SRA

Table 4 New challenges highlighted in the updated SRA

2.3 The BONUS structure

The functioning of BONUS relies on the BONUS EEIG, a European Economic Interest Grouping [EEIGs are regulated by Council Regulation (EEC) No 2137/85 of 25 July]. It follows the rules of the BONUS Decision, regulations on the use of EU funds under the Seventh Framework Programme and an implementation agreement reached in 2012 between the Commission and the BONUS EEIG and restated in 2015. This covers issues such as the use of funds and reporting requirements. BONUS EEIG must manage a total budget of €100m, with a maximum EU contribution of €50m matching the contribution of the participating states.

The participating states are Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland and Sweden, each with at least one funding agency contributing to the BONUS budget (Table 5). The number of funding agencies increased during the implementation of BONUS from 17 in 2012 to 20 in 2015. These institutions nominate senior officers

• Increasingly diversified use of chemicals and new materials poses hazards to the environment

• Eutrophication affects today nearly the entire Baltic Se • Increasing maritime traffic is imposing risks to the environment • Fisheries regulation is not effective enough to secure the stability of the ecosystem and

reproduction capacity of the Baltic Sea fish stocks • Marine space is not used safely and systematically to fulfil the intensifying needs from

society • Climate change causes changes in the Baltic Sea region that need to be understood and

adapted • Protection measures are neither cost-efficient nor optimally shared • Existing data are insufficient and not efficiently used to support research and decision

making

Source: Strategic research agenda 2011–2017

• Adapting to the climate change and its effect • Restoring good environmental status of the Baltic Sea and its coasts • Achieving sustainable and safe use of the exploited coastal and marine ecosystem goods

and services • Creating cost-efficient environmental information system • Evaluating and developing relevant policies and collective governance • Adapting to a more sustainable way of living

Source: Strategic research agenda 2011–2017

• Mitigating eutrophication that affects today nearly the entire Baltic Sea • Achieving sustainable and safe use of exploited coastal and marine ecosystem goods and

service • Planning of the use of marine space that fulfils the intensifying and diversifying needs from

society • Minimising the environmental threat of increasingly diversified use of chemicals and new

material • Making fisheries management effective in order to secure the stability of the ecosystem

and reproduction capacity of the Baltic Sea fish stocks • Achieving safe maritime traffic imposing no risks to the environment

Source: Strategic research agenda 2011–2017, update 2014

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(usually one per country) to the Steering Committee (SC), the highest decision-making body of the BONUS EEIG. The SC chair rotates every year between the BONUS EEIG members. The SC convenes 3-5 times a year and decides, typically by consensus, on the strategic orientation of BONUS (

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Table 6). The European Commission and additional funders of the BONUS activities are invited as observers to Steering Committee meetings.

Table 5 Funding agencies that have contributed to BONUS implementation

Denmark • Danish Agency for Sciences, Technology and Innovation (starting from Jan 2015:

Innovation Fund Denmark) Germany

• Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung • PT Jülich

Estonia • Estonian Ministry of Education and Research - delegated to Estonian Research

Council • Estonian Environmental Investment Centre • Estonian Ministry of Rural Affairs

Latvia • Latvian Academy of Sciences (starting from Jan 2015: State Education Development

Agency) Lithuania

• Research Council of Lithuania • Lithuanian Ministry of Economy - delegated to Agency for Science, Innovation and

Technology (MITA) Poland

• The National Centre for Research and Development Finland

• Academy of Finland • Ministry of Employment and Economy • Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry • TRAFI

Sweden • FORMAS • Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) • Foundation of Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) • Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency • Swedish Research Council • Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA) • Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SWAM)

Russia Russia is not a Participant State but has reached bilateral agreements with the BONUS EEIG

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Table 6 Strategic decisions for which the Steering Committee is responsible

The BONUS EEIG

• Manages calls for proposals, project selection and the implementation of the BONUS programme through managing and monitoring contracts with the research performers

• Distributes EU funding and allocates national funding to participants as well as monitoring both cash and in-kind contributions

• Monitors, manages and reports the financial and scientific implementation of the BONUS programme to the Commission

• Monitors the proper use of funds • Develops and updates the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of BONUS • Maintains a financial plan for the duration of the programme • Shares good practice and contributes to harmonisation and streamlining practice

among participating regional, national and basin-based research programmes • Communicates the results of the BONUS programme • Ensures the take-up of results, for example in the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea,

using the standards of the European Marine Observation and Data Network standards where appropriate

• Maintains an exhaustive list of all research infrastructures relevant to BONUS research teams

• Assesses the impact of BONUS actions, in particular those specified in the Decision to establish BONUS

The implementation of the BONUS EEIG activities is done by the BONUS Secretariat (Figure 1) and is coordinated by the Executive Director. Both the Executive Director and the Finance Manager are appointed by the SC; other employees are selected and appointed by the Executive Director.

• Co-operation and co-financing contracts and agreements with other organisations • Funding of research projects, training courses, conferences, dissemination and other activities

based on competitive calls launched by the BONUS EEIG • Opening calls for proposals, their themes and funding volumes • Policies, rules and regulations concerning funding principles, evaluation criteria, reporting and

data management • Members of the evaluation panels, drafting groups, independent observers and other experts

assisting the Secretariat in matters related to the strategic research agenda and calls for proposals;

• Major changes in descriptions of work of the projects funded by the BONUS EEIG • Approval of the periodic reports of the projects funded by the BONUS EEIG • Approval of the annual accounts of the BONUS EEIG • Projects to be implemented, coordinated or participated by the BONUS EEIG • Official publications reflecting views of the BONUS EEIG • Major revisions of the BONUS Secretariat’s manual on governance and management

Source: The BONUS Secretariat’s manual on governance and management of BONUS Version 3.5.2015

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Figure 1 Composition of the BONUS Secretariat

Source: BONUS The BONUS Secretariat’s manual on governance and management of BONUS Version 3.5.2015

The Secretariat is overseen by the Executive Committee, comprising the current, previous and upcoming chairs of the SC as well as the Executive Director and Finance Manager. The Executive Committee supports the Secretariat in analysing issues of strategic importance and financial matters for the SC decisions. The BONUS EEIG is assisted also by an Advisory Board, appointed by the SC and composed of scientists of high international standing, representatives of relevant stakeholders, industry and civil society organisations, Baltic research programmes and other bodies relevant to the European regional seas. It assists the Steering Committee and the Secretariat by providing independent advice, guidance and recommendations regarding scientific, technology and policy-related issues of BONUS.

In addition, BONUS provides a platform for interaction with stakeholders at large in the form of the BONUS Forum, gathering representatives from ministries and other actors dealing with the Baltic Sea system research, innovation and governance. It is a consultation body discussing the outcomes of BONUS and emerging research needs from the decision-making perspective. BONUS project participants interact also via the Forum of Project Coordinators which assists the Secretariat in matters dealing with the scientific coordination of BONUS and the integration and synthesis of the research results.

Figure 2 illustrates the internal structure of the BONUS EEIG and its interactions with other bodies.

Executive director (ED)

Communications manager (CM)

Financial manager (FM)

Programme manager (PM)

Part time innovation call

manager

Programme officer Assistant

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Figure 2 BONUS EEIG internal structure and interaction with other bodies

Source: BONUS Secretariat’s manual on governance and management of BONUS Version 3.5.2015

The running costs of the BONUS EEIG cover expenses related to personnel, administration, premises and office equipment, external services, meetings and events, call evaluation, dissemination as well as travel and accommodation. They are covered by the management compensation paid by the Participating Countries (50%) and the EU contribution (50%). The total budget for these costs is €5m, i.e. 5% of the total BONUS funding.

National research councils typically spend 3-4% of their budget on administration. Innovation agencies normally spend close to 10%. Given the nature of BONUS essentially as a research funder, the lower end of this range is the more appropriate benchmark. There are scale economies in research funding, and BONUS is a small funder, so its position just above the normal research council range appears to be justified. It also falls within the normal range (4-6%) for Article 185 arrangements.

EU joint programming or ‘public-to-public’ R&D cooperation instruments normally strive for a ‘common pot’, in the sense that contributing parties put money into a central fund, which is then allocated based on competition. Hence there is no juste retour – so countries may take out more or less money than they put in, a principle that has been central to the Framework Programme since its inception. However, participating countries say that regulations in some places forbid the use of national funds on non-national researchers and therefore have prevented the implementation of a common pot. Consequently, each partner in a project that has succeeded in the selection and negotiation process receives funding from two sources: the EU and a relevant national agency. The EU money can only be released in order to match national money.

European Commission

BONUS Members

Additional funders

Russian funders

Funding bodies

Advisory Board

BONUS Forum

Forum of Project

Coordinators

EEIG Steering Committee

EEIG Secretariat

Executive Committee

Implementation bodies

Advice, Consultation & Support bodies

Advice

Consultation

Suppor t

Contract observer

EEI G Statutes representat ives

Call agreem ents, observers

Call agreem ents, observers

Project Coordin

ator

Representatives

Beneficiary

Beneficiary

Beneficiary

Consor tium Agreem ent

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As shown in Figure 3, EU funds are transferred by the BONUS EEIG to the coordinator. The coordinator then transfers the funds to the different partners in the consortium after the equivalent matching national funding has been received. National agencies make their payments directly to their respective national participants.

Figure 3 Transfer of funds to partners of a funded project

National Funding AgencyNational Infrastructure Provider

National Beneficiary

Nat

ional

Con

trib

ution

For each Nat ional Beneficiary in a funded project

European Union

EU

funds

BONUS EEIG

Project Coordinator

EU

funds

EU funds

Grant Agreement

Bilateral agreement for funding and

infrastructure provision

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2.4 The implementation of BONUS

2.4.1 The process

BONUS was implemented in two phases. There was an initial strategic phase of 15 months, during which there was extensive consultation among the member countries in order to design and agree a strategic research agenda (SRA) (BONUS, 2011), followed by an implementation phase during which there were four thematic calls for proposals and projects were contracted. Three years after the first SRA was agreed, the Steering Committee approved an updated and expanded version (BONUS, 2014).

Table 7 synthesizes the situation of the calls and the projects selected in the three BONUS calls. The first call sought proposals for Viable Ecosystem (VE) and Innovation (Inno) projects. The second call sought Sustainable Ecosystem Services (SES) projects. Contracting for the third, Blue Baltic (BB) call were still ongoing at the time of writing, so the information shown is not complete.

The calls address the different Strategic Objectives and the Themes defined in the SRA. The overall success rate for proposals across all four calls is 16%, but the rate varies a great deal by Theme. Thus, while only one proposal addressed Theme 3.1 in 2014, 28 proposals identified Theme 2.4 as their main link to the BONUS calls. There are cases like Theme 1.1 where a large number of proposals (11) resulted in no project with quality enough to be funded. There are other cases where this ratio is also very high like Theme 4.1 of the first call (2012), where twelve proposals resulted in only one project being funded. BONUS reopened this Theme in 2014 and three more projects were approved. The opposite case is Theme 3.1 where the only proposal submitted to the call of 2014 was funded.

The number of projects funded in each Theme varies from one (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.2, 4.3 and 5.1) to five (2.4 and 5.2). The variability among the numbers within Themes is much higher in projects than in proposals, which seems to indicate that it is a difference in quality (rather than in the number of proposals submitted) that decides what is being funded in each Theme. BONUS has taken actions to reopen some Themes where none (1.3 and 1.4) or only one (4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 5.1) project were funded in a call. For Theme 1.1, however, no re-call was planned although no project has been selected for funding. The development of the Themes overall is in line with the SRA update in 2014, with a growing emphasis on technological, blue-growth and governance aspects.

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Table 7 State of play of BONUS calls and projects

Numbers of proposals received are shown in the # column. Numbers in other cells are 1.Publishing the call, 2.Preregistration, 3.Proposal submission deadline, 4.Review panel ranking, 5.SC approves the priority and reserve list, 6.Formal communications, 7.Grant negotiation starts, 8.Infrastructure negotiation starts, 9.Project implementation commences. Yellow, red and blue colours indicate respectively the calls of the years 2012, 2014 and 2015. (Source: BONUS annual reports 2012 to 2106).

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2.4.2 What was funded

The interest of applicants in the BONUS programme differs among the four thematic calls. The most popular in terms of the number of proposals submitted have been the very first call on Viable Ecosystem with 87 proposals and the last call on Blue Baltic with 75. These two calls addressed the largest number of thematic priorities in the SRA, providing a wider choice of themes for the applicants. The least ‘popular’ call was on Innovation, with only 33 proposals submitted. This call was quite focused and addressed only three thematic priorities of the Strategic Research Agenda. It ran in parallel with the call on Viable Ecosystem.

Table 8 Data for BONUS calls

Calls for proposals VE Inno SES BB

Project statistics No of pre-registered projects 94 52 60 93 No of submitted projects 87 33 48 75 No of ineligible projects 2 4 2 2 No of eligible projects passed to the 2nd evaluation phase

85 29 46 22

No of projects approved 7 13 8 12

Rates Success rate (approved/ submitted) 8% 39% 17% 16% Project drop-out rate (pre-registered/submitted)

7% 37% 20% 19%

Thematic focus No of themes addressed by the call

10 3 6 9

Funding Total funding planned €31m €7 €15m + €1,5m €30m Funding contracted €26m+ €7m €17m+ n/a

Project size Mean project size €3,779,336 €447,080 €2,166,620 €2,727,551

Schedule Implementation period 2014-2017 2014-2016 2015-2018 2017-2020 Source: BONUS website, Annual Reports

As a result of all four thematic calls for proposals, the BONUS programme funds a total of 40 projects. On average, 20% of proposals pre-registered with BONUS were not in the end submitted. Of those submitted, few have been rejected as non-compliant: six proposals exceeded the allowable budget; three were incomplete; and one included an ineligible partner. The competition for projects has been rather intense. Success rates differed by call, with Viable Ecosystem (VE) being the lowest at 8%. Competition for Inno projects was not so great – there the success rate was 39%.

The programme did not use all of its budget for the first call on Viable ecosystem, committing a bit more than €26m rather than the planned €30m. The other calls – Innovation and Sustainable Ecosystem Services - have used all of the planned funds including €1.5m flexibility that was available for SES. The Blue Baltic call is still in the negotiating phase, so the budget outcome is not yet clear.

The total amount of funding of all projects including both EU and national funding (excluding in-kind contribution) is €79m. The total volume of all projects is €83m.

Table 9 shows that cash funding for BONUS projects totals almost €83m, 4.4% of which comes in the form of participants’ own contributions. Given their more industrial orientation, the Innovation projects have the lowest rate of funding from BONUS: in most cases varying between 77% and 88%, though the ESABALT (58%) project has a lower rate, as do SWERA (65%) and HARDCORE (59%). There are also Inno projects with close to 100% BONUS funding, owing to the presence of research organisations.

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The Blue Baltic Call will fund 12 projects of which 5 include only research organisations and universities. Due to industry participation the funding rate across all BB projects is 93.5%. Two projects include one industry partner each. Five projects include two and more industry partners, but there is no project with a majority of industry.

Table 9 Funding of BONUS projects

VE Inno SES BB Total

BONUS funding 26,105,351 5,812,046 17,332,956 30,003,065 79,253,418 Own contribution 155,312 1,330,031 106,009 2,071,326 3,662,678 Total 26,260,663 7,142,077 17,438,965 32,074,391 82,916,096 Own contribution % 0.6% 18.6% 0.6% 6.5% 4.4% Source: BONUS EEIG

National priorities concerning the type of projects vary. Sweden, Denmark and Estonia focus on VE projects. Finland and Latvia are focused on BB and SES projects. More than half of Germany’s budget goes to BB projects and a quarter to VE projects. Poland’s priority is BB projects while Lithuania focuses on SES projects.

Table 10 Allocation of national budgets for the various type of projects

DK EE FI DE LV LT PL SE Total National Contribution

TOTAL VE 2.599.200 544.325 1.497.965 1.959.061 186.000 166.434 452.044 5.646.557 13.051.586

Total VE % 47,0 44,8 23,3 25,2 27,2 29,8 18,3 42,9

TOTAL INNO 122.664 227.917 452.861 792.937 26.500 50.000 244.722 1.013.050 2.930.651

Total INNO % 2,2 18,8 7,0 10,2 3,9 9,0 9,9 7,7

TOTAL SES 1.183.200 340.540 2.186.964 1.084.250 234.870 241.500 508.631 2.493.452 8.273.407

Total SES % 21,4 28,0 34,0 13,9 34,3 43,3 20,6 19,0

TOTAL BB 1.628.205 102.516 2.299.223 3.952.553 236.615 99.960 1.268.677 3.995.074 13.582.823

Total BB % 29,4 8,4 35,7 50,7 34,6 17,9 51,3 30,4

Total 5.533.269 1.215.298 6.437.013 7.788.801 683.985 557.894 2.474.074 13.148.133 37.838.467

Total % 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0

Source: BONUS EEIG

2.4.3 Industrial participation

The distribution of the total project cost shows that a clear precedence is given to research - and mainly basic research projects – which attract 92.7% of the total funding. The strong research focus is confirmed by the fact that only 6.3% = €4,976,649 of the entire funding goes to industry.

• Variable Ecosystems Projects: 0.23% = €59,639 • Innovation Projects: 15.9% = €924,096 • Sustainable Ecosystems Services: 1.33% = €231,000 • Blue Baltic Projects: 12.54% = €3,761,915

Given the focus of the programme, the number of SMEs participating is necessarily low.

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Table 11 Number of SMEs and large enterprises supported in total by BONUS (as at 31 March 2017)

SME LE Total

DK 8 1 9 EE 1 0 1 FI 1 1 2 DE 8 1 9 LV 0 0 0 LT 0 0 0 PL 3 1 4 SE 4 2 6 Total 25 6 31 Source: (BONUS EEIG, 2017)

2.4.4 Who pays

At the time of this evaluation, the BONUS programme is co-financed by a total of 20 different funding institutions from eight participating countries providing the 50% national co-financing required for their respective partners in the approved projects. In general, each participating country is “represented” by 1-2 funding agencies with an exception of Finland with four, and Sweden – with seven.

Figure 4 shows national funding commitments to BONUS prior to the Blue Baltic call.

Figure 4 Total commitments to BONUS projects by participating state, 2012-2016

Sources: BONUS Annual Reports 2012 and 2016. The Figure does not include the Blue Baltic Call of 2015

Initially, the programme had 17 agencies providing co-financing and additional three institutions – two from Estonia and one from Finland - joined the programme during the course of implementation. Two of these funders (Estonian Environmental Investment Centre and Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) joined BONUS specifically for co-financing their institutions in the projects approved for the call on Innovation. Five other funding agencies have provided co-financing only for Innovation call projects, i.e., (1) Lithuanian Ministry of Economy (delegated to Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA)), (2) Finnish Ministry of Employment and Economy, (3) Finnish Transport Safety Agency (TRAFI), (4) Swedish Foundation of Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) and (5) Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA). Four of the participating countries – Denmark, Germany, Estonia and Finland – have provided more additional national co-financing

DK13%

DE19%

EE3%

LV1%

LT1%

PL7%FI

16%

[CATEGORY NAME]

[PERCENTAGE]

26

than committed at the start of the programme (Table 12). This amounts to the total of €5.36m and demonstrates their increasing motivation for participation in BONUS, as well as support to the projects submitted by the institutions from their countries.

Table 12 BONUS Spending commitments of participating states and funds remaining, 2016 (€)

Country Original Commitments

Additional Commitments

Total Commitments

Co-financing agreements signed (€)

Remaining funds (€)

DK 3,429,589 2,075,542 5,505,131 3,905,064 1,600,067 DE 5,000,000 2,878,961 7,878,961 3,836,247 4,042,714 EE 295,607 1,295,607 1,112,782 182,825 0 LV 597,000 0 597,000 447,370 149,630 LT 589,200 0 589,200 457,934 131,266 PL 2,900,000 0 2,900,000 1,205,397 1,694,603 FI 6,788,600 112,953 6,901,553 4,137,790 2,763,763 SE 17,005,056 0 17,005,056 9,153,059 7,851,997 Totals 36,605,052 6,363,063 42,489,683 23,325,687 18,234,039 Sources: BONUS Annual Reports 2012 and 2016. The Table does not include the Blue Baltic Call of 2017. More detail is given in Appendix C

2.4.5 Administration

BONUS uses a conventional process for securing projects (

27

Figure 5).

1) Launching of the calls for proposals with setting the theme(s) for the call, the main criteria for a project to be eligible, the process of application and the deadline for project submission. In addition, the BONUS programme has introduced one more step – all projects had to pre-register their interest in the call before a fixed deadline. Only the pre-registered projects could submit proposals.

2) Administrative and eligibility check of the submitted projects that give access to further evaluation of only those projects that fulfil the set out technical criteria.

3) Proposal assessment is performed by a pool of independent experts. The final list of projects to be funded is then selected by the BONUS Steering Committee, sitting as a panel.

4) Negotiation and contracting of projects is complex (Figure 6) because funding comes from two sources – 50% directly from the national funding institutions from the participating countries and 50% from the European Union, channelled through the BONUS EEIG. Hence, there are two parallel negotiation processes.

5) Launching of the approved projects.

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Figure 5 Elements involved in ranking of proposals

Source: BONUS Annual Report 2013.

Figure 6 An example of negotiations involved in the call of 2012

Source: BONUS Annual Report 2013

Beforemeetings

In the consensusmeetings

IER 1 IER 2 IER 3

In thereviewmeeting

Draft CER compiled by the rapporteur

Consensus meeting discussionCall Task Force member moderates,

Rapporteur presents the IERs

Rapporteur finalises the CER

Secretariat proofread

Experts read

Agreement on scores and CERs Experts sign the CERs in EPSS

Secretariat prepares the draft ranking order

Review meeting proposes the ranking list of the proposals

Chair of the review meeting endorses the proposed ranking list by his/her signature

I f correct ionsI f correct ions

I f approved

SC

Secr

Coord

NFI

Ntlbenefici

ary

Infra provider

Decisions:-Projects- Neg.

mandate

InformCoord

Inform projects’

beneficiaries

Negotiate about budget with ntl

beneficiaries

Make ntlfunding decision

Submit ntlapplication

Save final budget in EPSS

Negotiate DoW with Coord

Negotiate Co-fi with NFIs

Save final DoW with SoD in EPSS

Negotiate CA with ntl beneficiaries

Sign ntl GA

Sign ntl GA

Sign CA

Sign CA

Encourage ntl infra-

providers to report

Negotiate infra agreem

Sign Co-Fi

Sign Co-Fi

Decisions: EEIG funding

Agree about reporting to

BONUS

Sign BONUS

GA

Sign BONUS

GA

Sign BONUS

GA

Sign Infra agreem

Sign Infra agreem

Actor

May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan

25.1116.5

2013

29

The BONUS programme has launched the following calls.

• The first two thematic calls on Viable Ecosystem (VE) and Innovation (Inno) were launched in 2012 with the project submission deadline and the following processes of project evaluation, negotiation and contracting in and throughout 2013, with the last projects from the Innovation call contracted and launched in 2014. These two thematic calls are technically being considered as one call, though each had slightly different time schedule

• The call on Sustainable Ecosystem Services (SES) was launched and administered during 2014, in parallel to the contracting and launching of the last projects from the Innovation call. Contracting of the SES projects was completed and the projects were launched in the first half of 2015

• The last call (for the moment) on Blue Baltic was launched in November 2015 after all the projects approved from the previous call on Sustainable Ecosystem Services (SES) were contracted and launched. The Blue Baltic projects were submitted, evaluated and the decision on approval taken in 2016, while the negotiation, contracting and launching process was taking place during the first half of 2017 (and was not concluded at the time of writing)

In general, it requires 3 months for the BONUS EEIG to complete the eligibility check and organise the evaluation of the submitted projects that results in the decision on approval of the recommended projects by the Steering Committee. The most time consuming stage is the negotiation and contracting of the approved projects that has to follow the two-stage funding and contracting process involving BONUS and the national funding authorities that involves national decision making at each partner country and individual contracts with each project partner at their national level. This process takes from 6 to 12 months, so that projects on average start one year after the date of proposal submission to BONUS.

The implementation of the different phases in the process of project selection was very efficient for the period between the publication of the call and the start of the negotiations (Table 13). This time was ~7 and ~10 months for the Viable Ecosystem and Innovation calls of 2012, and ~9 months for the Sustainable Ecosystem Services call of 2014. These are remarkably short times given the complexities involved in the selection process.

The selection of experts and the dynamics designed for their interactions, described in the annual reports, avoids conflicts of interest and guarantees a transparent and fair procedure of proposal ranking on the basis of their scientific and technological excellence. The reports written by an external observer also indicate that the selection process was conducted honestly and to high ethical standards.

Table 13 Time to accomplish key steps in the funding cycle

Calls for proposals VE Inno SES BB

Submission deadline 14 Feb 2013 12 March 2013

16 April 2014 10 March 2016

Projects evaluated and selected 25 Apr 2013 23 May 2013 19 June 2014 26 May 2016 Decision on approval by SC 16 May 2013 3 July 2013 4 July 2014 15 June 2016 Evaluation results announced (to applicants)

17 May 2013 11 July 2013 7 July 2014 30 June 2016

Negotiation and contracting of projects 27 May 2013 – 5 Nov 2013

13 Aug 2013 – 5 July 2014

Sep 2014 - March 2015

July 2016 -March 2017

Earliest start of projects Jan-Feb 2014 April 2014 April 2015 April 2017 Time between submission and selection (approval by SC)

3 months 4 months 2,5 months 3 months

Time between selection (approval by SC) and contracting

6 months 12 months 8 months 9 months

Total time between submission and launching (start of projects)

11-12 months 13 months 12 months 12 months

Data source: BONUS website, Annual Reports

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Despite the efficiency of EEIG BONUS in overcoming the difficulties involved in running ambitious programme of calls, the procedure was delayed during negotiations. Thus, in the Viable Ecosystem call of 2012, once the SC had selected the projects to be funded, seven months were necessary for the projects to start, the Innovation call project taking about one year. This time was not reduced in the call of 2014. In addition to the inherent complexity of the process, delays can also be due to mismatches between regulations in the participant states and BONUS’ rules, such as

• The German funding institution PT-Jülich cannot pay indirect cost at a fixed rate of 20% to government research institutes

• Danish universities cannot open separate bank accounts for BONUS funding • Infrastructure providers are often different organisations from research funding

bodies, and it is not evident to some of them what is the benefit from providing the infrastructure and assuming an extra reporting work

Table 14 shows the running costs of the BONUS EEIG, which have been planned to amount to 5% of the overall €100m BONUS budget, as specified in the implementation agreement between BONUS and the Commission. Administering BONUS also involves additional costs to the national funders and the European Commission.

Table 14 BONUS EEIG running costs 2012-18

Implementation phase Act 2012 Act 2013 Act 2014 Budget 2015

Budget 2016 FP 2017 FP 2018 TOTAL %

FUNDING / RUNNING COSTS 154,154 872,264 846,031 889,476 1,033,250 964,141 240,684 5,000,000

Management compensation paid by participating countries 77,077 436,132 423,015 444,738 516,625 482,071 120,342 2,500,000 50 Mgmt compensation / members 77,077 273,052 243,594 265,317 337,204 295,339 120,342 1,611,924 Mgmt compensation / other NFI 0 163,080 179,421 179,421 179,421 186,732 0 888,075 EU Contribution 77,077 436,132 423,015 444,738 516,625 482,071 120,342 2,500,000 50

COSTS 154,154 868,044 842,213 881,976 1,027,660 957,681 239,925 4,971,653 100BL1. Staff costs 76,793 434,009 444,742 506,428 503,346 495,249 99,511 2,560,077 51BL2. Administration 3,396 12,376 15,058 18,753 20,837 21,428 4,562 96,409 2BL2.1 Premises & office equipment 23,961 98,254 101,204 103,012 101,416 102,432 21,405 551,685 11 BL3. External services 1 29,069 51,565 66,067 95,177 129,600 132,791 55,059 559,328 11BL4. IT costs and services 2 14,159 75,398 73,711 65,086 61,022 50,648 8,420 348,443 7BL5. Events 3 0 29,362 21,847 34,320 42,500 42,670 28,755 199,454 4BL5.1 Call evaluations 0 134,041 76,334 0 112,390 45,000 0 367,765 7BL6. Dissemination, promotion 853 11,473 21,256 24,000 26,100 36,100 15,400 135,182 3BL7. Travel and accommodation 5,923 21,566 21,994 35,200 30,450 31,364 6,813 153,310 3

OTHER ITEMS 0 4,219 3,818 7,500 5,590 6,460 760 28,346 1% of the total IP costs 3.1% 17.5% 16.9% 17.7% 20.7% 19.3% 4.8% 100.0%

1 Accounting, audits, legal services, other expert fees 2 Office IT, Electronic Proposal Submission System (EPSS), access based reporting tool, BONUS portal3 Project conferences, stakeholder events etc.

Source: BONUS EEIG

2.5 Findings and Recommendations of Previous Evaluations

2.5.1 Impact assessment

The Impact Assessment of 2009 (European Commission SEC(2009) 1475 Final, 2009) analysed options for implementing an Article 1691 initiative for the Baltic Sea Region, one of 4 potential Article 169 initiatives included then under the FP7 Cooperation Specific Programme and Capacities Specific Programme.

The Impact Assessment stressed that the BONUS ERA-Net (2004-2006) had made a good progress in initiating communication between research funding institutions in the region, analysing the landscape and developing the preconditions for further integration by elaborating a series of Analytic Papers, a Science Plan, Legal basis for a Decentralised Implementation Structure (DIS), and that the ERA-Net BONUS Plus (2007-2011) further developed and tested the identified mechanisms in practice through a joint call.

1 Articles in the Treaty have subsequently been renumbered. Article 169 in 2009 corresponds to Article 185 today

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The Impact Assessment concluded that, following the completion of BONUS Plus, in line with the FP7 approach and as acknowledged in stakeholder consultations, there was a need for a fully-fledged BONUS-169 initiative as a policy-driven integrated research programme in the Baltic region to aid in the development and implementation of an ecosystem approach in the Baltic Sea. In view of the fragmentation of the research effort in the region, the ecosystem approach in the region necessitated “a research strategy striving for a holistic, integrated, inter-disciplinary scientific approach addressing both the natural and socio-economic systems.”

In addition, this strategy should “strive to effectively foster the close collaboration of research communities across different geographical and disciplinary borders, including highly trained researchers (of current and future generations) and well-functioning interfaces between science and policy that allow for genuine dialogues between scientists, policy-makers and other stakeholders in order to ensure policy-relevance of the research and the rapid translation of research into policy advice at different levels (from local to regional).”

Considering options for implementing such a programme, the Impact Assessment concluded that the most appropriate policy option would be to apply Article 169 “to enable the Community to support the integration of national research programmes” It further recommended that “the participating Member States integrate their research efforts by defining and committing themselves to a joint research programme“. The EU role would be to coordinate the research programme by active participation in a voluntary scientific, management, and financial integration process.

An approach was recommended where mobilisation of an EU contribution of about €50m would be needed to support the, already submitted, BONUS 169 Outline Research Agenda. This approach recognised that, under circumstances at the time of the Impact Assessment, additional preparation and resources were needed to establish the strategic elements identified. Consequently, the approach selected envisaged two phases of the programme, the strategic (preparatory) and an implementation (calls) phases. It was also deemed necessary to further pursue stakeholder consultations during the strategic phase to fine-tune and detail the Science Plan and call contents. Progress from the strategic to the implementation phase would depend upon successful completion of the former.

The Impact Assessment stressed that the option recommended would allow for continuity and maintenance of the momentum developed by the BONUS consortium through the ERA-NETs and as such it has the potential to make full and effective use of the funding that could be provided should an Article 169 be approved. It would provide opportunities for developing and implementing appropriate intergovernmental accords, allow for ensuring full stakeholder participation in identification of research priorities and the formulation of integrated research programmes to be implemented through policy-oriented calls for proposals. With appropriate funding, the EEIG would be strengthened and would have the potential to provide suitable leadership in developing a comprehensive and high-quality integrated research programme. This can provide a robust basis for examining the environmental, social and economic factors that influence the sustainable use of the natural coastal and marine systems of the Baltic.

The Impact Assessment also stated that the recommended policy option and approach would ensure the priority setting power for the Commission through its involvement in the management bodies of the programme and give the Commission an opportunity to review and verify that the goals and objectives set up for the strategic phase, as determined with a set of indicators and measures provided, are attained before investments for the implementation phase are engaged.

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2.5.2 Interim evaluation

The Interim Evaluation of BONUS (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014) carried out by the Panel of Experts appointed by the Commission concluded that the programme had successfully developed a Strategic Research Agenda, agreed with all the Member States involved, which defined the essential research needs and priorities to be addressed to improve the environmental status of the Baltic Sea and to provide a sustainable resource to the regional economies. The Interim Evaluation considered BONUS as having been very successful in bringing together the research community and establishing an integrated transnational programme that was jointly defined, applying common rules and selecting projects for support on the basis of excellence with a goal to address the needs of the Baltic. As stated in the Interim Evaluation report, the Member States, acting jointly and together with the EU, came up with real cash contributions and thus demonstrated commitment and provided a clear European added value. Through their efforts, a coherent framework that complemented and supported the scope and aims of major EU policies and strategies was established. The evaluators found the mechanisms for financial management to be complex, difficult and inefficient due to the lack of ‘common pot’ and decentralised management of funds provided by the national research agencies. The Interim Evaluation report regarded the BONUS EEIG Secretariat as generally well managed and efficient.

The interim evaluation made nine operational recommendations for BONUS:

1. Develop a synthesis of the research supported by BONUS since its start as an ERA-NET until its current status as an Article 185. This should highlight the achievements and impacts.

2. Move towards the pooling of national funds to reduce the number and complexity caused by different funding streams. This would ensure more efficient management, reduce time to grant and overcome difficulties associated with applying common funding rules within national administrations.

3. Take steps to increase the provision of in-kind infrastructure contributions to BONUS projects. e.g. national administrations could provide incentives to partly subsidise the provision of infrastructure to BONUS. If the in-kind provision of infrastructure cannot be increased, further national cash contributions will be necessary to ensure that BONUS is fully implemented.

4. Take steps to ensure that BONUS projects build synergies and network with other projects and initiatives within the Baltic Sea Region.

5. Increase the interaction between the BONUS Advisory Board and the Steering Committee by, for example, virtual online meetings.

6. Focus communications which highlight the impacts arising from BONUS towards the needs of specific stakeholder groups: institutions, conventions, policies, Directorates-General of the European Commission, ministries and regional authorities, including those responsible for regional development.

7. The participating states and the European Commission should strengthen strategic communication on the potential of BONUS funded research results for policy to the different Directorates-Generals involved and within Horizon 2020. The participating states should increase their awareness of the impact of BONUS on their national programmes more widely, e.g. towards fisheries' management, regional development, coastal zone development, agriculture etc.

8. Improve the monitoring of BONUS by more systematic acquisition and analysis of data on the outcomes and impacts arising from BONUS by for example ensuring the regular effective surveying of stakeholders and by tracking the trends in the total amount and proportion of national funding channelled through BONUS.

9. Target the communication of calls for proposals towards SMEs and provide additional support towards applications by SMEs and facilitate their incorporation within developing project consortia.

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The interim evaluation also made four recommendations that relate to any continuation of BONUS beyond the five years originally funded:

1. Article 185 is an appropriate instrument for overcoming fragmentation of national research programmes and achieving a durable integration within the Baltic Sea Region.

2. Contributions from participating states should be merged within a 'real common pot' that is centrally managed.

3. The participation of SMEs in BONUS projects should be increased by for example setting SMEs targets within calls for proposals and providing funding rates in line with Horizon 2020.

4. The innovation component of the programme should be increased in line with the objectives of Horizon 2020.

The Interim BONUS Evaluation Report concluded that “Over a preceding period of eleven years, the BONUS initiative established a solid basis for cooperation within the current BONUS. The BONUS initiative increasingly enhanced the integration of research and institutional research capacities within the Baltic Sea Region. This has helped support and strengthen policies, practices, management arrangements, regulations and other legal measures that are 'fit-for-purpose' addressing the environmental, societal and economic challenges of the Baltic Sea”.

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3 EVIDENCE COLLECTED FOR THIS EVALUATION

3.1 The scientific contribution of the BONUS work

BONUS has commissioned an assessment of its impact on scientific excellence and dissemination (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017). The assessment report identifies about 1500 scientists involved in the development of 38 projects, and an expected scientific output of more than 1500 international scientific publications in the period 2014-2024. For the period 2009-2016, the BONUS related research was about 10% of the science published for the Baltic Sea environment. Estimations raise these numbers above 20% by year 2019 (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017). These numbers are just preliminary evidence of the magnitude of the scientific output stemming from BONUS. The full scientific impact of the implementation of BONUS projects will become more evident in the coming years since most of the publications are produced after the projects have been completed, as shown in Figure 7 for the projects implemented during the BONUS+ phase.

Figure 7 Number of international publications from BONUS+ and different calls of BONUS

Source: (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017)

The scientific significance of BONUS is seen not only in the quantity of scientific publications, but also in the comparative impact of these. Thus, both the average number of citations per paper and the impact factor of the journal in which the papers were published, taken as indicators of the impact of the scientific publications, for articles focussing on the Baltic Sea are higher for research conducted under the BONUS umbrella than outside it or before the programme was initiated (Figure 9). Despite the delayed output of scientific publications relative to the project completion date, a delay usual in research programmes, BONUS projects have already been able to generate publications in high-impact journals (e.g. COCOA publication in Trends in Ecology and Evolution in 2015 or BLUEPRINT at Genome Biology in the same year). Nevertheless, no top journal (Nature or Science) has published a BONUS-produced paper during the history of the various BONUS programmes.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

BONUS+ VE INNO SES

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Figure 8 Average number of citations per paper in relation to BONUS, non-BONUS or pre-BONUS projects

Source: (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017)

Figure 9 Average journal impact factor of research papers in relation to BONUS, NON-BONUS or PRE-BONUS projects

Source: (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017)

In addition to these quantitative achievements by BONUS, the qualitative components of the scientific production also evidence the strength of cooperative efforts, identified by international bodies such as the G20 (OECD, 2016) as desirable for enhancing the scientific impact. Thus, more than 52% of the BONUS scientific papers involved authors from several countries, this being a positive sign of the impact on international collaboration brought about by the transnational nature of BONUS (

Figure 10). As shown in, BONUS clearly outcompetes non-BONUS scientific production both in terms of the number of publications that involve more than one country and in the number of countries involved in one publication. This benefit is spread among all the countries involved in the implementation of BONUS (Table 15), with comparative benefits that are particularly high for countries, such as Latvia, that have shifted from no transnational collaboration for non-BONUS articles to most of its research being conducted in cooperation with other countries for BONUS-funded science.

0

1

2

3

4

5

0 1 2 3

PRE-BONUS NON-BONUS BONUS

Years after the publication

Ave

rage

num

ber

of ci

tations

per

pap

er

0

1

2

3

PRE-BONUSN = 2809

NON-BONUSN = 3706

BONUSN = 425

Ave

rage

Journ

alIm

pac

t Fa

ctor

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Figure 10 Percentage of research papers on the Baltic Sea environment per country and number of other countries involved

Upper and lower panels show the data of BONUS and NON-BONUS funded research (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017)

Table 15 Number of countries involved in scientific publications about the Baltic Sea environment, for two random samples of 495 articles each of BONUS and non-BONUS funded research

Nr of countries that produced the publication

NON-BONUS Number of papers

NON-BONUS% of papers

BONUS Number of papers

BONUS% of papers

1 338 68.3% 236 47.7% 2 100 20.2% 149 30.1% 3 36 7.3% 60 12.1% 4 10 2.0% 27 5.5% 5 6 1.2% 10 2.0% 6 4 0.8% 4 0.8% 7 - - 8 1.6% 8 - - - - 9 - - 1 0.2% 10 - - - - 11 1 0.2% - -

Total 495 100.0% 495 100.0% Source: (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017)

This scientific environment provides an excellent international nursery habitat for the formation of new scientists. Thus, BONUS projects are currently providing support to a total of 115 PhD students (48 in the Viable Ecosystem call, 25 in the Innovation call

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80NON-BONUS

No other country 1 other country 2 other countries >2 other countries

% o

f Bal

tic

Sea

core

pap

ers

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80BONUS

No other country 1 other country 2 other countries >2 other countries

% o

f Bal

tic

Sea

core

pap

ers

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and 42 in the Sustainable Ecosystem Services call). Eight PhD theses have already been defended within the context of these projects.

While it is evident that the report (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017) on BONUS’ impact on scientific excellence and dissemination has striven to be comprehensive, it fell unfortunately short of providing information on the innovation and technological advances (patents, utility models, spin-offs generated) of the projects funded by BONUS. Such indicators are also not collected by BONUS itself.

3.2 The policy context of BONUS

The Baltic Sea region benefits from a number of other interventions relevant to the marine and maritime environment. However, their focus is largely not on research. Key interventions are

• Inter-governmental and treaty organisations

- The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, known as the Helsinki Commission or HELCOM, a governing body of the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (the Helsinki Convention). HELCOM has designed and implemented the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP). HELCOM benefits from scientific knowledge but its main focus is not research funding. According to HELCOM’s own definition, it is:

◦ An environmental policy maker for the Baltic Sea area by developing common environmental objectives and actions

◦ An environmental focal point providing information about the state of and trends in the marine environment, the efficiency of measures to protect it and common initiatives and positions, which can form the basis for decision-making in other international fora

◦ A body for developing, according to the specific needs of the Baltic Sea, recommendations of its own and recommendations supplementary to measures imposed by other international organisations

◦ A supervisory body dedicated to ensuring that HELCOM environmental standards are fully implemented by all parties throughout the Baltic Sea and its catchment area

◦ A coordinating body, ascertaining multilateral response in case of major maritime incidents.

- The Council of the Baltic Sea States (http://www.cbss.org/council/) (CBSS), a forum for inter-governmental regional cooperation, with membership consisting of the eleven states of the Baltic Sea Region as well as the European Commission. Although science can provide support to CBSS goals, these are primarily related to promoting regional identity as well as a safe, sustainable, and prosperous region

• The European Union

- The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR)

- Owing to its regional component, BONUS has added a particular value to the EU policies such as the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020

- EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)

- EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive

- EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)

- Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme (BSRP)

- A range of other policy initiatives more peripherally connected to BONUS but with which there can nonetheless be synergies. A list is given in Table 30 at the Appendix.

BONUS has established synergies with many of these interventions.

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3.2.1 BONUS and intergovernmental organisations

BONUS interacts with HELCOM. BONUS project results already feed, or will feed, information into the HELCOM action areas (agriculture; fisheries, industrial and municipal releases; marine protected areas; maritime spatial planning; monitoring and assessment; response to spills; species and biotopes; shipping; marine litter and noise). An example of the utility, for HELCOM, of the BONUS project-supplied information is the recent paper by (Klais & al, 2016) originating from the BONUS projects INSPIRE and BIO-C3, emphasising a change in zooplankton monitoring strategy to fully reflect the spatio-temporal variability of the zooplankton and to optimize the zooplankton sampling effort in the Baltic Sea.

BONUS has created strong links with the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), a programme to restore the good ecological status of the Baltic marine environment by 2021 (http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-action-plan). The Plan, adopted by all the coastal states and the EU in 2007, provides a basis for HELCOM work and incorporates the latest scientific knowledge and innovative management approaches into strategic policy implementation, and stimulates goal-oriented multilateral cooperation around the Baltic Sea region.

BONUS calls and the resultant projects provide the latest scientific knowledge needed for the goals and objectives of BSAP to be met. These goals and objectives are very much at the heart of the BONUS SRA, strategic objectives and themes of the calls implemented to date, as it is evident from the list of the BSAP objectives and areas of interest.

1) The Baltic Sea unaffected by eutrophication (with emphasis on clear water, natural level of algal blooms, natural distribution and occurrence of plants and animals, and natural oxygen levels);

2) The favourable status of the Baltic Sea biodiversity (restoration of natural marine and coastal landscapes, thriving and balanced communities of plants and animals, and viable populations of species);

3) The Baltic Sea undisturbed by hazardous substances (concentrations of hazardous substances close to natural levels, all fish safe to eat, healthy wildlife, and radioactivity at the pre-Chernobyl level);

4) Environmentally friendly maritime activities (no illegal discharges or accidental pollution, safe maritime traffic, efficient emergency and response capabilities, minimum sewage pollution from ships; no introductions of alien species from ships; minimum air pollution from ships; zero discharges from offshore platforms; and minimum threats from offshore installations)

- Analysis of BONUS strategic objectives and activities shows them also to be complementary to those of the CBSS, an overall political, flexible, demand-driven and result-oriented forum for regional inter-governmental regional cooperation. The CBSS identifies political goals, creates action-plans, initiates projects and serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas concerning regional issues of common interest. The CBSS long-term priorities are the regional identity, safe and secure region, and sustainable and prosperous region. The CBSS supports projects addressing those priorities, but without a research focus2, therefore BONUS-supported science fills an important gap in the regional cooperation.

2 see http://www.cbss.org/project-support-facility/

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3.2.2 EU policies, programmes and strategies

BONUS funds research that interfaces with relevant EU policies, as defined by the BONUS Decision. This section reviews how implementation of BONUS objectives links with these policies. The analysis presented below is an update of the comprehensive analysis contained in the BONUS Interim Evaluation Report (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014).

Over the years the European Union has developed a set of policies that complement the single market and cover many different fields such as cohesion, agriculture, fisheries, environment, health, consumer rights, transport, tourism, energy, industry, research, jobs, asylum and immigration, as well as taxation, justice, culture, education and sport. Owing to its overall objective of promoting sustainability of the Baltic Sea environment, BONUS has contributed to the EU Environment and Common Fisheries Policies. Given the intense maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea and the difficulties it faces during winter, BONUS is implementing concrete trans-national actions (e.g. projects ESABALT, GEOILWATCH, SWERA) to contribute to create high levels of safety and environmental standards in transport across the basin. BONUS has also benefited from its relevance to national policies and actors outside the domain of the promotion of and support for research and technology. These organisations fund BONUS because of its relevance to sustainability and include among others the Estonian Environmental Investment Centre, the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

3.2.2.1 EU cohesion policy

Cohesion Policy is the EU’s main investment policy. It targets regions and cities in the European Union in order to support job creation, business competitiveness, economic growth, sustainable development, and improve citizens’ quality of life (European Commission, 2014).

The Cohesion Policy has set 11 Thematic Objectives to support growth for the period 2014-2020.

Strengthening research, technological development and innovation 1.

Enhancing access to, and use and quality of, information and communication 2.technologies

Enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs 3.

Supporting the shift towards a low carbon economy 4.

Promoting climate change adaptation, risk prevention and management 5.

Preserving and protecting the environment and promoting resource efficiency 6.

Promoting sustainable transport and improving network infrastructures 7.

Promoting sustainable and quality employment and supporting labour mobility 8.

Promoting social inclusion, combating poverty and any discrimination 9.

Investing in education, training and lifelong learning 10.

Improving the efficiency of public administration 11.

BONUS has clearly added value to Thematic Objective 1, since it has established a programme for the development of science, technology and innovation where excellence under open competition (only a small fraction of the proposals presented were finally funded) and transnational collaboration are compulsory (cf BONUS Annual Reports). This programme has resulted in a significant impact of the scientific production of the Baltic region owing to the implementation of BONUS (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017). The BONUS-generated added value to Thematic Objectives 5, 6 and 7 is also manifest through the implementation of projects such as BAMBI, BIO-C3, STORMWINDS, SHEBA, ANCHOR, ESABALT or GEOILWATCH.

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Contribution of BONUS to Thematic Objective 3 is more limited owing to general difficulties of FP7 to incorporate SMEs into project proposals.

On account of its regional component, BONUS has contributed mainly to the implementation of the second goal of the Cohesion Policy, i.e. to the European Territorial Cooperation (or better known as Interreg) which provides a framework for the implementation of joint actions and policy exchanges between national, regional and local actors from different EU Member States, as well as non-EU countries3 with a view to finding shared solutions to common challenges. In order to support the harmonious economic, social and territorial development of the Union at different levels, cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation is supported under the European Territorial Cooperation goal4. In addition, the implementation of the EU

3 Several non-EU countries are participating in implementation of Interreg programmes (e.g. Norway, Switzerland).

4 http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/guides/blue_book/blueguide_en.pdf

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macro-regional strategies (for the Baltic Sea, Danube, Adriatic and Ionian and Alpine regions) contributes to implementation of this objective.

On account of its Baltic Sea regional focus, BONUS is implemented in a context where social, economic and territorial disparities are still visible. BONUS contributes to overcoming them and can serve as a positive example of transnational collaboration; by sharing the experience accumulated, BONUS can benefit future initiatives in peripheral areas of the EU where development and collaboration with non-EU countries is needed (e.g. Black or Mediterranean seas). This is particularly the case because BONUS has been able to involve, within one research programme, countries with different degrees of maturity in their membership in the EU as well as non-EU countries like Russia.

This collaboration with Russia is also relevant for Cross Border Collaboration (CBC) as a key component of the European Neighbourhood Policy. The CBC promotes cooperation between EU countries and neighbourhood countries sharing a land border or sea crossing. Environmental challenges are among the objectives focussed on by the CBC but, although several Land-Border programmes exist with the Russian Federation, no Sea-Crossing programme is in operation at present. BONUS has, therefore, been a successful tool for the implementation of COM (2012) 497 recommendation to develop Science Diplomacy as an instrument of soft power and a mechanism for improving relations with key countries and regions. Thus, BONUS has concluded a memorandum of understanding with the Russian Foundation for Basic Research for the ‘BONUS call 2012: Viable ecosystem’ (cf. Example Box 3) and with the Russian Foundation for Humanities (RFH) for the ‘BONUS call 2014: Sustainable Ecosystem Services’ as well as the ‘BONUS call 2015: Blue Baltic’.

It is important for the overall evaluation of BONUS to assess the extent to which BONUS is coherent with other interventions which are thematically related to BONUS and which are aimed at supporting programme level collaboration among Member States and between Member States and the EU.

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3.2.2.2 EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) and its revised Action Plan (European Commission, 2017)

The European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) is aimed at reinforcing cooperation and integration within the region so that challenges can be faced by joint efforts and more balanced development in the area can be promoted. The Strategy entails three objectives representing the key challenges.

• Saving the Sea

• Connecting the Region

• Increasing prosperity

Each objective is related to a range of policies and has an impact on other objectives. The objectives guide an array of policy areas: Bioeconomy – Agriculture, forestry and fisheries; Culture – Culture & creative sectors; Education – Education, research and employability; Energy – BEMIP Baltic Energy Market Interconnection Plan Action Plan (for competitive, secure and sustainable energy); Hazards – Reducing the use and impact of hazardous substances; Health – Improving and promoting people’s health, including its social aspects; Innovation – Exploiting the full potential of the region in research, innovation and SME, utilising the Digital Single Market as a source for attracting talents and investments; Nutri – Reducing nutrient inputs to the sea to acceptable levels; Safe – To become a leading region in maritime safety and security; Secure – Protection from land-based emergencies, accidents and cross-border crime; Ship – Becoming a model region for clean shipping; Tourism – Reinforcing cohesiveness of the macro-region through tourism; Transport – Improving internal and external transport links which are specific areas for macro-regional cooperation that address the key challenges and opportunities in the region. Implementation of each Policy Area involves stakeholders from various levels (international, national, regional, local) and sectors (public, private, civil society) and involves joint actions which can be given the status of so-called flagships. EUSBSR includes also cross-cutting Horizontal Actions: Capacity – Capacity building and involvement; Climate; Neighbours – Creating added value to the Baltic Sea cooperation by working with neighbouring countries and regions; Spatial Planning – Encouraging the use of maritime and land-based spatial planning in all Member States around the Baltic Sea and develop a common approach for cross-border cooperation. These are relevant to and complement the objectives and policy areas5.

The research focus of BONUS has addressed components of the EUSBSR such as environmental sustainability (e.g. projects GOHERR, MIRACLE from the Sustainable Ecosystem Services, the SES call) or secure transport (e.g. projects SHEBA, STORMWINDS from the SES call). On the other hand, BONUS, being a user-oriented programme, has benefited from the EUSBSR as a platform to interact with policy-relevant actors and stakeholders. This mutual benefits and synergy are evident in the key publications of both initiatives which frequently refer to one another.

As illustrated by Table 24 and Table 25 (at the Appendix), BONUS strategic objectives are aligned with those of the EUSBSR. Moreover, BONUS-funded projects address the EUSBSR objectives and sub-objectives and are clearly within the scope of 12 out of the 13 EUSBSR Policy areas (Table 24). Also the themes of the final BONUS call match the objectives, sub-objectives, Policy Areas, and Cross-Cutting Horizontal Actions of EUSBSR (Table 25). In particular, the Cross-Cutting Horizontal Action “Spatial Planning – Encouraging the use of maritime and land-based spatial planning in all Member States around the Baltic Sea and develop a common approach for cross-

5 https://www.balticsea-region-strategy.eu

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border cooperation”, while already reflected in a number of on-going and newly funded BONUS projects (e.g. BALTCOAST, BALTISPACE and BASMATI), is explicitly addressed by one of the call themes (Theme 4.3: Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale).

In addition, the BONUS objective to “integrate the research activities in the Baltic Sea System into a durable, cooperative, interdisciplinary well-integrated and focused multi-national programme” is fully in line with Policy Areas “Education” (Education, Research and Employability) as well as “Innovation” (Innovation – Exploiting the full potential of the region in research, innovation and SME, utilising the Digital Single Market as a source for attracting talents and investments).

In Policy Area “Safe”, BONUS is recommended as a source of funding for projects focusing on safe navigation. In Policy Area “Culture”, BONUS – with its emphasis on young scientist’s training - is aligned particularly well with Action 3: International excellence in tertiary education, science and research (European Commission, 2009).

As stressed in the BONUS Interim Evaluation (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014) “BONUS plays a very important role in implementation of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region by providing a knowledge base that no individual Baltic Sea State could do alone. This is largely due to the strong network of scientists and cooperation between institutions from around the Baltic”. The importance of BONUS is acknowledged in the EUSBSR Action Plan (European Commission, 2009; European Commission, 2009) which regards BONUS as a useful source of science-based information to reduce the negative effects of e.g. fishing and countering the introduction of new alien species by ships” (p. 39).

The EUSBSR Action Plan lists BONUS as one of the key regional organisations, networks and initiatives that are involved in the EUSBSR. The EUSBSR provides a platform for stakeholder communication. BONUS benefits from this platform by, for example, holding joint sessions and seminars during the Annual Baltic Sea Strategy Forum (e.g. the 7th Strategy Forum in November 2016 in Stockholm6).

3.2.2.3 EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)

Directive 2008/56/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 establishing a framework for community action in the field of marine environmental policy (Marine Strategy Framework Directive) provides a legislative framework within which the ultimate Good Environmental Status (GES) of the EU’s marine waters is achieved by 2020 and the resource base upon which marine-related economic and social activities depend (European Parliament and Council, 2008). MSFD requires that the Member States carry out an initial assessment of the current environmental status of their national marine waters and a comprehensive socio-economic analysis of human activities there. The Member States have been, moreover, required to determine what GES means for national marine waters, and to establish a monitoring programme for the assessment and update of targets. Ultimately, the Member States are obliged to develop a programme of measures designed to achieve or maintain GES. To aid in MSFD implementation, the Commission also produced a decision ((Commission Decision (EU) 2017/848 of 17 May 2017) laying down criteria and methodological standards on good environmental status of marine waters and specifications and standardised methods for monitoring and assessment, and repealing Decision 2010/477/EU.

6 ttps://www.bonusportal.org/news/the_heads_of_bonus_helcom_vasab_and_baltic_earth_in_hot_seats_at_the_eusbsr_strategy_forum.2954.news)

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As shown in Table 26, BONUS strategic objectives match, to a large extent, those of MSFD. The match is achieved on account of BONUS call themes being formulated so as to facilitate common approaches amongst the Baltic Sea countries and to ensure the necessary scientific foundation for the assessment and management of the marine environment. This way, results of BONUS projects have the potential to assist the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea in implementing MSFD. Specifically, the projects funded under the 2012 Viable Ecosystem (VE) Call are expected to provide data which will enable quantification of most of the descriptors (e.g. D1 – Biodiversity; D5 – Eutrophication) set out in Annexe 1 to the MSFD. An example is furnished by a recent paper (Andersen, et al., 2017), stemming, inter alia, from BONUS project COCOA (Viable Ecosystem Call of 2012), which analyses the current status of and trends in eutrophication of the Baltic Sea. This outcome is particularly valuable considering that the most recent HELCOM holistic assessment of the Baltic Sea (HELCOM First Holistic Assessment 2010) concerns the period 2003-2007. In addition, the projects funded under the 2014 Sustainable Ecosystem Services (SES) call should contribute to refining the policies concerning the marine environment.

3.2.2.4 EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive

The Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning (MSP Directive) (European Parliament and Council, 2014) is legislation establishing common framework for marine spatial planning in Europe. Although each EU country will be free to plan its own maritime activities, local, regional and national planning in shared seas, such as the Baltic Sea, should be made more compatible through a set of minimum common requirements.

The BONUS-supported activities are aligned with this legislation, as already the first call in 2012 (Viable Ecosystems, VE) resulted in successful (funded) projects which addressed MSP: BAMBI (http://bambi.gu.se) and INSPIRE (http://www.bonus-inspire.org). In addition, the most recent resolved call (Sustainable Ecosystem Services of 2014, SES) called explicitly for projects addressing the MSP Directive in its themes 2.3 (Integrated approaches to coastal management), 4.1 (Governance structures, policy performance and policy instruments), and in particular Theme 4.3 (Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale). The call resulted in funding certain projects (BALTCOAST, GO4BALTIC, GOHERR, SHEBA) the objectives of which included aspects of maritime spatial planning, thus aligning BONUS with the EU MSP Directive.

Moreover, the most recent call BLUE BALTIC of 2015 includes a theme (Theme 4.3) Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale. While addressing the BONUS Strategic Objective 4 (Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea region), the theme called for projects focusing on (1) application of the ecosystem approach in maritime spatial planning (MSP), with a particular emphasis on developing an ecological and socio-economically sound network of protected marine areas covering the whole Baltic Sea, and (2) exploring the needs and establishing a region-wide data exchange network in support of MSP in the Baltic Sea. The Blue Baltic call project BASMATI addressing maritime spatial planning has been approved for funding.

3.2.2.5 EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)

The EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is a set of rules for managing European fishing fleets and for conserving fish stocks (https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp_en). First introduced in the 1970s, the CFP has undergone a series of successive updates, the most recent of which took effect on 1 January 2014. The CFP aims to ensure that fishing and aquaculture are environmentally, economically and socially sustainable and

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that they provide a source of healthy food for EU citizens. Its goal is to foster a dynamic fishing industry and ensure a fair standard of living for fishing communities.

Fisheries are a major economic activity within a sea basin, and the fisheries status and effects are of special concern in the Baltic Sea. BONUS responds to these concerns by aligning its strategic objectives, the resultant call themes and projects funded, with one of the main policy areas of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (Table 27), namely the Fisheries management.

The BONUS projects addressing the CFP policy area Fisheries management resulted from all the three resolved calls (VE, Inno and SES): INSPIRE (Integrating spatial processes into ecosystem models for sustainable utilisation of fish resources; VE), FISHVIEW (Assessing fish passages by the use of a robotic fish sensor and enhanced digital imaging; Inno) and GOHERR (Integrated governance of Baltic herring and salmon stocks involving stakeholders; SES). These projects are still in progress.

3.2.2.6 EU Blue Growth Strategy

Blue Growth is the long term strategy to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors as a whole7. The EU Blue Growth Strategy is based on two documents: the Communication from the Commission: Blue Growth opportunities for marine and maritime sustainable growth of 2012 (European Commission, 2012) and the Communication from the Commission: Innovation in the Blue Economy: realising the potential of our seas and oceans for jobs and growth of 2014 (European Commission, 2014) (European Commission, 2016a). The latter is also accompanied by “Marine Knowledge 2020: roadmap accompanying the document”.

The strategy is based on three components: (1) developing sectors that have a high potential for sustainable jobs and growth (e.g. aquaculture, coastal tourism, marine biotechnology, ocean energy, seabed mining); (2) components essential for providing knowledge, legal certainty and security in blue economy (marine knowledge, maritime spatial planning, integrated maritime surveillance); and (3) developing sea basin strategies to ensure tailored measures and to foster cooperation between countries (Adriatic and Ionian Seas, Arctic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea).

As illustrated by Table 28, BONUS is coherent with all the three components of the strategy. Whereas the entire BONUS SRA has been built to fit the second component (particularly with respect to generating marine knowledge and maritime spatial planning) and the entire BONUS addresses the Baltic Sea sub-component of component 3 (Sea basin strategies; cf Table 24 and Table 25), some of the BONUS projects, both already funded and those approved for funding under the Blue Baltic call of 2015 will provide information and solutions important for the sectors listed in the first component, particularly aquaculture and marine biotechnology (e.g. MICROALGAE, PROMISE, OPTITREAT from the Inno call FLAVOPHAGE, OPTIMUS, CLEANAQ from the Blue Baltic call).

3.2.2.7 European Research Area (ERA)

The European Research Area8 (ERA) aims at overcoming the fragmentation of European research to increase its efficiency, excellence and impact. The ERA evolves around six priorities: (1) More effective national research systems; (2) optimal transnational cooperation and competition (including research infrastructures); (3) an

7 http://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/policy/blue_growth_en

8 http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/index_en.htm

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open labour market for researchers; (4) gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research; (5) optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge; and (6) international cooperation (ERA Progress Report 2016)

BONUS contributes to most priorities of ERA (Table 29). Participation in BONUS project consortia strengthens the national research systems (priority 1) as it requires adherence to EU FP7 funding rules, commitment by national funding bodies to provide sustainable and transparent funding, and professional research management and accountability in the use of public funds. Funds are also invested in increasing the human research capacity by training provided, in most projects, to young researchers and by exposing them to the experience of working in an international setting. However, the degree to which the national research systems are strengthened can be also viewed from two additional standpoints: that of a BONUS-assisted change (for the better) in scientific output by a country’s researchers and that of a BONUS-assisted change (for the better) in cost-efficiency of research. Regarding the first aspect, the available statistics summarised in the BONUS-commissioned report on scientific excellence and dissemination (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017) show a positive change (a positive difference between involvement in BONUS-supported and non-BONUS publications) in most countries except one (Poland), a particularly striking difference (99-130%) being seen in Latvia, Sweden and Estonia. The second aspect has been dealt with in another BONUS-commissioned report, on BONUS impact on relevant policies, innovative industries and structuring of the macro-regional research area (Barnard & Eliott, 2017). This aspect, however, is difficult to judge, as the cost-efficiency would have to be first defined; without such definition it remains a rather fuzzy concept. This fuzziness has been reflected in responses to the question on opinions regarding a change in cost-efficiency of research, directed by Barnard and Elliott (2017) to BONUS participants and stakeholders (“funders” and “users”). Most of them were not able to provide any answer, whereas one-third of all the “funders” and close to 20% of the participants found “no discernible impact”.

3.2.2.8 INTERREG Baltic Sea Region Programme (BSRP)

By supporting transnational research projects, BONUS aligns itself with the BSRP, a programme with the overall objective to strengthen the development towards a sustainable, competitive and territorially integrated Baltic Sea Region by connecting potentials over the borders. It prepares investments and actions aimed at improving the territorial potential of the region, minimising the differences in the level of socio-economic development between the western and eastern parts of the region and enhancing policies towards an integrated development of the region. BSRP addresses issues that need intervention at the transnational level, has a strong socio-economic focus and intervenes on environmental challenges such as environmental hazards, pollution and maritime safety, i.e. issues addressed also by BONUS calls and projects.

The INTERREG Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014-2020 is in the latest of several cycles. It supports integrated territorial development and cooperation for a more innovative, better accessible and sustainable Baltic Sea region. Partners from countries around the Baltic Sea work together in transnational projects on common key challenges and opportunities (https://www.interreg-baltic.eu/home.html). Projects have to involve at least three partners from three different countries from the Programme area. Total project budgets typically range between €1.5m and €4.5m for seven or more partners working together for two to three years.

The BSRP 2014-2020 offers funding for four priorities (thematic fields):

• Priority 1 (Capacity for innovation) offers support for e.g. development of innovation infrastructures, implementation of smart specialisation strategies and development of non-technological innovations

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• Priority 2 (Efficient management of natural resources) highlights the need to manage natural resources more efficiently; areas that receive support include resource-efficient “blue growth”, renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and clear waters

• Priority 3 (Sustainable transport) invites projects focusing on accessibility of remote areas, maritime safety, environmentally friendly shipping and urban mobility

• Priority 4 provides ‘seed money’ for smaller projects and support for coordination of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EU SBSR implementation tasks)

Although building on the strengths of the Baltic Sea Region (which include considerable research and development capacity and a high potential for knowledge-based development), BSRP is focused on practical solutions and, as opposed to BONUS, has very limited research dimension. However, there is a synergy since some of the needs it identifies (e.g. uncontrolled exploitation of marine resources, insufficient use of innovation potential) clearly call for solutions based on sound scientific research which can be provided by BONUS.

The BONUS synergy with BSRP involves mostly the concept of ‘blue growth’ and economic development. An example is furnished by the Innovation Call of 2012, carried out in collaboration with the EU SBSR flagship project 'BSR Stars’. The call strongly encouraged applicants to seek BSRP funding in collaboration with partners applying for funding under the BONUS calls in order to facilitate application of the research results.

3.2.2.9 Other policies and programmes

The Expert Group took into account other regional activities important for and contributing to, implementation of the BONUS programme objectives. These activities include: EU policies such as the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and its Action Plan, the ERA, Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), and Directive 2014/89/EU (of 23 July 2014 establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning); the European Investment Bank; the EEA Grants & Norway Grants; and transnational conventions such as the Convention for the Protection of the Environment of the Baltic Sea (the Helsinki Convention); and other regional initiatives such as VASAB (an intergovernmental multilateral co-operation of 11 countries of the Baltic Sea Region in spatial planning and development).

As already noted in the Interim BONUS evaluation (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014), during the lifetime of BONUS a variety of financing instruments has been active within the region, structured mainly around the EUSBSR. Analysis conducted in the EUSBSR context showed those various instruments (inter alia European Investment Bank - EIB, Programme for the Competitiveness of enterprises and SMEs - COSME 2014-2020, European Economic Area & Norway Grants – EEA&NG, European Research Council - ERC, European Science Foundation – ESF) to differ in approach, objectives and priorities. Most of the instruments operate throughout Europe and have a broad scope with no exclusive marine or maritime focus. Regulations according to which some of the instruments are used do overlap, to some extent, with BONUS objectives, mainly in relation to supporting innovation. As shown by details of objectives and priorities of those instruments (Table 30), they can be considered to be complementary to BONUS.

3.3 The views of project participants

We explored project participant views through a comprehensive survey. This was complemented by interviews with selected project leaders, allowing the opportunity to deepen our understanding of participants’ views.

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We sent invitations to a web-based survey to 174 BONUS project participants, based on a list provided by the BONUS secretariat. We received exactly 100 responses, but four of these were incomplete, giving us 96 usable responses and an effective response rate of 55%. The response rates were similar for SES (51%), VE (58%) and Inno (58%) projects. Among the countries with more than ten invitees, only Sweden achieved a less than 50% (44%) response rate. Given the limitations of any small survey, we regard this as a rather robust response pattern.

Table 16 Survey response analysis

Invitees Respondents

No (%)

SES 57 29 51% VE 65 37 57% INNO 52 30 58% Total 174 96 55%

DK 17 10 59% EE 14 7 50% FI 33 21 64% FR 2 1 50% DE 30 18 60% LV 6 5 83% LT 5 3 60% NL 1 1 100% PO 18 9 50% RU 3 1 33% SE 45 20 44% Total 174 96 55%

Some 24% of respondents were project leaders; correspondingly, 76% were other participants. Sixteen respondents were from companies.

The interviews were carried out with co-ordinators of projects out of Calls for proposals from the year 2014 on, primarily from the areas of Viable Ecosystem and Innovation but also two from the area of Sustainable Ecosystem Services.

3.3.1 Project origins

According to the project leaders, the BONUS programme is well known in the research community. As a result of the awareness activities of BONUS in the Baltic Sea research community, applicants were personally aware of the programme or became aware of it through research colleagues. They chose to use the BONUS programme where there was a thematic fit between their research strategies and the opportunities it offered and understood BONUS to be the appropriate initiative when their project’s focus was on Baltic Sea ecosystems aspects. The wider goals of BONUS were less important to them.

The survey suggests that the origins of the project ideas are mostly collaborative (

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Table 17), indicating that BONUS serves as a platform for coordinating research based on discussion among multiple participants. (Of the four ‘other’ responses, one project resulted from wider discussion within a national research community, another proposal was originally submitted to another European Call, a third was generated by the team but fitted exactly with the SRA and in the last case the respondent was not involved at the start and so could not answer the question.)

The limited extent to which project ideas were based on the SRA was surprising, though it may simply reflect consistency between the ideas of the SRA and the research community, given that the community was extensively involved in developing the SRA.

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Table 17 Origin of the project idea

Answer Options Response Percent

Response Count

You developed the idea together with your partners

58.3% 56

A partner organisation developed the idea 24.0% 23 You or your organisation 10.4% 10 Other 4.2% 4 You used the Strategic Research Agenda as the source for the project idea

3.1% 3

As in most collaborative R&D schemes, the networks involved evolved from earlier constellations. On average, respondents to the survey indicated that they had 6.8 partners in their project, with a range from two to 15. On average they had worked with 2.9 of their partners in previous projects. Inno projects were a little smaller than the others (an average of 5.7 partners, of whom the respondents had worked with 2.3 previously). The VE projects contained the greatest number of partners (3.5) from previous networks.

3.3.2 What the projects do

The survey shows that BONUS projects are more orientated towards research than development and implementation, although these latter activities are still important. It is fundamentally a research programme that aims to influence policy; it is not an innovation programme. Data collection and maintenance are significant in half the cases, which is consistent with BONUS’ mission. Some 32% of respondents said they expected to influence standards, laws or regulations. By implication, the majority expect their work to have broader policy implications. Figure 11 shows how the respondents characterised their projects. They were allowed to select as many of the categories shown as they felt were relevant to their project, hence the percentages add to more than one hundred.

Inferring from the statements of the project leaders Inno projects were more likely than others to include development and other close-to-use activities and less likely to do research. Only 38% of SES projects involved data collection and databases. Slightly more of the VE projects involved research than projects in the other categories.

Figure 11 Activities undertaken in the BONUS projects

N = 96

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Applications engineering

Technology transfer

Feasibility studies and field trials

Development

Experimental development

Work for standards, regulations or laws

Demonstration and awareness

Collecting data and maintaining databases

Problem definition

Basic research

Applied research

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3.3.3 Relevance to BONUS goals

Survey respondents see their projects as fitting very well with BONUS’ objectives (Figure 12). They respond to environmental and societal challenges, enhance research capacity and improve research programming. The expected contribution to establishing ERA in the region is more limited but still strong.

Figure 12 How projects fit with the BONUS objectives

N = 95

Project leaders indicated that all Viable Ecosystems projects address very well specific problems of the Baltic Sea ecosystem. All the other projects address problems of high importance for the Baltic Sea environment. They all provide methods, models and results indispensable for making progress in improving the Baltic Sea ecosystem. Often their findings are also potentially applicable outside the Baltic region. In one case there is not any specific link to the Baltic Sea ecosystem (except that there are harbours).

From the interviewees’ statements it can be deduced that the projects are in line with the SRA and the BONUS priorities. Dependent on the centre of gravity the projects contribute to a (general) improvement of the scientific basis related to ecosystems aspects, they generate knowledge necessary for solving problems, provide indicators and information on the environmental status. Innovation projects help to improve environmental monitoring, data management and provide innovative modelling systems. All projects have either a direct or indirect impact on management of the ecosystems and on decision taking.

3.3.4 Participants’ own research agendas

According to the project leaders BONUS in general helps them to follow and to continue an existing personal research agenda. This is particularly evident in the case of Viable Ecosystem and Sustainable Ecosystem projects. It has been stated that BONUS projects provide an additional opportunity to produce publications and scientific papers and to contribute to skills development. Furthermore it has been mentioned that in some cases there is a contribution to the organisations strategy with positive repercussions on the personal situation. It is obviously an exception that there is no contribution. Project leaders prefer to use national or BONUS funding to pursue one’s own or organisation’s research strategy instead of funding from other sources, such as other parts of the Framework Programme.

Figure 13 shows how participants characterize their project participation in BONUS. The respondents feel that the projects are of high strategic importance to the organisations participating, though they are by no means always core to the research agenda of their organisation, suggesting that BONUS coordinates activity at the level

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

ERA in the Baltic Region

Integrate research activities

Respond to environmental and socialchallenges

Enhance research capacity

5 4 3 2 1

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of projects rather than organisations. They underline the importance of collaboration: these are not projects they could or should do alone. Consistent with the research rather than implementation focus, the work is rather long-term in nature. But it does not involve much risk, suggesting that it involves further exploration of research trajectories the participants believe are quite well understood. This is consistent with the importance of connecting research to policy over the longer term.

Figure 13 The nature of participation

N = 96

3.3.5 Choice of partners

The rules of participation require a minimum of three partners from three different states of which two had to be from the Baltic Sea area. In general, the project leaders felt that BONUS’ rules on partnerships did not prevent them from working with the best possible partners. The coordinators of Viable Ecosystem and Sustainable Ecosystem Services projects did not feel any limitation in choosing the right partners. The necessity to include partners for ‘geo-political’ reasons is accepted. In general the focus on the Baltic Sea environment was seen rather as an advantage and stimulus for consortium building than as a limitation.

However, the Innovation Project leaders were less positive about the three-partner rule. Some felt obliged to include partners who were not necessary for the outcome of the project, because the projects could have been run only with two partners or with only one foreign partner. One project would have greatly benefitted by including a further partner (from Norway). Setting up a project on a broader partner basis could produce more comprehensive content and results. Some partners were chosen for ‘geo-political’ reasons, and would not otherwise have been taken on board.

Broadly, however, the rules relating to partner choice and the configuration of projects are well accepted, because the pros are considered to outweigh the cons. It was possible to solve deficiencies in the partner configuration through an appropriate division of functions in the work plan, to obtain significant mutual learning effects, to develop individual skills, to build-up competence, and to spread experience, to intensify networking, make progress in Baltic Sea research integration and to develop the BONUS family.

3.3.6 Projects’ aims and achievements

A clear majority of the co-ordinators declared, that their BONUS project turned out to be helpful for the career, however with a broad spectrum of different effects at

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Low-risk … high risk

Short term … long term

Core … peripheral area

Low … high strategic importance

Feasible without … with collaborators

1 2 3 4 5

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individual level, e.g. it helped them pursue their own research priorities, to improve their CV, generate new project ideas, launch publications, and improve their proposal writing skills. Improved networking was seen as an added value for all, as BONUS helped to intensify existing contacts, to build-up new ones and to extend the range of partners.

According to the statements of the project leaders the added value for the team mainly consists of the easy access to other researchers and transnational research groups. There is consensus that the international character of the projects and their role in BONUS allow a networking intensity which otherwise would not be possible. It has been evidenced that - beyond the skills development in the project itself – particularly the international environment created by the project and by BONUS lead to leaning effects and a broadening of the team’s knowledge base. This includes professionalisation on the job and generating new ideas, but also proposal writing.

It can be inferred from the project leaders’ statements that in the case of the Viable Ecosystem and the Sustainable Ecosystem Services projects the teams carry out research activities which would not have been possible without BONUS (PhDs). A further effect mentioned is the increased visibility of the teams.

The survey indicates that the researchers are primarily focused on their research ambitions. They are also concerned, but less so, with the organisation and coordination of research. They are little interested in traditional innovation activities.

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Figure 14 shows participants’ aims in doing their BONUS project. They were asked to rate each possible ambition on a five-point scale, where 5 is ‘extremely important’. Strikingly (taking scores ‘4’ and ‘5’ together), the most important is to work on tools and techniques, underlining the importance of data acquisition and handling in environment-related projects. New knowledge and partnerships, maintaining expertise and the production of traditional scientific outputs including PhDs all have high priority, followed by – presumably in the somewhat longer term – improving the environment. Organisational aspects such as increasing research capacity, coordination, accessing others’ knowledge as well as establishing the ERA in the Baltic Sea Region and important, but less so. Traditional innovation-related activities rank at the bottom of the list.

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Figure 14 Participants’ aims in doing the project

Figure 15 shows that the participants felt they had done well in reaching their aims of maintaining expertise, forming new networks and working on tools and techniques, enhancing their reputation accessing expertise and developing new knowledge.

Figure 15 Participants’ achievements in doing the project

N = 92 The differences between the aims and achievements are not very big. Table 18 shows the means of the differences between the achievements and aims scores from the questionnaires. A positive number indicates that respondents’ achievements exceeded their aims, and vice versa. Participants felt they had done better than intended in terms of environmental impact, reputation and increasing their staff.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Produce patents and licenses

Involve SMEs in research

Increase your research staff

Demonstrators, prototypes, pilots, etc.

New products, processes or services

Access additional funds

Improve coordination of Baltic research

Data and databases

Enhanced reputation and image

Establish ERA in the Baltic

Increase Baltic research capacity

Access complementary expertise

Scientific publications, PhDs etc.

Maintain expertise in a research area

New research partnerships and networks

Improve Baltic Sea environment

Develop new, fundamental knowledge

Work on tools and techniques

1 - Not important 2 3 4 5 - Extremely important

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Production of patents and licencesInvolve SMEs or spin-off firms in research

Access to additional fundsProduction of demonstrators, prototypes, pilots, etc.

Improve the environment in the BalticIncrease number of research staff

Contribute to establishing ERA in the BalticProducts, process or service development

Improve coordination and organisation of researchProduction of scientific publications, PhDs etc.

Increase research capacity in the BalticCollection and maintenance of data/bases

Developing new, fundamental knowledgeAccess to complementary sources of expertise

Enhanced reputation and imageWork on tools and techniques

Formation of new research partnerships and networksMaintenance of expertise in a research area

1 - Not achieved 2 3 4 5 - Completely achieved

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They had performed less well than intended at producing scientific publications, getting more funding, producing new knowledge and research tools or innovation outputs.

Table 18 Mean gap between achievements and aims

Categories Aims Achievements Difference

Enhanced reputation and image 3.30 3.60 0.29 Data and databases 3.27 3.54 0.27 Increase your research staff 2.64 2.85 0.21 Demonstrators, prototypes, pilots, etc. 2.91 3.01 0.10 Produce patents and licenses 1.43 1.44 0.01 New research partnerships and networks 4.03 3.97 -0.07 Maintain expertise in a research area 4.03 3.94 -0.09 Increase Baltic research capacity 3.64 3.53 -0.11 Access complementary expertise 3.76 3.65 -0.11 Improve coordination of Baltic research 3.41 3.29 -0.12 Establish ERA in the Baltic 3.40 3.27 -0.13 Involve SMEs in research 2.16 2.02 -0.14 New products, processes or services 2.99 2.84 -0.15 Work on tools and techniques 4.23 3.83 -0.40 Access additional funds 3.28 2.85 -0.43 Develop new, fundamental knowledge 4.17 3.67 -0.50 Scientific publications, PhDs etc. 4.00 3.43 -0.57 Improve Baltic Sea environment 4.17 2.97 -1.20 Note: Calculated as the achievement score minus the aim score N = 92

Figure 16 shows that the big positive effects of projects on the participants’ organisation related to access to international funding, PhD production, career opportunities and production of scientific papers. There was less influence over their ability to raise money nationally.

Figure 16 Effects on participants’ own organisation

N = 92

3.3.7 Additionality and European Added Value

We asked the participants whether their project would have gone ahead without BONUS funding. Only 26 of the 91 respondents to this question (27%) said that it would have done so. However, the follow-up question about what would have happened in the cases where the project would have been done without BONUS funding was answered by 60 respondents (63%) rather than just the 26 who said the projects would have been done in any case but in another form. We interpret this to mean that the participants were committed to the themes of their projects and would pursue them through whatever channels were possible.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Increased production of PhDs

Increased production of other kinds of written output

Increased career opportunities

Increased ability to get national research funding

Increased ability to get international research funding

Increased production of scientific papers

Increased opportunities for international collaboration

1 not important 2 3 4 5 extremely important

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Figure 17 shows how the 60 respondents to this question believe their project might have proceeded in the absence of BONUS funding. In effect, they indicate that BONUS funding made their projects bigger and better: from their perspective, BONUS’ key contribution was money.

Figure 17 In the absence of BONUS funding, we would have tried to do the project anyway, but…

N = 60

The project leaders we interviewed from Viable Ecosystems and Sustainable Ecosystems projects were unanimous that only BONUS made it possible to realise this type of project, because only BONUS offered the specific Baltic Sea ecosystems approach. It would not have been possible to run the project only at national level due to a lack of national expertise. Given the need for cross-border co-operation, funding from national programmes is not possible. European Level funding (from the wider Framework Programme) would also have been possible but this is not as specific and focused as that in BONUS.

The statements of the project leaders suggest that in the case of the Innovation projects, BONUS appears to be of less added value. As these projects’ impact often exceeds the Baltic Sea region the co-ordinators also take into consideration national sources of funding, the INTERREG Baltic Sea Programme or Horizon2020 – the latter, however, for projects with less focus.

There is a unanimous view that BONUS is complementary to other programmes and unique in terms of its objectives. BONUS is seen as a programme which “offers a stable vision beyond fashion trends” in research and the opportunity to follow scientific necessities. Given the specific research objectives of BONUS and its geographical focus a clear majority does not see any overlap. A minority believes that there is an overlap, but not a conflict with other Baltic Sea programmes. The overlap is seen as positive, providing more opportunities to apply for funding.

3.3.8 The strategic research agenda

The process of creating the BONUS SRA was seen as highly collaborative and as an activity with a significant coordinating effect in the Baltic region. The project leaders say that conditions for better coordination are provided by better access to the best research partners in the field around the Baltic Sea and improving knowledge about the activities of other research groups, which leads to a better orientation and shaping of their own research activities.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

with internal funds replacing BONUS funding

with fewer partners

with funds from other sources replacing BONUS…

the project would have taken longer

the project would have had a greater risk of failure

with reduced funds

with less satisfactory outputs

with less ambitious objectives

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In all but minor details, the project leaders agreed that the SRA makes a lot of sense. It helps to develop an understanding of the issues addressed. It is considered flexible enough to allow a sufficient degree of freedom and at the same time it is considered detailed enough in order to bring people together and to work on a specific objective. In general improvements were not considered as necessary. Individuals made the following suggestions for changes, though it should be noted that they are directly linked to the interests of the organisations represented. They suggested that translating the SRA into Calls should not lead to limitations on their ability to apply. There should be a more of a catchment focus and not only a marine research focus, the research should be more knowledge and curiosity driven and modelling should have a higher priority.

3.3.9 Effectiveness

According to the project leaders, the key scientific results of the projects were:

• Improved understanding of aspects of the Baltic Sea ecosystems

• Bringing basic science results to applications

• Developing methods and bringing them to applications

• Further development of systems approaches

• Contribution to indicator development

• Improvement of predictions

• New tools and advances in the use of technologies

• Mapping

Project leaders had more difficulty in specifying policy impact. Major contributions to policy development they described were: creating awareness among policymakers and administration; and providing scientific findings, data, indicators and tools for practitioners, policy makers and public administration, which serve as a basis for policy decisions and for developing and implementing directives; and cooperating with administrations, e.g. VTS (Vessel Traffic Service).

Impacts identified on the Baltic marine environment vary very much from project to project, partly as a function of the maturity of the project results. Examples include

• Contributing to a better understanding of the Baltic Sea

• Better profiling of what is best for the Baltic Sea

• Improving the management of the Baltic biodiversity

• Providing tools for integrated system management at regional and sub-regional level

• Contribution to safety and ecologic sustainability

• Awareness creation among end users

There was no evidence of specific impact on the Baltic environment at this time.

3.3.10 Efficiency

Figure 18 explores the attractiveness and administrative efficiency of BONUS, from the researchers’ perspective. They rate the effectiveness of the secretariat and the image of BONUS very highly. BONUS was very open to participants from their countries. To a small extent, it is a better match than other schemes to researchers’ own research agendas and in addressing new or risky ideas. Responses on the other dimensions shown are rather balanced: BONUS is not better or worse than other funders in these respects.

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Figure 18 How BONUS compares with alternative funders

N = 87

The unanimous view of the project leaders is that the BONUS Office is efficient, competent, flexible, helpful, fast, professional, service-oriented, supportive, very much appreciated, responsive, friendly and very helpful in implementing networking activities. It does not make more administrative demands of researchers than is necessary, given the complexity of the funding process.

According to the statements received the difficulty of obtaining financial support from a national programme compared to BONUS varies a lot: in some states it is more complex to apply for national funding, in others it is more complex to apply for a BONUS project. In general, however, the processes in BONUS appear to be more transparent than in national programmes.

The approval process in BONUS is considered burdensome, as is the entire bureaucracy in the implementation phase of the project. Once the project is launched, the complexity of the handling varies a lot according to the national situation but in general is seen as tolerable. BONUS is considered to be about as bureaucratic as the national funding organisations that support it.

In the wider Framework Programme, projects are seen as more complex than BONUS projects. Both the submission of the proposal and the handling of the project in the FP are more difficult. The overall administration of the BONUS project is done better. Further, in the Framework Programme, proposal assessments are not seen as very reliable owing to a lower level of scientific competence among the assessors. Given the higher complexity and the lack of focus of the wider Framework Programme, it is not really considered as an alternative to BONUS.

BONUS’ internal communication is seen as well done. Communication instruments and the amount of information provided are considered adequate. Stakeholder events are considered important for creating awareness and for intensifying networking. Criticism was expressed that project partners were forced to participate in too many meetings.

Effects on the general public are unclear. The suggestion was made that communication to the public should focus more on specific research or problem areas.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%100%

Application success rate

Time to funding decision

Frequency of calls for proposals

Amount of reporting

Complexity of the application process

Supporting new or risky ideas

Freedom to pursue own agenda

Openness to your country

Reputation / Brand

Effectiveness of the secretariat

1 much worse 2 3 the same 4 5 much better

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3.3.11 The future of BONUS

Project leaders agreed that the BONUS Programme should continue, as it is unique in terms of geographical focus, content and objectives.

Unlike in the survey (where a majority of people supported an expansion of BONUS to the North Sea), only one co-ordinator unconditionally supported the proposal to include the North Sea region in future. The majority would opt for a North Sea enlargement of BONUS provided it was not on terms that would reduce their access to funding. Other conditions for the support of extension included

• A drastic increase in budget, with the budget split half and half between the North and Baltic Seas

• Definition of real common issues

• Inclusion of the North Sea should be limited to the regions near the Baltic Sea entrance

• The Baltic Sea focus must not get lost and regional necessities should be taken into account

• All the important states should be on board., including the UK and Norway

One third of the project leaders were against a North Sea extension for the following reasons

• It would dilute the BONUS objectives

• There are no synergies and no common denominator

• They are two too different ecosystems

• There is the risk of a loss of focus

• There is political uncertainty (caused by the inclusion of the UK and Norway)

Some 77 people commented on the North Sea extension in the survey, 49 (64%) supporting an extension and 28 (36%) being against it. Three of those opposed to an extension indicated that BONUS should however cover the Skagerrak, Kattegat and the Sound. Participants from countries with a coast on the North Sea and from Finland were the most enthusiastic about extending. Those from other Baltic countries with no North Sea coast were less enthusiastic. The main arguments in favour were that there was a need for a programme in the North Sea, scientific interest and the research opportunities that would be provided. Those against were anxious that an extension would dilute resources and reduce the efforts in the Baltic.

The project leaders made the following suggestions for improvements in future:

• General

- A common-pot solution has to be established

- Interaction with national funding agencies has to be streamlined

- More money should be allocated for the programme, as the success rate is rather low: the number of projects approved should be at least 20% of those submitted

- 50/50 relation between science and management/application projects

- More focus should be put on basic research

- Reduce the time gaps from one Call to the other

- Establish a better communication with policy makers

- Innovation projects should be the same size as research projects

- As soon as the priorities are defined through the SRA the national authorities should not have any role in the process anymore

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• Evaluation and approval

- The selection process has to be simplified

- More skilled proposal assessors are needed (despite the fact that BONUS’ assessors were judged to be better than those more widely used in the Framework Programme)

- The approval process should be less bureaucratic

- The sequence to get the projects approved has to be modified as follows: 1) all the money of the EU should be allocated for the best projects; 2) the others should get all the money of the Member States. In that way delays could be avoided and complicated negotiations caused by reluctant national funders which are blocking the entire procedure would affect only some of projects

- Funding decisions have to be more transparent

- An early signal should be given on the funding decision

- Time-to-contract should be shorter

- Financial information reporting has to be reduced

• During the project’s lifetime

- Streamline reporting

- Yearly financial report is enough

- A summary should be enough for reporting on progress of activities

- “Trouble me less!”

3.4 Interviews with Stakeholders

This section combines responses from the EEIG, Steering Committee members, Advisory Board members and other stakeholders involved in policy for the Baltic Sea whom we interviewed. These are listed in Appendix A. Views specific to the EEIG are indicated in the text. We have chosen not physically to separate these from the views of the stakeholders in the interest of avoiding a more complex report structure.

The reader should note that this section reports the views of stakeholders. It does not represent findings or conclusions of the expert group, which are presented in Chapters 4 and 5. The views of the Commission officials interviewed are also not reflected in this Chapter. Their role has been to comment on our report and to act as sparring-partners during its development.

3.4.1 Relevance and appropriateness of BONUS

3.4.1.1 How BONUS addresses needs

According to the interviewed stakeholders, BONUS is a reliable framework for regional collaboration and funding of marine sciences. The participating Member States agree that BONUS is consistent with their national policies and fulfils their needs by supporting marine research activities that the countries would not be able to implement with national resources alone. The programme also connects researchers around the Baltic Sea, which raises the profile of national research activities and “opens the doors” for international cooperation for the scientists from smaller countries such as Lithuania and Latvia. It should be noted, however, that the contributions of the Baltic States are a very small part of the programme (Figure 4). BONUS also tries to connect research and society thus making scientific knowledge more accessible to the non-academic world. And since there are still many problems in marine environment to solve, the programme is still relevant.

For the stakeholders, BONUS is also an important tool for long-term planning and commitment at high level of all participating states. Many other research activities suffer from not having the needed commitment from the participating states. Involvement in the development and implementation of the BONUS Strategic Research

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Agenda is a way forward especially for smaller countries such as Denmark or the Baltic States allowing for them to access a critical mass that would otherwise be available only to the larger countries like Germany, Sweden or Finland. As a result, BONUS provides a structural effect on both levels - a wider Baltic Sea region, as well as on the national level.

The stakeholders agree that BONUS integrates different policies such as environment, blue growth, marine, etc. At the same time, currently the programme does not cover on-land activities that also make an impact on the Baltic Sea, e.g., sewage systems, effects from fertiliser run-off, etc. This aspect could be included as a cross-sectoral element in a follow-up programme.

3.4.1.2 Why BONUS is needed

From the perspective of Baltic Sea Region policymakers, BONUS is a research-oriented programme that is not overlapping with any other initiatives in the region. It is important for countries and national researchers to cooperate with each other and the programme provides a wider platform that combines research with different portfolios.

Stakeholders argue that the Baltic Sea as a closed basin is different from other seas. It is like a salty lake and has specific problems and pollutants. Therefore, transnational cooperation in “working” with the Sea is crucially important and nobody other than the surrounding countries will do the research and take care of the sea.

The stakeholders highlighted that informally BONUS started as a trilateral cooperation among Germany, Sweden and Denmark and the EU funding then helped other Member States to join. From the beginning the research community and funders were scattered but BONUS brought all of them together and made stronger connections. Now the programme looks at marine problems from different angles and at higher level than would have been possible with national programmes that are usually restricted to national interests. Rather, BONUS uses the national resources for longer-term planning and implementation, as well as makes a better collaboration among countries in the Baltic Sea Region raising their activities from small national scale to regional. The countries surrounding the Baltic Sea are limited in financing for marine research and BONUS adds another 50% from the EU funds.

All stakeholders agree that BONUS continues to be needed because the problems with the health of the Baltic Sea still exist and require joint action by all surrounding countries. It also helps to raise the research capacity for some countries, e.g. Lithuania and Latvia, by making all as equal partners.

EEIG: Environmental issues concerning the Baltic Sea became topical in the 1990s and it became obvious very quickly that the sea could only be saved by combining the forces of all countries surrounding it. The idea was to utilise the specific strengths and competencies of each country and to foster cooperation among the scientists. Since there was no funding available for such activities, creation of a programme supporting collaboration in research activities on the Baltic Sea made sense and it still continues to do so because not all the environmental issues have been resolved.

3.4.1.3 BONUS’ objectives

The stakeholders recall that BONUS has evolved from ERA-NET into Article 185 programme. That made all resources more planned and predictable allowing agreement on a long-term strategy for five years. Objectives of BONUS are appropriate and have been the same from the beginning. The programme will reach them despite any barriers such as the funding rules of Article 185 that can be overcome in practice and, since there appears to be no viable alternative that can deliver and coordinate a large, regionally focused programme.

The main barrier for the participating states is lack of national funds that does not allow them to support all the good projects. Especially, it is a problem for small countries with high proposal success rate, such as Estonia and Denmark, that have not been able to commit as much as their researchers can win in the competition. Another

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barrier is a relatively weak linkage between the stakeholders, policy makers and researchers where BONUS is trying to be a pioneer for improving the flow of information.

The participating states also complain about the strict selection rules and complicated bi-directional funding mechanism of Article 185, which do not give the programme any flexibility. Projects have to report in two directions – national and BONUS – both having different rules and the coordinator has to check whether the national funding has reached the project partner organisations. As a result, projects suffer from an extra administrative burden “eating away” the time that researchers should spend on science. At the same time, for reporting on the use of national funds most of the participating Member States accept the same or a similar report that the projects prepare for BONUS reporting on the use of EU funding.

EEIG: Initially, as an ERA-NET programme BONUS was more focussed on the Baltic Sea eco system, whereas now as the Article 185 programme it becomes broader making an impact on a greater area both geographically, i.e., by “moving to land” and thematically through, for example, introducing the aspect of innovation that was not among the original objectives. From its very beginning the programme has addressed and is still addressing the objectives that are in line with the needs and policy areas of its participating states. It is a regional research cooperation programme that has created a common scientific area in the Baltic Sea Region. The main impediment for BONUS is management of national and EU funding streams that is not optimal and causes implementation barriers.

3.4.1.4 How the SRA implements the BONUS objectives

Compared to other initiatives, stakeholders see the development and revision of the SRA as a flexible and fast process. The document serves not only as a strategy, but also as an implementation plan, i.e., one document for all making the process transparent to policy makers, stakeholders and implementers. At the same time, SRA is very wide and covering everything, therefore could be more focussed on thematic areas in the future.

All participating states agree that SRA is being well implemented, has been followed with the project calls and has gone through a democratic revision process. At the same time, some calls focused on 3-5 objectives and due to the varying quality of proposals not all the objectives were adequately tackled.

The participating states praise the democratic process for preparation and revision of SRA taking into account the views of policy makers, researchers and others with discussions on how to bring the problems forward. In addition, all countries can nominate researchers to be involved in preparation of the information and chairing thematic groups. As a result, no country can complain that their interests have not been taken into account. However, some policymakers argue that the SRA outlines a very detailed scientific plan but lacks focus on the societal issues that are also linked to it.

EEIG: SRA 2011-2017 is a ‘live’ document that is being reviewed systematically. The last revision cycle took place during 2013 resulting in a revised version of SRA published in 2014 (BONUS Publication No.13). This process included (1) policy framework analysis checking the relevance towards the tendencies and initiatives of such related sectors as environment, marine, regional development, innovations, science, etc., and (2) consultations with the members of BONUS Steering Committee and the funders. The results of this process were integrated in the revised version of SRA that was used as a basis for the last two calls.

3.4.1.5 Does BONUS have all the needed partners on board?

In general, the participating states agree that BONUS has all the needed partners on board and for efficient decision-making one national representative in the Steering Committee (except two for Sweden) is sufficient. The programme is open to additional

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institutions joining, if interested, and some countries have already involved additional partners, e.g., funding agencies for innovation projects. Nevertheless, some countries argue that BONUS would benefit from having a wider range of partners on board including representatives of Russia and organisations working with maritime and innovation issues. Also better synchronisation with the INTERREG programmes in the Baltic Sea Region and the EUSBSR would be beneficial. The participating states should also improve their national communication and coordination platforms with other relevant organisations including the respective ministries, as is currently done in Sweden.

Policymakers argue that the BONUS Advisory board is too large: meetings gather too many people and the representatives are often changing. Therefore, the Board suffers from poor continuity and lack of mutual trust because people do not know each other.

EEIG: Involvement of partners in BONUS is different for each participating country and depends on its policy and expectations of the programme, as well as composition and set-up of the national stakeholders. Sweden is a good example demonstrating a real participating state attitude. It involves three different organisations/funding agencies in the programme with two of them as BONUS partners and representatives in the Steering Committee - having one vote between them. Therefore, prior to each meeting all organisations involved discuss their split of responsibilities on the national level and agree how to use their national vote.

EEIG suggests that, in general, the programme would benefit from having innovation funding agencies also on board especially as usually they play a role in funding SMEs. For example, Finland is represented in the programme by the funder of scientific activities and does not involve the innovation funding partner. At the same time, even though negotiating and arranging funding for SMEs has sometimes been challenging for the programme, all the administrative problems have been solved successfully.

According to EEIG, the programme also has a reserve in involving various sectoral funders to foster inter-disciplinary cooperation. Some of them are already involved whereas their level of involvement depends on the interest of the main funding agencies. A good example is Estonia that has raised extra funding from the Foundation for Protection of Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture to cover the national co-financing for their projects. Besides the financial aspect, it also raises the political profile for inter-sectoral collaboration.

3.4.1.6 Is the Article 185 mechanism necessary?

The participating states indicate that it would probably not be possible for the countries to set up a similar programme to BONUS without the EU funding. This would perhaps be feasible for larger countries such as Germany and Sweden but would be “mission impossible” for the smaller countries. In any case, without the EU funding the programme would not have been of the same scope. Working with the issues of the Baltic Sea requires combining the resources of all participating countries and with the EU support these resources double.

According to the stakeholders, Article 185 is relevant for integration of science policy on the regional level. And, even though working with the Article 185 mechanism is complicated, it forces the participating states to go through several steps, notably an explicit process of identifying needs and priorities at the national level, that turn out to be beneficial and provide good results. Without Article 185 also the commitment of the participating states would have been much smaller, as would the impact of the programme on the Baltic Sea Region.

Policymakers regard the EU funding as an important mechanism for launching new initiatives. Later they could keep on ‘rolling’.

EEIG: The countries around the Baltic Sea might have set up a similar initiative but its impact would have been much smaller if implemented without the EU funding. Despite its complexity and administrative challenges, the mechanism of Article 185 with 50%

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co-financing rule has put all participating countries on equal terms and provided a consolidating effect.

3.4.1.7 How could the definition process for BONUS have been improved?

The stakeholders agree that legal requirements for launching Article 185 with collecting all the necessary political and financial support from the European Commission and the Parliament, etc. make it a lengthy process. The mechanism of Article 185 also sets out strict rules and procedures that are difficult to implement and cause inflexibility. Another complexity is caused by differences in the programming periods between BONUS and the ‘standard’ EU planning periods.

BONUS is a very focused programme and its definition could not only focus on marine environment, but also include the adjoining coastal areas and social aspects. A wider definition would be an added value to the programme making a greater impact on the whole region. BONUS could also foresee a flexible geometry allowing partners to focus on their nationally relevant issues where participating states could modify the project priority lists of the scientific evaluation process by taking into account their political priorities.

EEIG: BONUS started as a regional environmental programme focusing on the Baltic Sea. It evolved into sectors of innovation and energy, and is now moving towards blue growth to comply with policy developments at the European level.

3.4.2 Effectiveness of BONUS

3.4.2.1 What has BONUS achieved? Has it reached its objectives?

The stakeholders point out that the BONUS objectives integrate marine research and maritime activities with environment and combine the results of agriculture nutrition and air pollution with an impact on the marine environment. It bridges various policy areas – environment, marine, maritime, spatial planning, agriculture and fishery policies and blue growth – being multi-disciplinary. This requires the projects to be cross-clustered, interact among themselves and address different themes. As a result, the programme is likely to achieve more than promised at the start, e.g., as regards the aspect of innovation that has been integrated in the programme and by involving SMEs in its projects. BONUS has launched four calls for project proposals and funded 40 projects that are being implemented. It has also contributed to research policies and delivered knowledge and new methods, but it is an open question on how these will be utilised in the future.

According to the stakeholders, BONUS has also created a research community in the Baltic Sea Region and raised the profile of the programme making a high status for researchers to be involved. It has raised the level of scientific excellence and the need for making research valuable for the needs of society. The objective has not only been to fund projects, but to make an impact on the region and make the marine problems visible to society. BONUS is well known and is invited as a speaker to meetings and conferences. It has also been a platform for learning and exchange of experience for the participating states as regards research and administrative practices, as well as increased their understanding on what is going on in the other participating states and what are their needs on the national level.

Policymakers argue that the main achievement of BONUS is an operational cooperation network of researchers that allows building new partnerships. The projects are in line with the programme objectives but are very specific and that makes it difficult to see what exactly has been achieved.

EEIG: First, BONUS is the first regional research programme funding scientific activities that focus on the maritime issues of a specific sea and as thus is unique in the EU context. It has contributed to development of research and created the platform for collaboration of scientists in the Baltic Sea Region. It has developed an SRA outlining 19 themes that address the needs of the participating states that further

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translates into the objectives of the programme. The SRA has been used as a basis for launching four calls for proposals resulting in funding of 40 projects. Second, for the programme administration it has built a cooperation platform and mutual trust among the involved national funding institutions and BONUS members allowing to reach consensus and for the programme to function harmoniously. BONUS has also stimulated some funding institutions to move from basic science to policy and problem-based research.

3.4.2.2 Successes and failures

Stakeholders argue that the success of the programme is integration of cross-sectoral aspects and coordination of national and international activities. The main failure has been that it has been impossible to create a common pot and that has slowed the programme down. For example (highlighted as success and failure by several participating states), when during the last call for proposals (Blue Baltic launched in 2015) Estonia and Denmark were running out of money, cooperation among funding agencies in different countries intensified and the in-kind contribution of infrastructure owned by Germany was in a way used as a common pot. Infrastructure has always been used as a buffer by the programme to get over financial problems, e.g., on how to finance external partners.

The community of researchers and funders is rather small and closed. For example, the same researchers are also cooperating in other programmes, while key people in BONUS are also involved in JPI Oceans. Therefore, people know each other and it makes easy to take decisions. It is not in the interests of anybody to cheat or misuse funds in such a transparent situation.

EEIG: The participating countries are united and committed. A good example was the agreement process for extension of the programme to the North Sea where despite delays in agreement with the “new” partner countries (France and UK) all the problems were solved and the agreement reached thanks to the common willingness of the involved countries.

EEIG highlights that through the earlier ERA-NETs and now as an Article 185 programme, BONUS has managed to build up a successful consortium of research funders as decision makers of the programme. This was especially visible during the last call for proposals (Blue Baltic launched in 2015) where due to high number and good quality of projects some of the participating states (e.g., Estonia and Denmark) ran out of national co-financing money and were not able to support the activities proposed by their research organisations. According to the financial rules, the situation when one of the countries has used all their national co-financing can block the whole programme. Nevertheless, the solution on how to fund the selected projects was found thanks to mutual trust and good cooperation among the countries. In addition, the countries (Estonia and Denmark) managed to attract additional national funds for co-financing of the BONUS projects. As a result, the programme will be able to fund 12 new projects.

In general, implementation of the approved projects has been very smooth without any big failures. None of the projects has had any major financial difficulties or over-spending.

3.4.2.3 Effects on cooperation

Stakeholders see BONUS as a well-established long-term platform that enhances cooperation among countries and on the national level. It has improved collaboration on international level among national funders and enriched the national research and political landscape with both national and international dimensions. The cooperation among the countries has improved over the years and this has spilt over to other programmes as well, e.g., JPI Oceans. The interest in the programme and willingness to cooperate has been also manifested in the joint proposal for continuation of the

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programme that includes a funding commitment from each participating Member State.

In general, BONUS has encouraged collaboration and sustainable partnership among the countries and as a spill-over effect improved contacts and exchange of knowledge in different areas. As regards Russia, its participation in the programme is considered important even without concrete funding, and the scientific cooperation should continue despite any political obstacles.

EEIG: The participating countries are willing and able to cooperate. This is especially visible through the work of the Steering Committee – be it opening of project calls, making decisions on approval of projects or solving any other challenges, e.g., lack of funds for some projects from some participating states – all members are usually very active and open in solving problems. For example, Germany offers their infrastructure as in-kind contribution to other countries. In general, all countries are flexible, eager to help and solve problems. SC members know each other very well, trust each other and know that there is no hidden agenda. Russia is also ready to cooperate and BONUS has a cooperation agreement with the Foundation of Humanities of Russia. However, the cooperation has not yet materialised since for the last two calls, the projects with participation of partners from Russia were not selected for approval.

3.4.2.4 Effects on agenda-setting, coordination and policy

Stakeholders believe that BONUS has fostered cooperation between policy makers and researchers through the Steering Committee and the Advisory Board. It has improved communication among the countries and created networking of researchers. It is providing an improved scientific basis for national and international regulations, e.g., HELCOM, and planning at national/ministerial level.

In addition, the policy-making process has also been influenced by certain BONUS projects. However, as most of the BONUS funded projects have not finished yet, the question of whether project results will be translated into policy remains open. Cooperation and coordination among different funding mechanisms, e.g., programmes funded by the Structural Funds including INTERREG programmes in the Baltic Sea region, etc., and initiatives such as the EUSBSR could be more active.

Policymakers claim that the topic of maritime spatial planning has had a major effect in HELCOM and other policies in the Baltic Sea region. The results have been mainly reached through implementation of various projects including those funded by BONUS, as well as DG MARE. At the same time, BONUS has not yet used its full potential and could be more actively involved in discussions on the EUSBSR. And even though some projects are contributing to certain topics of the EUSBSR, their results and impact could be made more visible.

3.4.2.5 Has BONUS changed joint research funding practices?

According to the stakeholders, BONUS has made funders of different, but related sectors to work and think together. This is especially visible in Estonia, where BONUS has brought together three funders – (1) Estonian Research Council – the funding agency for BONUS with (2) the Ministry of Environment and its funding agency Estonian Environmental Investment and (3) the Ministry of Agriculture. Sweden has developed a 5-year plan for synchronising all research-related activities funded through Horizon 2020, JPI and INTERREG programmes. BONUS has also been a source of inspiration for improvement of some organisations’ internal processes, e.g., as regards evaluation with setting criteria and how to score and define them, how to train evaluators and moderators and in which cases to use independent observers. It has increased willingness to fund transnational research that is now considered as necessity.

EEIG: As set out by Article 185, BONUS is operating with common funding rules of all participating countries and the research projects are multi-national. Therefore, BONUS

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is mobilising the financial resources of participating states and providing additional funding. In fact, not all participating states have separate funding programmes for research projects and what has been available is being channelled through BONUS. One additional in-kind contribution is the existing infrastructure, e.g., research vessels, that helps to increase funding sources within BONUS.

3.4.2.6 How could BONUS become more effective?

The participating states agree that the current funding mechanism has been complicated and that implementation of a common pot and simplified administration would make BONUS more effective. However, a common pot seems politically unachievable at present to those whom we interviewed. A certain flexibility in the programme allowing to change things according to the actual needs and balanced budgets among countries would be beneficial.

Participating state funders have to follow their national rules. Therefore, it would be difficult to get all countries to pull resources to one pot for the entire programme period. While “richer” countries are more supportive of introducing one source of funding, those with limited funds are afraid of losing control over the expenditure of their small resources. Another option would be introduction of a post-evaluation pot that would require detailed planning on how to make decisions on funds. For the projects it would be much easier to work with one funder and with one reporting system.

Another problem highlighted by the stakeholders is that all countries have to participate in all calls, even when their budgets are exhausted. Therefore, either a variable geometry for partners or certain flexibility on how to budget each call could be introduced including a variable rate for the EU funding (30-50%).

Policymakers argue that BONUS could try to open up for more science fields with a better balance between natural sciences and economic and societal sciences. It should also communicate the project outcomes more visibly, by, for example, using the EUSBSR framework more skilfully and by actively involving the projects themselves.

EEIG: A common pot would make BONUS more effective. Now the programme has managed to agree on a post-evaluation common pot that is not operational yet but could be introduced for the next programme.

3.4.3 Efficiency of BONUS

3.4.3.1 Contributions of the participating states

The stakeholders point out that the contributions by all countries are important: each brings different things and diversity plays an important role. The aspect of diversity more concerns the experience brought in by each country making a valuable mix of knowledge for the programme. This is especially visible through the work of the Steering Committee where each representative brings in his/her specific experience. For example, Poland brings in knowledge on legal matters, Estonia has been active in the work of various EU committees and knows the work with the European Commission, Germany and Denmark have specific knowledge related to the use of research infrastructure, Sweden brought in an observer who helped the programme with the innovation aspect as regards ideas and contacts. With contribution by each party, the countries have built a communication platform, trust and commitment.

EEIG: All countries bring in their respective funding contributions and participate in the work of Steering Committee, as well as development of the SRA. Finland has been the initiator of the BONUS programme, bringing lots of funds and vast knowledge on shipping issues, as well as strong clusters. Sweden brings in lots of money and is a good example of excellent national cooperation, inter-sectoral approach and flexibility. Denmark contributes to administration of the programme with competent staff having an in-depth knowledge in marine science, it has actively participated in the

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programme development, as well as brings in good project managers. Estonia contributes with scientific excellence, its specific knowledge on innovations and IT technologies and lobbying activities for continuation of the programme. Germany brings in lots of funds and owns a lot of research infrastructure used in the programme as an in-kind contribution. With generating additional funds, it has also helped some participating states in reducing their national funding problems. Poland also brings in research infrastructure, as well as participation of SMEs in projects, whereas Latvia and Lithuania are always supportive and rather benefit from the programme through exchange of experience and learning. BONUS helps them to open doors to transnational and wider European cooperation.

3.4.3.2 Coherence of BONUS’ research agenda

The participating states agree that their national priorities have been included in the BONUS research agenda. At the same time, the research agenda is not linked to the national funding constraints but to the theme of the call. Blue Baltic, for example, is a difficult area that requires a lot of scientists compared to the other areas. Some participating states argue that the calls need to be more focused on fundamental scientific questions and have been mixed a bit too much in the BONUS calls.

The stakeholders highlight that the national funding constraints have been severe, especially after the economic crisis that blocked the availability of national funds for almost all countries. While larger countries are in easier positions, smaller countries struggle with national limitations. At the same time, all countries understand that pooling of funds on international level boosts their national research potential. Given this, as well as the administrative constraints of the programme (e.g. that a call for projects can only be launched if all participating states participate), BONUS has been implemented successfully.

EEIG: BONUS research agenda or SRA has been developed by all participating states using a bottom-up approach, i.e., it started with the national level and moved up to the level of Baltic Sea. Therefore, it is complete and coherent and its implementation through BONUS covers all 19 themes.

3.4.3.3 Do funding and administrative arrangements affect efficiency?

According to the stakeholders, while the programme is functioning, to raise its efficiency it would need to be simplified. The mechanisms of Article 185 make the administration process complicated and heavy. It could have been smoother with flexibility on national budgets and procedures. The time needed for taking national funding decisions varies among the States. For example, Estonia as a small country with a short administrative chain can make decisions on the national funding quite fast while for Germany that can be a lengthy process due to the federal system. A lot of administrative burden falls on the shoulders of the Secretariat that has been efficient in dealing with all the funding and administrative arrangements.

The stakeholders agree that the two-stage funding process is complicated and requires good communication among the involved parties, but works fine. The problems arise with common pot rules, mandatory participation of all participating states in all calls and complicated funding and reporting schemes. In general, by respecting the national regulations the participating states have only two options to choose between, i.e., (1) a common pot or (2) a two-stage process involving BONUS and the national authorities. A middle way between these two options would be the proposed post-evaluation pot.

EEIG: A common pot would make the funding structure more efficient. Nevertheless, through learning by doing the Secretariat has developed an administrative system that functions. It has all possible digital and electronic tools such as online tool for invoice management, travel claims, etc. Comparing the Secretariat’s budget for administration

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with the total funding basket of the programme and the number of approved projects to administer, the system can be considered as being efficient.

The two-stage process involving BONUS and the national authorities works as well as it can within the existing framework. In general, BONUS has built good relationships with the national funding agencies that support the processes of project evaluation, contracting and reporting. It is an active and supportive network of organisations that helps the Secretariat in various tasks, e.g., translating national documents, finding information on SMEs, etc.

3.4.3.4 How well does the BONUS governance work?

All participating states agree that BONUS governance works well and the programme has developed the necessary administrative procedures. Despite its small size, the Secretariat works well and is providing a good service to both the projects and the Steering Committee. For example, it prepares a complete overview on funding, projects, etc. for each of the Committee’s meetings that are called on a quarterly basis. All participating states fully trust the Secretariat and praise its small, but very professional and efficient team, as well as the ability to foresee and plan things in advance.

EEIG: BONUS governance works well having all adequate checks in place. The statutes of the Secretariat and the regulations of the programme define the governance process indicating the split of responsibilities. And, even though the participating states have different research potential and history, the programme is not “captured” by certain countries.

In 2016, BONUS underwent an external audit ordered by the European Commission that checked how the programme’s financial management functions, and what systems, processes and procedures have been developed.

3.4.3.5 Cost, efficiency and effectiveness of the BONUS administration

Stakeholders feel that taking into account the two funding paths for each project that roughly double the management costs compared to one-stop funding, BONUS administration is efficient. And even though its cost is quite high for some of the countries, all participating states agree that it provides value for money. BONUS is delivering extra things that could not be done at the national level, e.g., visibility of research and Baltic Sea problems, working with young researchers and end-users, etc.

The stakeholders compared the size of secretariat for administration of the Baltic Sea Region programme with almost 30 persons on board with the BONUS secretariat with only six employees praising the latter for its efficiency.

EEIG: BONUS Secretariat operates in a horizontal management system and employs six full-term staff. For example, management of all finances has been in the hands of one person with some technical help from an assistant and with bookkeeping and office costs being outsourced. The team is small and international with very competent staff who have different backgrounds and clear division of tasks, thus making it efficient. It is also efficient if compared with the Secretariats of other similar programmes and the administrative burden BONUS has with the two-stage funding process.

3.4.3.6 Is the effort of administration imposed at the national level worthwhile?

All participating states agree that it is worthwhile paying these administration costs. The budget and the expenditure have always been clear and transparent, as is what deliverables to expect from the Secretariat. Taking into account this and the scale of activities, and if compared with other programmes, BONUS is good value for money for the participating states.

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The stakeholders also point out that reducing costs would mean cutting activities, and that would not always be desirable, e.g., for visibility. At the same time, evaluation process could have been more cost-efficient and some funds could have been saved on inviting all evaluators to participate in the 3-day meetings, where instead the evaluation results could have been transferred in writing. The programme could also save on publishing of some communication material on paper by focusing on electronic publishing.

EEIG: As defined by the Council Decision, the administration costs for the programme (€5m) are covered 50/50 by the EU and the participating states. The contribution of each participating Member State is calculated as 5.4% from the respective national funding committed to BONUS projects.

3.4.3.7 How BONUS communicates

According to the stakeholders, the communication from BONUS is seen as smooth, professional and efficient taking into account that it is driven by one person in the Secretariat with some ad-hoc assistance from trainees. The programme uses different communication tools and channels to raise its visibility and exchange information. For example, the programme webpage has a public area with general information on BONUS, its products, etc. and an intranet for registered users that works as a platform for exchange of information. The communication is targeted at various groups of recipients such as projects, researchers, stakeholders and outer world. For young researchers that is done through blogs, participation in conferences, etc. All participating states agree that BONUS can manage a much bigger volume of communications than would be possible if done separately by each country.

At the same time, the stakeholders point out that there has been too little communication beyond the regional level, e.g., with the Scientific Research Committee and European Commission, and pushing it further to the EU level and beyond. It would be important to demonstrate success of this and future programmes not only in the Baltic Sea Region, but beyond.

Policymakers say that BONUS newsletters are interesting reading material in a refreshingly short format. At the same time, BONUS should inform on the outcomes of their projects in an aggregated form on what has been achieved, as well as cooperate more closely with the coordinators of the relevant policy areas and horizontal actions of the EUSBSR. Here BONUS could utilise the clustering activity or the, so called, project platform that is open to all projects in a certain sector funded by various funding instruments in the Baltic Sea Region, such as, the INTERREG programmes, TEN-T projects, initiatives funded by DG Mare, etc. In addition, in Autumn 2017 the Baltic Sea Region programme will launch a special call for project platforms, e.g., on blue growth, and later also on water and on transport.

3.4.3.8 How transparent is BONUS?

Despite the complexity of its rules, participating states see BONUS as transparent as regards both decision-making and implementation. It has introduced a system of pre-registration prior the calls for the projects under preparation allowing the funders to be informed and check the compliance with national policies. The funders can interfere, if any discrepancies are identified. For example, in the past participation of one or two companies has been cancelled due to their lack of the necessary capacity. The system gives security for funders and allows planning of their funding.

Policy makers see BONUS as a well-managed programme with transparent procedures.

EEIG: The Secretariat tries to work as openly and transparently as possible. It backs up the work of the Steering Committee and ensures that all its decisions are implemented. All the documents of the work of Steering Committee, e.g., agendas and

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minutes of the meetings are publicly available. And only information that following certain regulations is considered confidential, e.g., personal data, etc. is not published or is being published later.

3.4.4 Coherence of BONUS with EU and national policies

3.4.4.1 How does BONUS fit with other policy instruments?

Participating states feel that the relevant EU, regional and national policy instruments have been taken into account and integrated in the SRA. During its revision, the programme had a dialogue with HELCOM, VASAB and others incorporating their comments. BONUS also tries to play a role in the EUSBSR and to develop synergy with the INTERREG Baltic Sea Region programme, as well as to establish connections with JPI Oceans.

Most of the participating states have policy instruments at national level that are complementary to BONUS, such as marine strategies, plans for agriculture and fisheries, etc. The countries also cooperate with HELCOM, policy area coordinators of the EUSBSR and other policy makers in the Baltic Sea region. In return, BONUS helps the countries with integration and implementation of various EU directives and policies at the national level.

The stakeholders reveal that most of the countries do not have specific policy instruments or interventions for marine research at national level. This issue is being touched episodically and not in an organised manner for being able to solve problems with the Baltic Sea. This makes BONUS unique and the main channel for funding activities related to research on the Baltic Sea.

Policymakers believe that BONUS has its own specific niche in provision of research, while other instruments are more focussed on policy-making and implementation.

EEIG: BONUS is a policy-driven programme with all the relevant national and Baltic Sea region policies reflected in the SRA. BONUS is not formally part of the EUSBSR, but contributes with four of its funded projects.

3.4.4.2 What is distinct about BONUS?

BONUS is seen by the stakeholders as the only research and innovation programme dealing with the Baltic Sea that is based on an SRA. It is a problem-oriented science programme with long-term planning and high-level commitment focusing on both basic and applied research. And while environment is usually viewed from the angle of precaution, i.e., is there anything harmful that needs to be tackled, science, i.e., BONUS, is interested in knowledge to be able to predict whether there will be anything harmful and what exactly.

The stakeholders agree that JPI Oceans also links ministries from all participating states. So, in principle there might be some overlap between BONUS and JPI Oceans. That is being currently analysed by a joint working group but conclusions have yet to be reached.

EEIG: BONUS is the only network of researchers, research developers and funders in the Baltic Sea region.

3.4.4.3 Does what BONUS is trying to achieve conflict with the EU or national policy?

All participating states agree that there are no clashes between BONUS and its SRA and policy objectives at the national levels. On the contrary, BONUS is complementary by combining and bridging several sectors, such as marine services and environment. BONUS also should contribute to the policy-making process by bringing in scientific information that comes from the results of research done in the framework of its funded projects. The only question is whether this information will reach the funders and politicians at the right time. Many of our interview partners argued that the links

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between BONUS research and policy change are weak. HELCOM has started inviting BONUS researchers to present their work at its meetings, in order to strengthen this.

Policymakers argued that climate change is not at the top of agendas any more. These agendas are moving towards economic growth and efficient use of resources while environmental issues have lost priority. As a consequence, for some researchers it is hard to understand why the programme is developing in blue growth rather than staying with the marine environment.

EEIG: EU R&D agenda is wider, whereas BONUS focusses on saving the Baltic Sea.

3.4.4.4 Is Article 185 the right instrument for BONUS?

Despite its complexity, the participating states agree that Article 185 would be the best available instrument for continuation of BONUS. It has a favourable funding proportion with 50/50 co-funding rules that is important and more realistic for all countries than 30/70. Article 185 includes some flexibility that is important for a programme running long-time and gives academic freedom that is attractive for researchers. At the same time more flexibility in administration of the programme could be given, especially as regards opening of calls for proposals and setting out internal procedures on reporting. A stronger link to JPI Oceans needs to be ensured.

EEIG: There is no other instrument than Article 185 supporting development and implementation of an SRA in a long-term perspective and requiring a certain level of political commitment from the participating states. Without it, the recognition would not have been as high as it is now for HELCOM, BSSSC, etc. In general, Article 185 is quite inflexible, whereas BONUS has managed to introduce some flexibility, e.g., based on internal trust Germany brought in additional funds by helping Denmark to overcome shortage of national funds.

3.4.5 European Added Value (EVA)

Stakeholders believe that BONUS provides a platform for cooperation in research activities on the issues related to the Baltic Sea that could not be organised from the national level. BONUS has reduced the fragmentation of research both in the Baltic Sea region level and nationally and made it more integrated and interdisciplinary than before. It allows the scientific communities to get wider perspective, get new knowledge from the fellow researchers from other countries and move to international level. For smaller participating states it increases the critical mass that in collaboration with other countries makes it possible to achieve more. BONUS pulls together the available resources, provides a greater impact of research and raises its international visibility. It also stimulates dialogue among the participating states and with the Russian Federation and contributes to collaboration in terms of socio-cultural exchange. On the EU level, BONUS contributes to the EU policy with the regional research data and knowledge.

EEIG: BONUS is a regional research programme dealing specifically with the Baltic Sea that would not be relevant for an EU-scale initiative.

3.4.6 Recommendations for the future

3.4.6.1 Should BONUS continue?

All participating states are interested in the collaboration and agree that BONUS should continue because it has been an important and good programme and has all the relevant administrative and governance apparatus including the Secretariat in place. This commitment has already been embedded in the Proposal for continuation of the programme that participating states have submitted to the European Commission.

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The countries support continuation of the programme based on the Article 185 with the 50/50 funding mechanism, whether BONUS will be extended to the North Sea or not. On the contents side it would be important to have a programme addressing marine and maritime questions to raise the awareness about the sea and use of its resources without destroying them. There is a need for addressing the diversity and complexity of various sea related issues by moving into land areas including rivers and inland waters even more and addressing the recreational issues linked with shipping. It is clear that these issues cannot be tackled only from the national perspective and need collaboration. The programme should also involve Russia more actively understanding that it plays a role and makes a fairly high level of pollution to the Baltic Sea.

EEIG: The outline document for the follow-up programme has been agreed by all participating states and records their commitment for continuation of BONUS.

3.4.6.2 Should BONUS expand to cover the North Sea?

Extension of BONUS to the North Sea was initiated by Germany, Sweden and Denmark realising that more national funding is being invested in the Baltic than in the North Sea. Although all countries have approved this idea by signing the Proposal for the programme’s continuation, those bordering the North Sea support this idea more strongly than other participating states.

The stakeholders also agree that while the extension would be a logical evolution of the programme, the Baltic Sea still has lot of problems that require attention. If extended, the new programme could have variable geometry for calls allowing, for example, 60% participation of countries instead of involvement of all countries for all calls or could have separate calls for the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and both together.

The stakeholders also pointed out that the level of interest from the “new” countries is however mixed. This is especially the case for Norway, which is already heavily involved in JPI Oceans. Limitations also concern the UK whose administrative set-up would require approval of participation in the programme separately by England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and is now even more unclear in terms of its ability to participate in EU programmes following Brexit. Taking this into account, for the next programme round some of the BONUS participating states suggest continuing and improving BONUS and addressing any extension of the programme to the North Sea at a later stage.

Policy makers also agree that content-wise it might be good to extend BONUS to the North Sea whereas management of such a programme would be challenging.

EEIG: The idea of BONUS extension to the North Sea was initiated by Germany, Sweden and Denmark and was afterwards approved by all participating countries. Such a programme would be interesting from the science point of view and would also have a greater impact. It would be beneficial for the North Sea since the surrounding countries do not cooperate in marine research but do research within their national boundaries instead. On a broader European level, it would be a step closer to the idea of a wider programme for cooperation among regional seas. At the same time, it would be an administrative challenge to manage such a programme and integrate new countries and researchers that are not yet tightly connected. Overlap with other similar initiatives such as JPI Oceans will also have to be avoided.

3.4.6.3 Lessons for the future

The participating states highlight that preparation of the follow-up programme needs to be done in close communication and open dialogue among the participating states and the European Commission allowing to incorporate all the lessons learned from implementation of this programme into the new one. Policymakers suggest to widen the scope of the programme from the natural sciences to incorporating the elements of social sciences, such as benefits and impact on economy and society.

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EEIG suggests considering the following points for the design and implementation of a future programme.

• The programme regulations could only stipulate general rules and conditions for the programme implementation without going into too much detail that are later difficult to implement thus making the programme inflexible, e.g., currently it stipulates that projects need to be selected through direct application process, whereas the scientific environment would benefit from 2-stage application process.

• The programme administratively would benefit from integration of funds, i.e., common pot where all participating states deposit their national co-funding or alternatively – an operational post-evaluation common pot where the participating states transfer a certain amount of co-financing depending on the results of the respective call and approved list of projects with involvement of their institutions.

• 2-stage application process for projects would be beneficial for the scientific community and would save their rather scarce resources.

• Grant agreements with projects setting out the rules for implementation and reporting should be tailor-made for the BONUS programme rather than using the templates from FP7. This especially concerns reporting of the use of national funding that is BONUS-specific and is not compatible with general FP7 rules.

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4 ANSWERS TO THE EVALUATION QUESTIONS

This Chapter uses the evidence previously assembled to answer the five main evaluation questions posed in this study, namely the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of BONUS, its coherence with other European policies and the ‘EU added value’, namely the extent to which intervention at the European level adds value over and above what could have been realised by Member States alone. Finally, we review BONUS’ progress in responding to the nine recommendations of the interim evaluation (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014).

4.1 Relevance

4.1.1 Relevance of and stakeholder commitment to original objectives

The original objectives of BONUS were formulated during a development process initiated by BONUS’ predecessor programmes, ERA-NET BONUS and BONUS+. During the BONUS ERA-Net Plus, the BONUS participating states demonstrated their intention to act together in implementing a Joint Research Programme, set up the BONUS EEIG and produced background documents for the preparation of BONUS. An Impact Assessment Expert Group set up by DG RTD reviewed the documents and the BONUS EEIG and carried out research to optimise the initiative.

An extensive consultation was carried out with the marine research community and key stakeholders during this process (BONUS EEIG, 2008). It included all Baltic Sea countries with a broad range of academic and governmental scientists, funding agencies, relevant ministries and their associated specialised institutes, intergovernmental and international organisations, as well as management and regulatory decision makers. The consultation also benefited from inputs of the EUSBR and the Advisory Board of BONUS+. Based on this process, the legislative decision identified the general objectives (GO) and actions (A) as well as specific objectives (SO) for the two phases of BONUS (These are listed in full in Section 2.2 above.) .

This consultation process is consistent with A4 and with the requirement of SP1 for BONUS actively to involve stakeholders, user groups, scientists, research institutions and broad stakeholder communities. As a result of this process, the SRA was delivered in 2012 (A1). The SRA identifies five Strategic Objectives and prioritizes BONUS themes in tight connection with the challenges identified during the consultation, thus addressing GO1, GO2, SO1 and A2. The SRA designs an environmental research programme which would launch multi-national calls based on the interdisciplinary themes contained in the five Strategic Objectives (GO3, SO2 and A7). The project proposals submitted were evaluated and those deemed appropriate for funding were selected on the basis of their adherence to these themes and scientific excellence, with consortia that have incorporated research groups from the new member Baltic States (A3). Up to 2015, more than 42M€ of funds have been mobilised for research and administration in BONUS, with a growing number of funding bodies (from 17 in 2012 to 20 in 2015) which are not exclusively research oriented (A5) (BONUS Annual Reports, 2012-2012). These numbers mean a significant investment in Baltic research on the part of the participating states, thus showing their commitment towards a structured transnational research programme (GO4).

The SRA also defines the organisational structure for the management of BONUS (GO4 and A6) and articulates the continuous input of funding and advice bodies to achieve the GOs. Based on the evidence above, BONUS has taken through the initial development of the SRA in 2012, its update in 2014 and the implementation of their work content all the steps necessary to fully comply with the general and specific objectives as well as the actions initially contemplated in the legislative decision.

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4.1.2 Was BONUS the best way to reach the objectives?

Alternative ways to address the problems identified by BONUS could be

• Re-use of the ERA-NET instrument.

• Creation of a transnational programme organised by the participating states themselves.

• A transnational programme organised at the level of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

• A Joint Programming Initiative.

• Incorporation of the BONUS objectives into the ‘Co-operation’ part of the Framework Programme.

In practice, the BONUS ERA-NET and ERA-NET Plus effectively exhausted the opportunities for using an ERA-NET to address the BONUS challenges prior to the creation of the Article 185 programme. Participants saw Article 185 as a mechanism to scale up the effort towards the level needed.

History shows that since the start of the Framework Programme it is close to impossible to establish multilateral R&D funding programmes in Europe without a central, organising authority. Prior to the Framework Programme, several multilateral treaty organisations were set up to do research, such as CERN and EMBL An early attempt to create an instrument to serve the modern function of the Framework Programme was the European Cooperation on Science and Technology (COST), which failed to move beyond low-cost networking activities because of the ability of individual Member States to hijack the agenda in order to reach unrelated negotiation goals (Roland, 1988). The only multilateral organisation of note to be set up after the start of the Framework Programme with the ESPRIT Pilot in 1984 was Eureka in 1985, which is based on aggregating national funding and in practice experiences as many problems of negotiating among national funders in an Article 185 programme as does BONUS. So this is not an alternative.

There is a history of Nordic cooperation, but unless it is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordic Innovation) it resorts to virtual common pots in the style of BONUS (Nordic Energy Research, NordForsk). Crucially, Nordic R&D cooperations are much smaller than BONUS, which itself is the smallest of the Article 185 programmes. The Nordic institutions increasingly seek to involve the Baltic states (but not Russia or Poland) and appear to be unlikely to be capable of establishing an initiative of the scale of BONUS – especially as neither Norway nor Iceland has an interest in the Baltic.

The Joint Programming initiatives are at one level highly relevant, and the existence of JPI Oceans underlines common interest in maritime and marine issues. However, JPIs are inherently open to all Member and Associated States with a common interest and could therefore not exclusively tackle the problems of a single basin. A similar issue prevents the use of the Co-operation mechanism for addressing the problems of a sub-set of Member States.

The Article 185 mechanism is complex and requires significant administrative effort compared with either national funding or the Framework Programme. Nonetheless, Article 185 is the only available instrument that could address the regional coordination and capacity building needs. Simplification of the instrument – and especially the creation of a single common pot – is desirable, but BONUS appears to be the best available way to tackle the problems addressed. It may be then concluded that, compared to other funding instruments, an Article 185 initiative such as BONUS offers benefits of participating in a regionally focused and coherent programme with clearly defined mission and objectives serving the interests of both scientific advancement and societal growth.

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4.1.3 Have the problems addressed by BONUS changed? Do stakeholders think it worth continuing?

The Interim Evaluation Report (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014) argues that the original objectives of BONUS have been achieved: the Baltic Sea Region’s research capacity has been greatly enhanced; the major environmental and key societal challenges the region faces and will face in the coming years have been and are being responded to; and the efficiency and effectiveness of the Baltic Sea Region’s fragmented research programming and approach have been improved by integrating the research activities in the Baltic Sea system and by establishing a durable, cooperative, interdisciplinary, well-integrated and focused multi-national programme.

However, as the original objectives of BONUS were formulated in response to the environmental and anthropogenic pressures and challenges the region faces, the fact that BONUS has achieved its strategic objectives does not mean that the environmental pressures and challenges have disappeared. As shown by the most recent (2011) HELCOM holistic assessment of the Baltic Sea (Laamanen, 2011) and by the recent relevant publications, including those stemming from BONUS projects (e.g. COCOA, HYPER (Andersen, et al., 2017), almost the entire open Baltic Sea is eutrophic (with the exception of the open Bay of Bothnia in the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea), as are almost all coastal areas, although some signs of improvement have recently been detected and reductions in both nitrogen and phosphorus loads led to large-scale alleviation of eutrophication (Andersen et al., 2017). Nevertheless, the spatial extent of near-bottom hypoxia and anoxia, oxygen deficiency-related situations strongly associated with increased eutrophication, has remained very extensive (Feisel, 2016). Biodiversity, another HELCOM core indicator, is being affected by introductions of non-indigenous species (biopollution), the southern and south-eastern areas of the Baltic being classified as strongly impacted by introductions, and no area showing a biopollution index value below 2 (moderate impact). The most recent HELCOM’s hazardous substances assessment finds that, although some of those substances have been showing decreasing trends and health status of some predatory species (considered harbingers of hazardous substance pollution) has been improving, the main basin of the Baltic Sea and its westernmost areas (Kiel and Mecklenburg Bights) have been identified as heavily contaminated. The status of coastal areas is highly variable, but generally the contamination level was higher near larger cities. The highest concentrations relative to threshold values set in 2007 are still shown by substances such as PCBs, lead, DDE, cadmium, mercury, TBT and dioxins as well as brominated compounds. Moreover, there are emerging hazards posed by microplastic pollution and pharmaceuticals the assessment of which has only recently began. To summarise, all the HELCOM evaluations available to date show that the state of the Baltic Sea environment still remains a serious concern. There is still a need for developing and implementing adaptive management strategies which would respond to changes of drivers. Hence it is vital to continue research on linkages between different environmental problems of the Baltic Sea and the linkages between ecosystem services and human welfare, which a number of BONUS calls – and projects that are being carried out as a result – address, but obviously a more long-term perspective is needed for the vital continuous science-policy dialogue (BalticSTERN Secretariat, 2013). In this context, as already stressed by the Baltic STERN Report, the most recent research supported by BONUS (Andersen et al., 2017) indicates the need for sustained monitoring activities to be continued.

BONUS has succeeded in coordinating some 14% of the region’s marine and maritime research (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014) through the joint programming of its SRA, whose implementation is achieved via cross-border projects. Both the policymaking community and the researchers involved believe that networking has increased within both policy and research communities. However,

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BONUS has not created any additional permanent structures or routines that would preserve these benefits beyond the end of the programme. Such change would be necessary in order to continue the level of joint programming achieved, whether it is delivered through a new Article 185 agreement or a new mechanism.

4.1.4 Does BONUS support EU policy objectives?

BONUS has significantly contributed to all the general objectives and actions set forth in the legislative decisions, and is a reference body for structuring environmental research in the Baltic Sea region. Sustainable growth is the present and future need in the region as acknowledged by the regional bodies in the Baltic (HELCOM, EUBSR) and underpins the need for structuring their capacities in an efficient manner. BONUS has shown flexibility in its updated SRA response to new strategies provided by the Blue Growth (European Commission, 2012) and Marine Spatial Planning Directives (European Parliament and Council, 2014). Together with its acknowledged reputation in the region, this flexibility makes BONUS a relevant tool to build ERA in the region, in particular if the success achieved is complemented with programmes to foster the transnational exchange of young and senior scientists in the region.

In order to deliver ERA, an Innovation Union must involve remove obstacles to mobility and cross-border cooperation. Partnering is also a key component for the realization of ERA. Public-to-public partnerships such as those promoted under Article 185 are expected to impact the achievement of ERA. Despite its comparatively small size in relation to other Article 185 implementations, BONUS has contributed to all the positive impacts identified for Article 185 as a tool for delivering ERA: i) it has promoted a large-scale and wide-scope partnership with preparation of multiannual financial commitments, ii) it has achieved scientific and management integration, and iii) it has overcome unnecessary overlap and fragmentation of research and innovation effort. Further progress, however, is desirable towards financial integration.

Table 19 shows how BONUS relates to the ERA objectives in place at the start of the programme and the revised objectives greed in 2015.

Table 19 ERA objectives 2010-15 and 2015-20

BONUS contributes

ERA Objectives 2010 Quality of doctoral training, attractive employment conditions and gender balance in research careers

Partially

Mobility of researchers across countries and sectors-, including through open recruitment in public research institutions and comparable research career structures and by facilitating the creation of European supplementary pension funds

No

Cross-border operation of research performing organisations, funding agencies and foundations, including by ensuring simplicity and mutual coherence of funding rules and procedures, building on the work of stakeholders, funding agencies and their representative organisations

Yes

Dissemination, transfer and use of research results, including through open access to publications and data from publicly funded research

Yes

Opening of Member State operated research infrastructures to the full European user community Yes

Consistency of EU and national strategies and actions for international cooperation in science and technology

Yes

ERA Objectives 2015-20 Effective national research systems Yes Jointly addressing grand challenges Yes Make optimal use of public investments in research Yes

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BONUS contributes

infrastructures

An open labour market for researchers Minor contribution

Gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research No specific contribution

Optimal circulation and transfer of scientific knowledge Yes

International cooperation Minor, through

Russian involvement

Source: SEC(2010) 1161, ERAC 1208/15 (2015)

The design of BONUS SRA and the way it has been implemented is in agreement with the general aims of the ‘the three Os’ (European Commission, 2016b) concept. Specifically, the BONUS programme shares the following components of this means to reinforce the existing programmes:

Open Innovation

• BONUS co-created its SRA with a broad set of consulted bodies which defined the research priorities and which are permanently connected to the science outputs though different fora. Therefore, BONUS is user-centric.

• BONUS has scientific mechanisms to facilitate the flow of scientific results towards policy and regulations. This is achieved by explicit components of the managerial structure and intensive collaboration with regional bodies.

Open Science

• Articles 26.4 and 26.5 of the Implementation Agreement as well as the SRA establish that data generated by BONUS will be transferred to public databases such as SeaDataNet, Pangaea or ICES.

• Article 26.6 of the Implementation Agreement forces the open publication of the Metadata for any data collected within BONUS-funded research.

• Some projects (e.g. BALTICAPP) explicitly include citizen science in its work content.

• The consultation process to generate the SRA, its update in 2014 as well as the interaction conducted with regional bodies embeds BONUS science in society as a socioeconomic driver.

• The calls for proposals have been conducted in a transparent and non-discriminative way for any applicant. The application process has been each time clearly explained by a special guidelines document available through the BONUS web site. Information on the calls was widely disseminated through the standard scientific channels.

• The proposal reviewing process was monitored by an external independent observer whose reports bear witness to the process being conducted in fairness and integrity.

Open to the world

• BONUS has conducted agreements to stimulate and assist partner countries outside the EU (Russia) to set up co-funding mechanisms for their participants in Horizon 2020 actions

• BONUS is identified as a case of science diplomacy (European Commission, 2016a), involving scientific cooperation with the Russian Federation.

At the thematic level, the process of selecting the strategic objectives and themes prioritized by BONUS involved policy-relevant actors and has led to the approval of proposals that are related to important EU policy objectives. BONUS therefore appears to be consistent with other EU Policy goals. We have not been able to identify any contradictions.

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4.1.5 Future relevance of BONUS

The success of BONUS in structuring the research in the Baltic environment has encouraged participant states sharing coasts on two seas (Germany and Sweden) together with other EU countries at the North Sea to consider the possibility of extending the program to embrace also this basin in proposals to the European Commission, although major uncertainties remain about the eventual participation of Norway and the UK. Nevertheless, the achievements of BONUS can be a useful example to enhance ERA in other countries which acknowledge BONUS as a programme that has paved the way to integrate marine research.

It is clear that BONUS or an equivalent intervention continues to be relevant in the Baltic Sea region.

• The scientific research indicates continuing environmental problems and is discovering additional challenges (such as microplastics), despite some improvements in parts of the Sea

• Joint programming under BONUS is having positive effects on research and policy (Section 4.2)

• Stakeholders and researchers testify to the increased integration of the scientific and policy communities at the operational level

• However, so far BONUS (which is a five-year programme) has not put in place a more permanent arrangement for maintaining the process of joint programming, without which there is little reason to believe that this process will continue

• Hence there is a need for a further intervention, if the advantages of BONUS are to be maintained

• It is not clear that a further Article 185 arrangement would be the right intervention, unless it contains measures that embed the structuring effects of joint programming beyond the lifetime of the programme

4.2 Effectiveness

4.2.1 Has BONUS enhanced research capacity?

BONUS has succeeded in enhancing research capacity by increasing the size of the effort and not least by graduating a number of PhDs. BONUS has been able to overcome fragmentation of research efforts in the region, one of the main obstacles to the full use of research results “in order to shape environmental policy throughout the Baltic Sea basin and ensure sustainable development”. As emphasised in the Interim Evaluation Report (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014), BONUS managed to create a critical mass needed to address a number of issues hampering the development of research and socio-economic development undertaken by each of the region’s countries alone by, inter alia pooling specialist research resources (human and infrastructure) and providing a greater scale, scope and impact of the research as well as continuity, both spatial and temporal, compared to efforts of individual countries. The structure of BONUS has made it possible to adopt a coherent and long-term research agenda and promote the development and implementation of a durable, cooperative, interdisciplinary, well-integrated and focussed multi-national programme in support of the region's sustainable development. Should the national funding schemes operate independently, it would be difficult to ensure the complementarity, continuity and cohesion needed and ensure the same level of coordination between national programmes. BONUS’ achievements in strengthening and coordinating research are therefore far-reaching and significant. It has unified the research and policy communities in ways that are completely unprecedented. It has strengthened the monitoring effort in the region and the associated databases.

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As demonstrated in Section 3.1, BONUS has increased the quantity and quality of relevant scientific production in the Baltic Sea region. The involvement of innovation agencies and the problem-orientation of the SRA have both helped shift the pattern of research away from basic research and towards multidisciplinary, problem-oriented work. Nonetheless, the work is usually several steps away from changing policy, let alone from having an environmental impact. Much of the work maps and provides understanding about how various parts of the Baltic Sea system operate, for example by looking at the interaction of land-generated nutrients, eutrophication, the filtering effect of coastal sediment and the formation of methane and concentrations of phosphorus in the sea bed that in turn need to be combined in making policy judgements, such as those relating to permitted limits on nutrient run-off.

4.2.2 Does the work tackle key environmental and societal challenges?

The effects of BONUS on policy development in the region are diffuse. The BONUS EEIG claims that there are more than 50 examples of BONUS making cases that could influence regulation and policy and a further 36 suggestions about design, implementation and evaluation of policy (BONUS EEIG Secretariat, 2016). Both researchers and other stakeholders consulted emphasise that policy influence is an aim and that it is to some degree being achieved but there seem to be few examples available of this happening in practice. There are examples of policy influence, such as the production of antifouling guidelines for leisure boat owners in the CHANGE project (though the take-up is unclear) and repeated inputs to the EU Common Fisheries Policy by the COCOA, BIO-C3 and INSPIRE projects. However, the nature of the research implies that the links between research and policy change are complex and indirect. There will be relatively few cases where it is easy to identify a simple cause-effect relationship between research evidence and policy change. Of particular importance to the Commission, which funds a great deal of research intended to lead to industrial innovation, is to understand the complex nature of the research-policy linkage and not to be tempted to use research-innovation links as implicit benchmarks.

Literature on research-policy interaction tends to focus on the need to involve potential users of research in project definition, engage them in the execution and monitoring of work and engaging in active dissemination of results (Walter, Nutley, & Davies, 2003) (Nutley, 2004). A widely-used approach can be found in the Brunel Health Services Research Group’s ‘payback model’, which spans

• Knowledge production

• Research targeting and capacity building

• Informing policy and product development

• Health and health sector benefits

• Broader economic benefits (Donovan & Hanney, 2011)

As Figure 19 indicates, in this model the stock of knowledge plays a central role, creating a buffer or reservoir between research and policy.

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Figure 19 The logic model of the payback framework

The UK Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has a long-running set of activities (RAPID) aiming to improve the linkage between development research projects and policy practice. Key principles that have emerged are

• The complexity of policy processes, which makes them intrinsically hard to influence

• The fact that research-based evidence in practice rarely plays a large role in influencing policy

• But that such influence is nonetheless possible

• The need for policy influencers to have a holistic understanding of the policy formulation context and process

• The need for non-research skills (communications, networking, storytelling, political understanding, etc) in order to exert policy influence

• The importance of intent – the researcher wishing to influence policy has strongly to desire to do so and act accordingly (Young, 2008)

There appears to be a need for any future intervention more fully to take account of the RAPID findings in two respects: first, yet more active engagement with the policymaking community, so that it sees how its needs are being connected to research; increased attention to societal processes and how they connect to the environmental issues addressed more directly by BONUS, and therefore an increased role for economic and social sciences in the programme.

A policy impact study commissioned by the BONUS EEIG (Barnard & Eliott, 2017) confirms the potential for policy impact, based on analysis of project documentation and surveys of participants and policymakers, but also points to the limited uptake of scientific results into policy so far and explain this in part through a lack of outreach and engagement with policymaking processes, as opposed to communication of results (which our own stakeholder and participant interviews and survey indicate is well done). The authors conclude that “stakeholders view the BONUS programme as having had a strong positive impact on three key areas: the application of science to policy development; changes in funding patterns both for research and for the development of innovative industries; and on the involvement of different actors (engagement).” They argue that there have also been effects on the increased sharing of scientific infrastructure during the period of BONUS.

Project leaders and policymakers said that BONUS served in some cases as a channel for the spread of good practice – both at the level of scientific practice and in terms of its use of a high-quality, peer-review-based proposal assessment process and modern administration.

The political, professional and industrial environment and wider society

Stock or reservoir of knowledge

Stage 0: Topic/issue

identification

Stage 1: Inputs to research

Stage 2: Research process

Stage 3: Primary

outputs from research

Stage 4: Secondary outputs:

policy making; product

development

Stage 5: Adoption by practitioners and public

Stage 6: final

outcome

Direct feedback paths

Interface A: Project

specification and selection

Interface B: Dissemination

Direct impact from processes and primary outputs to adoption

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4.2.3 Has BONUS structured research in the Baltic Sea area and contributed to ERA?

The core feature of BONUS is the integration of national programmes to the extent of replacing them, which has become the case in most of the participating countries. As observed in the Interim BONUS Evaluation Report (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014), “BONUS members, i.e. the National Funding Institutions within the Baltic States have jointly agreed to a Strategic Research Agenda for the Baltic and also jointly committed their financial contributions to the programme. It should be noted that this is a cash contribution which arguably reflects a much higher level of commitment to integration than an in-kind contribution would do. Due to the cross-cutting nature of BONUS, there are no clear statistics to indicate the total value of the national commitments within this domain. However, one analysis estimated that 14% of the region's total research and development funds allocated within the thematic scope of the programme are coordinated through BONUS. This analysis indicates a significant variation between individual countries, from 5% in Finland to 77% in Germany. However, due to the uncertainty concerning these figures, the variation may instead be due to structural differences in the way the value has been estimated.”

According to policymakers we interviewed, several countries did a special exercise to review their national research in the area before committing to BONUS and joining in the work to develop the SRA. The varying foci of different countries on different types of project underlines that there are many research questions brought to the table by participants that are not prioritised across the whole of BONUS – and correspondingly, that membership of BONUS allows each Participating State the chance to influence the programming of a greater amount of research than it could individually fund.

According to the BONUS Secretariat, none of the participating states currently runs a separate Baltic Sea research programme: all their programmes are currently channelled through BONUS and are therefore structured by the BONUS SRA. In addition to national co-funding, the EU contribution to funding BONUS has triggered and additional €5.5m in national funding and a further in-kind contribution of infrastructure worth €3.5m. BONUS has clearly enabled the national authorities to strengthen their research efforts in relation to the Baltic Sea. They would not have spent as much money on this in the absence of BONUS. This is a resounding success – but the obverse side of the coin is the lack of a continuing mechanism that would continue to structure the research across participating states. When BONUS finishes, the economic inducement to cooperate disappears and it is unclear whether the participating states will be prepared to programme jointly without that incentive. Given that BONUS has missed the deadline for applying for a direct continuation, it is unlikely that despite the one-year extension already granted by the Commission an EU instrument can be put in place rapidly enough to start immediately after BONUS, so at least for a period the ability of the participating states jointly to programme without external support may be tested.

For the time being, however, the BONUS funding, SRA and activities have reduced fragmentation in the research community by increasing cooperation and laid the basis for a more coherent research strategy across the Baltic Sea region. Researchers confirm that they are better networked and operate in larger networks than before and policymakers have better access to a wider set of relevant research. These achievements are consistent with the goals of ERA.

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4.2.4 Barriers to impact

The analysis suggests the presence of at least three barriers.

• Despite the considerable outreach of the BONUS programme and its significant efforts to involve and communicate with policymakers, the links to policy appear weak. Policy is inherently hard to influence and does not respond to the generation of new evidence in the linear way imagined by many researchers. This implies a need for more deliberate efforts to engage with policy development and to take better account of the socio-economic dimensions of the work and probably dedicated projects aimed at the research-policy link itself

• The inability of individual states jointly to programme rests on the natural tendency of national agencies to see joint programmes as a loss of ‘their’ budget in a zero-sum game and is typically resisted. There are two ways past this barrier: an incentive (as is provided by the EU in BONUS); or a realisation at the political level that joint programming in fact offers a positive-sum game, in which synergies mean that each takes out more than she puts in

• Lack of budget among the poorer countries involved has been a significant brake on their involvement. While BONUS has made valuable contributions to increasing scientific capacity and production, this has been achieved in a very unequal way, with the EU contribution matching those of the individual participating states (Figure 4). Four EU-15 states therefore received 88% of the funding, effectively doubling their national effort. While BONUS funding has undoubtedly been welcome in the New Member States – particularly in Latvia and Lithuania, where research budgets have been under particular pressure since the financial crisis – these represent only 1% each of the total spending (and therefore the EU contribution), while Estonia represents 3% and Poland 7%. Since capacity building is an explicit objective, it is possible to argue that a more redistributive mechanism would be appropriate, although that could increase the size of the funding gap that would follow the end of any programme the most in those participating states least able to cope with it

4.3 Efficiency of BONUS

4.3.1 The Strategic Research Agenda

As indicated in Section 4.1.1, the SRA is well constructed using a highly consultative process and well reflects the scientific needs and the views of the scientific community, as was confirmed to us in interviews with project leaders and other stakeholders. It has been updated and remains relevant, though a further update would be appropriate if BONUS is to continue in some form. Some of the participating Member State representatives argued that one weakness is that it has been so dominated by ‘hard’ scientists that it neglects the social and economic issues that need to be resolved in order to implement the eventual scientific findings and that correspondingly it lacks projects connecting directly to policymaking. A second criticism was that the somewhat ‘bottom-up’ process of collecting inputs from relevant stakeholders has led to the SRA tackling a rather long list of issues, so that it is unfocused. In practice, it has not been possible to find enough high-quality projects to cover all the areas it defines, which tends to support the idea that greater focus could be helpful.

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4.3.2 Governance

Given the number of parties involved and its multiple lines of accountability to funders, BONUS’ governance is necessarily complex but is also seen as functioning well, except in one area. Members and national representatives say that the Executive and Steering Committees have built up high levels of trust and cooperation and are able not only to reach consensus but also in the latter stages of the programme to introduce some flexibility in the allocation of money notably using in-kind infrastructure contributions to free up resources needed by some members in order to participate in all the calls. National funders appear satisfied with the lines of accountability and the information they receive.

The one area of criticism is the Advisory Board, which was also said by the interim evaluation to be too remote from the Steering Committee. The problem described to us was frequent changes among the representatives in that Board, leading to discontinuity and undermining its ability to provide advice.

The act of delegating funding decisions from the EU and national levels to the level of the BONUS programme introduces a principal-agent problem: that is, there is potential for the agent to select projects in her own best interest rather than in the interests of the principals. We saw no evidence or testimony that would suggest such problems have arisen. National representatives, other policymakers and project leaders saw BONUS as very transparent and pointed out that in the comparatively small communities of relevant policymakers and researchers people tend to know each other and bad behaviour is quickly identified. The pressure for BONUS to act as an honest broker is intensified by the publication of detailed information about funding decisions, making it difficult to hide improper behaviour.

4.3.3 Administration

Without exception, everyone we interviewed was full of praise for the effectiveness, efficiency, transparency and honesty of the administration by the BONUS EEIG in the context of the requirements of an Article 185 programme. It is well managed and operates orderly monitoring arrangements that allow it to report in a clear way to its principals. The programme development process through defining an SRA was seen in almost all respects as being good practice and the project assessment process is equivalent to best practice among the participating states. The researchers surveyed said that the secretariat was more effective than equivalent functions of other funders and that the BONUS ‘brand’ is highly respected. We found the level of documentation, provision of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and administrative order to be high and rooted in a strong NW European administrative tradition.

Stakeholders are unanimous in their approval of BONUS’ style of communication, at least to the scientific and policy communities. A few voices question whether the general public has been sufficiently addressed in BONUS’ communications. Our analysis of effects on public policy does not contradict this positive view of BONUS’ communications: rather, it suggests that additional, policy-focused activities may need to be programmed in future, rather than increasing the volume of ‘broadcasting’ from the secretariat. This communication needs to extend to policymakers outside the Baltic Sea region and within the European Commission.

The BONUS EEIG’s running costs are about what one would expect of an equivalent national research funder operating a relatively small programme. Per se, these do not represent a problem. Nonetheless, the complexity of what the secretariat has to do is considerable because of the requirements of the Article 185 instrument, which also imposes the costs of a second level of administration at the national level and of oversight at the European Commission. In cost terms, a simpler solution would clearly be preferable.

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We have not been able to identify any significant flaws in the Implementing Agreement between the Commission and the BONUS EEIG that limit its effectiveness.

4.3.4 Article 185

The complexity imposed by the use of the Article 185 instrument is considerable. It entails a double approval process, where first BONUS assesses and prioritises proposals and then each national element of those it recommends for funding have to be authorised by the relevant national funding authority. The complexity of the communication and coordination involved is illustrated in Figure 6. A consequence for the applicants is that a process of applying for funding from BONUS is stretched from about three to some twelve months (Table 13). Thereafter, project leaders have to report both to BONUS and their respective national authority for monitoring and accountability purposes. Given the underlying complexity, it is refreshing that the BONUS secretariat has such a strongly positive image among project performers, policymakers and national representatives.

Article 185 nonetheless brings important advantages. Not least among these is the high level of EU co-funding – at 50% much higher and more attractive than the 30% in the ERA-NETs. Our interviews confirm that this funding level is a key attraction and reason to tolerate the complexity of the instrument and a powerful incentive for joint programming, with the advantages that brings in scope and turning joint programming into a positive-sum game from the perspective of the participating states. At the national level, the Article 185 mechanism also has the important effect of triggering long-term planning and commitment.

In Section 4.1.2 we discussed – based on evidence collected in this evaluation –possible alternatives to the use of Article 185 and concluded that (whatever the organisational disadvantages of the instrument), from the perspective of the participating states the instrument is nonetheless the most attractive way to win the benefits of joint programming. This logic, however, risks locking the Commission into a logic where Article 185 tackles a policy failure – inability to identify and exploit the benefits of joint programming – for the period of the intervention but fails to correct that underlying failure. As a result the case for re-using Article 185 becomes strong but the Commission fails to exercise change agency and risks becoming locked into one of a set of everlasting interventions that over time will lock in the research funding and performing system at the national level rather than stimulating it to adopt new behaviours, learn and change with the dynamics of changing needs. A way is needed to break out of this Catch-22.

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4.3.5 Beneficiaries

The primary beneficiaries of BONUS are research organisations. This is clear from what the researchers say they are doing in their projects – primarily basic and applied research, data collection and tool development for research and monitoring purposes. They have little interest in innovation or the market (Figure 11,

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Figure 14). The analysis of who receives money in Section 2.4.2 is entirely consistent with the primary purpose of the programme, which is to address environmental issues through research that eventually supports policy decisions. Industry gets some 6% of the money. Few industrial companies are involved (

Table 11).

FP7 was required to spend 15% of its budget with SMEs. This is a target at the level of FP7, as a whole, and not for individual actions funded though FP7. There is no special clause in the FP7 Grant Agreements to require a minimum 15% of a project funding to SMEs. In practice, such a target would be inconsistent with the purposes of BONUS.

A second issue related to beneficiaries is the extremely uneven allocation of EU co-funding among participating states. This is an arithmetic consequence of the differences among the states in the amount of money they can or choose to put into the programme (Figure 4). The result is a Matthew effect: the rich get richer. And the amount of capacity building done in the weakest parts of the Baltic Sea research community is a very small part of the total. The extent to which different participating states receive money is of course in part driven by excellence: proposals are peer reviewed and BONUS appears to do a very good job of selecting the best. But it is also strongly driven by how much money the States can contribute. There may be a case for an explicit reconsideration of the balance between BONUS’ (implicit) excellence objective and its explicit task of building research capacity around the Baltic Sea.

4.4 Coherence

BONUS takes place in the context of a large number of policy initiatives in, or applying to, the Baltic Sea region. Leaving aside the wider aspects of the Framework Programme, which are open to all, BONUS is unique in focusing on research. The other initiatives span monitoring and policymaking for the Baltic marine and maritime environments including the fisheries, development of the greater Baltic Sea region, Europe-wide such as ERA and the ‘three O’s’ policy (open science, open innovation, open to the world) (European Commission, 2016b) and a range of other policy initiatives more peripherally connected to BONUS.

Section 3.2 provides descriptions of these initiatives and shows that the actions of BONUS are consistent with them. Table 24 to Table 30 at the Appendix provide a detailed analysis showing how the objectives of BONUS and those of other initiatives match and showing which BONUS projects contribute to the objectives of each.

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Table 20 offers a summary view of these analyses. We conclude that BONUS is in detail coherent with other relevant EU policies.

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Table 20 BONUS projects’ contribution to various EU policies and strategies (the newly approved Blue Baltic call projects are not included)

Strategic Objective MSFD CFP WFD EUBSR OTHERS

Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

BAMBI

BIO-C3

Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment

COCOA, Soils2Sea, MICROALGAE

OPTITREAT

PROMISE

SWERA

ZEB

BALTCOAST

COCOA

OPTITREAT

PROMISE

BALTCOAST

SOILS2SEA

MICROALGAE

OPTITREAT

PROMISE

SOILS2SEA(CAP) MICROALGAE (BG)

Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

SHEBA INSPIRE

Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea region

CHANGE

BALTICAPP

GO4BALTIC

MIRACLE

GOHERR MIRACLE GO4BALTIC

SHEBA

STORMWINDS

BALTSPACE (Directive 2014/89/EU)

GO4BALTIC (CAP)

MIRACLE (CAP)

STORMWINDS (Directive 2014/89/EU)

Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea region

BLUEPRINT

FERRYSCOPE

FISHVIEW

HARDCORE

PINBAL

FISHVIEW ANCHOR

ESABALT

GEOILWATCH

HARDCORE

As required of Article 185 programmes, implementation of BONUS has involved a significant investment of national funds from the participating states, in particular of the funds devoted to research in the marine environment. In return, BONUS has provided benefits at the national level, as it has taken from the participating states the burden of opening, selecting and managing research and technological calls under the highest excellence and ethical standards. However, the main added value for the participating states is in connection with the original objectives that justified the implementation of the programme, in particular for the need to arrive at a sustainable development of the Baltic Sea environmental research in support of marine governance policies through the integration of research capacity in the region.

A particular feature of BONUS is that the EU financial contributions it offers are restricted to Member States. However, there is no block to Third Country participation on a pay-as-you-go basis. It has been possible to include the Russian Federation in this way, though so far only two projects have been launched that involve Russia. BONUS has nonetheless built a friendly and consultative relationship with research institutions from the Russian Federation, is able to exchange research results with them and can involve them in devising strategy. The lack of wider policy engagement with Russia means there is little prospect of BONUS having a wider influence on emissions in the Russian parts of the Baltic Sea catchment. Given the significant contribution of Russian industry to pollution in the Baltic, there is a case for forming yet closer ties.

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4.5 EU Added Value

A central principle in the EU is that of ‘subsidiarity’: the idea that the Union should not do things that are better done at the level of the Member States. In cases where action at EU level is thought to be more effective, EU added value (EAV) describes why this is the case.

Table 21 shows how the idea of EU added value has evolved and in fact expanded through the life of the Framework Programme.

Table 21 How EU Added Value has been defined in the Framework Programmes

Dimensions of European Added Value FP1 FP2 FP3 FP4 FP5 FP6 FP7 FP8

Scale too big for Member States (MS) to handle alone X X X X X X X X Financial benefits: a joint approach would be advantageous X X X X X X X X

Combines complementary MS efforts to tackle European problems X X X X X X X X

Cohesion X X X X X X X X Unification of European S&T across borders X X X X X X X X Promotes uniform laws and standards X X X X X X X X Mobilising EU potential at European and global level by coordinating national and EU programmes X X X X X

Contributes to implementing EU policy X X X X Contributes to tackling societal challenges X X X X Exploits opportunities for the development of European science, technology and industry

X X X X

Structures the EU R&D community and ‘fabric’ X X X Improves quality through exposure to EU-wide competition X X

Coordinates and strengthens ’internationalisation’ X Source: Modified from (Arnold, 2012)

• Based on the analyses in this Chapter and Chapter 3,

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Table 22 summarises the contributions of BONUS under these expanding definitions of EU added value. BONUS contributes to all dimensions. Its contribution to cohesion has been limited by the fact that its funds-matching mechanism tends to reinforce the status quo rather than reducing inequalities within the macro-region.

Interviews clearly indicate that the scale of the BONUS effort and its organising effect on research in the Baltic Sea region were unattainable without a higher-level intervention. Stakeholders believe that BONUS provides a platform for cooperation in research activities on the issues related to the Baltic Sea that could not be organised from the national level. BONUS has reduced the fragmentation of research and made it more integrated and interdisciplinary than before. It allows the scientific communities to get wider perspective, get new knowledge from the fellow researchers from other countries and move to international level. For smaller participating states it increases critical mass. BONUS pulls together the available resources, provides a greater impact from research and raises its international visibility. It stimulates dialogue among the participating states and with the Russian Federation and contributes to collaboration in terms of socio-cultural exchange.

Project participants underline that most of the work required partnership and that there was additionality: much of the work would not have been undertaken without BONUS funding; some of the work would have been done nonetheless, but at smaller scale, more slowly, with higher risk, and so on (Figure 17).

The considerable synergies between BONUS and other EU policies have been demonstrated in Sections 3.2 and 3.4.3.2 to be very high.

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Table 22 How BONUS provides EU added value

Dimensions of EU Added Value Comment

Scale too big for Member States (MS) to handle alone

This is part of the original motivation of BONUS, the environmental sustainability of the Baltic Sea can only be achieved by transnational cooperation and structuring

Financial benefits: a joint approach would be advantageous

BONUS avoids redundancies in the production of the necessary science and, for the same funds, obtains more added value through transnational cooperation

Combines complementary MS efforts to tackle European problems

The need to achieve sustainable development in the Baltic Sea is a problem of European dimension both because several MS are affected and because the scientific and technological power of these states is needed together to achieve solutions

Cohesion BONUS has contributed through research joint activities Unification of European S&T across borders

The call for proposals stablished by BONUS is a reference for scientists and technologist in the region, a unified framework to collaborate/compete.

Promotes uniform laws and standards

BONUS is contributing to the implementation of standards in the region for EU policies such as the MSFD

Mobilising EU potential at European and global level by coordinating national and EU programmes

BONUS is an example of this coordination as a successful implementation of Article 185

Contributes to implementing EU policy

BONUS has significantly contributed to the relevant EU policies and strategies (e.g. MSFD, CFP, Blue Growth, EUSBSR,…), described in detail along this report

Contributes to tackling societal challenges

Addresses Climate change and Smart, green and integrated transport

Exploits opportunities for the development of European science, technology and industry

The programme for the call of proposals on science and technology foster the development of science and technology at regional level

Structures the EU R&D community and ‘fabric’

With its process to define research and technological priorities, the trans-national collaboration and its call for proposals, BONUS is contributing to a de-fragmentation of the R&D landscape devoted to generated knowledge for the sustainable development of the Baltic Sea

Improves quality through exposure to EU-wide competition

Scientific quality has been raised by the programme, but competition is not EU-wide

Coordinates and strengthens ’internationalisation’

Plays a small role via scientific diplomacy with the Russian Federation

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4.6 Implementation of the interim evaluation recommendations

The Interim evaluation (Burbridge, McCoshan, Devillers, Fossi, & Radziejewska, 2014) made nine recommendations for the future of BONUS. This section contains our observations on the extent to which these recommendations have been followed and is based on an account produced by the BONUS secretariat (BONUS Secretariat, 2016). As far as possible, we have ensured that this account is consistent with the evidence we have collected.

1. Develop a synthesis of the research supported by BONUS since its start as an ERA-NET until its current status as an Article 185. This should highlight the achievements and impacts.

This remains work in progress, which is planned to be completed during 2017. Impact studies of the science and policy have been completed and will be published. Project syntheses have been produced but there is not yet an all-encompassing account. While making such a document is challenging, doing so would expose useful evidence about the success of BONUS to policymakers, researchers and the public alike.

2. Move towards the pooling of national funds to reduce the number and complexity caused by different funding streams. This would ensure more efficient management, reduce time to grant and overcome difficulties associated with applying common funding rules within national administrations.

The difficulties caused by the lack of a real common pot are well recognised. BONUS has not been able to persuade its principals in the participating Member States to agree on a real common pot for the future. It has, however, found and agreed an intermediate position where (except for Germany and Belgium, which participates in a BONUS project) a post-evaluation common pot may be used but this has not in practice been introduced.

3. Take steps to increase the provision of in-kind infrastructure contributions to BONUS projects. e.g. national administrations could provide incentives to partly subsidise the provision of infrastructure to BONUS. If the in-kind provision of infrastructure cannot be increased, further national cash contributions will be necessary to ensure that BONUS is fully implemented.

BONUS has managed to obtain €3.5m in additional in-kind infrastructure provision, releasing €0.79m of EU co-funding. In addition, in-kind personnel contributions amount to at least €3m. BONUS has been able creatively to use in-kind infrastructure contributions to free up cash in some participating states which had reached the limit f their planned cash contributions to BONUS projects. The €3.5m is nonetheless considerably below the €12m level required by the implementation agreement.

4. Take steps to ensure that BONUS projects build synergies and network with other projects and initiatives within the Baltic Sea Region.

Section 3.2 of this report documents the considerable level of networking and integration between BONUS and other projects and initiatives in the Baltic Sea Region. It is difficult to imagine this reaching a higher level. Additional funds could be used for this purpose from the INTERREG Baltic Sea Region programme through a call for projects opening in autumn 2017.

5. Increase the interaction between the BONUS Advisory Board and the Steering Committee by, for example, virtual online meetings.

The use of virtual meetings remains at the planning stage. Given the evidence we found about the changing composition of the Board, it is not clear to us that virtual meetings would be the best type.

6. Focus communications which highlight the impacts arising from BONUS towards the needs of specific stakeholder groups: institutions, conventions, policies,

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Directorates-General of the European Commission, ministries and regional authorities, including those responsible for regional development.

BONUS continues to do many communication activities. However, as we indicate above, we see a more fundamental need to engage more actively with policymakers inside and outside the Baltic Sea Region in setting the agenda and to address more of the socio-economic issues involved in reaching the BONUS objectives, not least through greater involvement of social scientists.

7. The participating states and the European Commission should strengthen strategic communication on the potential of BONUS funded research results for policy to the different Directorates-Generals involved and within Horizon 2020. The participating states should increase their awareness of the impact of BONUS on their national programmes more widely, e.g. towards fisheries' management, regional development, coastal zone development, agriculture etc.

The Secretariat is able to show many instances in which project-level results have in some way been communicated to the European Commission. It is important that this should continue as part of a process of continual dialogue. However, as in relation to recommendation 6, we believe that a more systematic form of communication is necessary where BONUS itself addresses policy questions and organises its work and delivery in line with these, rather than expecting policymakers at all times to be able to integrate the large volume of project-level information produced by BONUS and other research relevant to the Commission.

Take steps to increase - The BONUS Secretariat now maintains and provides a very wide-ranging set of KPIs, using data it is possible to collect from participants and the Secretariat itself. Necessarily, these are mainly process and output indicators. Result and impact indicators are very difficult to obtain from participants. Understanding results and impacts tends to require significant evaluation effort and activities that are outside the scope and capability of administration. It is not reasonable to expect the Secretariat to be able to provide these. Separate studies are required such as those launched by the Secretariat (Snoeijs-Leijonmalm, forthcoming 2017) (Barnard & Eliott, 2017).

8. Target the communication of calls for proposals towards SMEs and provide additional support towards applications by SMEs and facilitate their incorporation within developing project consortia.

BONUS responded to this recommendation by launching the ‘Inno’ call, which aimed to increase SME involvement. For In practice, however, the number of proposals that included SMEs was modest, suggesting that the focus of the programme on research and policy provided limited innovation opportunities to SMEs. The subsequent Blue Baltic call has changed the funding and participation rules for SMEs, for example by increasing the rate of subsidy to 25% of their costs. However, the level of SME participation in BONUS overall remains low.

The focus on innovation matters, which essentially means focusing on an improvement of the individual innovation capabilities of project partners, is not consistent with the objectives of BONUS as a policy programme. Consequently the inclusion of SMEs cannot be mandatory, but has to be subordinated to the purpose of BONUS. The 15% target for SME participation in FP7 does not apply to every single programme, but poses an objective for the Framework Programme as a whole.

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5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This Chapter contains our conclusions and recommendations, which focus on the lessons learnt about the Article 185 instrument and on the future of BONUS.

Our overriding conclusion is that BONUS has been in many ways a great success.

BONUS was a relevant response to the environmental and policy issues identified in the Baltic Sea region. It continues to be relevant, in part because the environmental issues are large scale and will necessarily take a long time to tackle and in part because the institutional obstacles to joint programming at the level of the Baltic Sea largely remain. BONUS has been a convenient ‘work-around’ for these, not a permanent solution, which would have required behavioural, regulatory and policy changes. BONUS remains relevant also in the sense that more environmental problems are becoming prominent than before, for example in the area of microplastics.

BONUS has also made a small but potentially important contribution to EU science diplomacy by including the Russian Federation and strengthening scientific links with the relevant Russian research community. As a Baltic Sea state with significant economic activity, partnership with Russia is a precondition for improving the Baltic Sea environment.

We are not convinced of the usefulness of the proposed extension of the scope of a possible BONUS successor programme to cover the North Sea, which does not share the specific characteristics of the Baltic Sea and which would dilute the attention paid to the urgent problems of the Baltic. A considerable amount of work would still be needed to define and agree a strategic research agenda. A further complication with a North Sea extension would be that most of the relevant coastline belongs to Norway, an Associated State, or to the UK whose willingness and ability to participate in such programmes appears uncertain in the context of Brexit. An extension could be seen as a first step towards generalising BONUS across the Union – in which case its objectives would more easily be served by the more efficient arrangements of the wider Framework Programme.

It is possible to imagine less cumbersome ways than an Article 185 arrangement to reach BONUS’ goals. However, if we accept the idea that it remains impossible from the member state level to implement a single common pot for joint programmes, then Article 185 appears to be appropriate. An alternative for the future would be to use the European Joint Programming (EJP) Co-fund instrument. This is a mechanism that provides EU subsidy for a five-year set of jointly programmed research activities by a group of Member States. It does not require a strategic research agenda but five annually-approved work programmes agreed by the participating states. It is administratively lighter than a programme based on Article 185 and better adapted to smaller activities than those generally pursued in Article 185 programmes. A disadvantage of EJP Co-fund, however, is that it is less binding, because it on annual rather than longer term commitments by the participating states. Crucially, it is vulnerable to the same kind of complexity as is currently experienced in BONUS unless a real common pot is used.

Whichever instrument is used, a future focus needs to be on how to reduce or eliminate barriers to joint programming at the Member State level and in particular the reluctance to use a real common pot. This reluctance is fed by regulations and practices at agency level. There is potential to reduce it by engaging with the participating states to a greater extent at the level of ministries, which can in some cases over-rule the agencies and in others find creative solutions to make single common pots possible.

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BONUS has clearly made contributions to a wide range of EU policy objectives by providing research contributions, as our analyses of thematic overlaps and complementarities show.

More broadly, the use of the Article 185 instrument imposes considerable complexity.

• Regulatory and general aspects

- The mechanism of Article 185 sets out strict rules and procedures that are difficult to implement and cause inflexibility

- There are ambitious legal requirements for launching Article 185 with collecting all the necessary political and financial support from the European Commission and the Parliament

• Different funding streams

- High general management costs due to the two funding pathways

- Sophisticated governance is required, given the number of parties involved and the multiple lines of accountability to funders

- Mismatches between regulations in the participant states and BONUS’ rules

- Differences arise in the programming periods between BONUS and the ‘standard’ EU planning periods

- All countries have to participate in all calls, even when their budgets are exhausted

• Proposal submission

- Some countries require that beneficiaries submit a separate application concerning the provision of national fund to the corresponding National Funding Institution

• Proposal evaluation and approval

- There is a double proposal evaluation/approval process: Once proposals have been evaluated and ranked each of the National Funding Institutions undertake national negotiations and funding decisions with their national beneficiaries within the selected projects in accordance with an agreement between BONUS EEIG and the respective National Funding Institution. Only after that is the Commission annual advance payment to the EEIG distributed to the projects. All that makes project selection sub-optimal, complex and labour-intensive

- If one country runs out of budget, a highly-ranked proposal may go unfunded

- Burdensome negotiations, validation and financial check-ups on organisations

- High information, communication density and coordination efforts and long time-to-contract periods (up to 12 months)

• Reporting

- Project leaders have to report both to BONUS and their respective national authority for monitoring and accountability purposes

- Frequency and content of reporting are greater than necessary

- Financial management is difficult and inefficient due to decentralised management of funds provided by the national research agencies

In line with the high-level goals of the Framework Programme, it is expected that Article 185 programmes should have a structuring effect upon the fabric of EU research, for example by encouraging division of labour, specialisation and the focusing of resources on specific themes.

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The BONUS Article 185 programme builds on a longer process of identifying and collaborating common themes in Baltic Sea research. Its first task was to construct an SRA by involving funders and other stakeholders in the participating states. This induced many of them to identify and survey national activities. In some countries, the Agenda encouraged multiple national funders to become involved. The SRA became an extension of national strategies while the requirement that projects should involve at least three participating states ensured that the issues taken up in the SRA were common among at least that many states, even though the thematic foci of the individual states’ project participation varied considerably. The long-term nature of states’ commitment to BONUS ensured that in certain cases spending on Baltic Sea research was maintained irrespective of other budgetary pressures.

Unfortunately, no data are available about the proportion of participating states’ Baltic Sea research effort that was channelled through BONUS. It is clear, however, at least in the cases of Germany and Denmark that spending on BONUS risked crowding out other marine and maritime research; they supported the idea of extending BONUS to the North Sea partly in order to redress the balance of effort.

Since BONUS is still in progress, it is not possible to test whether the extent of cooperation and joint programming can be maintained. BONUS has clearly increased the level of cooperation among researchers. Experience both in the Framework Programme and the Nordic cooperation is that the resulting networks remain intact after the end of the funding and that those cooperating are likely to seek further ways to cooperate, for example in seeking funding for further project work. Some participating states were already committed to cooperation before the start of BONUS and the efforts to extend the life of BONUS beyond the present Article 185 arrangement suggests that these efforts at cooperation will only intensify. We conclude therefore that BONUS has had something of a structuring effect, building on pre-existing efforts, and that the prospects for this to continue are good.

BONUS has enhanced research capacity in the Baltic Sea macro-region and increased both the quantity and the quality of relevant scientific output. An unfortunate effect of the co-funding principle, however, is that BONUS has had the biggest effects on capacity in the countries best able to afford national contributions. In contrast, the absolute effects in the small states have been small, even though it can be argued that building research capacity in the form of people and resources is most urgent among them. It would be useful if future co-funding instruments could allocate co-funding by the EU at the programme level. This would allow uneven allocation of co-funding among projects. In the case of BONUS, it would have been possible to build more capacity in the cash-poor Baltic States by doubling their level of EU co-funding and balancing the programme budget by an almost invisibly small reduction in co-funding to the richer states.

BONUS has addressed key societal and environmental challenges. Its influence on policy has been more diffuse – partly because much of the work it does relates to monitoring and measurement which tend to support existing regulatory and policy process rather than more visible policy changes and partly because the interface between the programme and policymakers has tended to involve communication of results more than policymaker inputs to goal-setting, despite the involvement of policymakers in parts of the programming and SRA processes. It appears that their involvement needs to be even more intensive, potentially requiring greater involvement of national ministries in order to strengthen the link from research to policy.

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At this stage, there is no evidence that BONUS has had a direct effect on the environment, nor is it reasonable to expect it to have done so given the short period of time involved. Improving the link to policy would increase the likelihood of environmental impact. While BONUS has increased total research capacity, some of the smaller states are in greater need of capacity building than some of the larger ones. BONUS’ requirement that national and EU financial contributions should match means that this imbalance is not addressed.

Given the constraints imposed by the Article 185 instrument, BONUS has been very efficient. Its SRA was well constructed on the basis of wide consultation and has been updated. The rather bottom-up nature of the process, however, brings a risk of losing focus while the opportunity to introduce new topics together with the revision of the Agenda further encourages this tendency to fragmentation. The governance structures have worked well, BONUS has acted as a faithful agent to its principals using clear, fair project selection and transparent administration methods. Given the complexity of the administration task imposed by Article 185, the Secretariat is efficient and has an extremely good reputation among researchers and other stakeholders alike. While BONUS is the smallest of the Article 185 programmes, within the Commission it requires a similar level of management effort to the others. This diseconomy of scale needs to be balanced against the importance of the BONUS objectives.

BONUS has not funded many SMEs, and certainly fewer than would have been the case were the overall target for FP7 to be imposed at the individual programme level. However, in our view BONUS is essentially a research programme intended to support policy. Imposing a target for SME participation in this case would involve superimposing an industrial innovation objective onto a policy research programme without considering whether the objectives are consistent.

We have conducted extensive analysis into its thematic coherence and found that BONUS coheres well with other aspects of EU policy. Correspondingly, BONUS respects the subsidiarity principle: it is not something the participating states could do on their own. It adds advantages of scale, combines complementary national efforts, extends cross-border policy and scientific and policy communities, encourages the use of common standards, coordinates research efforts contributing to the implementation of EU policy, addresses key societal challenges, helps structure part of the European research community and research agenda and plays a small role in scientific diplomacy.

We have explored the EU Added Value of BONUS under various dimensions. BONUS contributes to all, although its contribution to cohesion has been limited by the fact that its funds-matching mechanism tends to reinforce the status quo rather than reducing inequalities within the macro-region. The BONUS effort and its organising effect on research in the Baltic Sea region were unattainable without a higher-level intervention. Stakeholders believe that BONUS provides a platform for cooperation in research activities on the issues related to the Baltic Sea that could not be organised from the national level. BONUS has reduced the fragmentation of research and made it more integrated and interdisciplinary than before. It allows the scientific communities to get wider perspective, get new knowledge from the fellow researchers from other countries and move to international level. For smaller participating states it increases critical mass. BONUS pulls together the available resources, provides a greater impact from research and raises its international visibility. It stimulates dialogue among the participating states and with the Russian Federation and contributes to collaboration in terms of socio-cultural exchange. Most of the work required partnership and there was additionality: much of the work would not have been undertaken without BONUS funding; some of the work would have been done nonetheless, but at smaller scale, more slowly, with higher risk, and so on.

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Our recommendations follow from this discussion:

At this stage BONUS should be allowed to run its course without the imposition of 1.major changes. Three necessary changes are

BONUS should be encouraged to consider whether the addition of a small i)number of projects aiming to improve its linkage to the policymaking process would be useful

BONUS should also establish closer links to policymakers and policymaking ii)processes in the participating states at ministry level and not just at agency level, in order to ensure a more continuous dialogue between research and policy

Having declared themselves willing to use a post-evaluation common pot in iii)future, the BONUS participating states should do so in the remaining call of the current BONUS programme

Article 185, in the BONUS implementation, imposes a high degree of complexity on 2.those involved with it. The biggest cause of this is the lack of a single common pot. Working-level discussions with the participating states will not remedy this situation, which is prevalent also in other instruments and is a significant barrier to joint programming. The Commission should consider whether it can exert influence over the participating states at a higher level, so that regulatory impediments can be addressed from the top down

Our discussion of BONUS highlighted that it provides a temporary solution that risks 3.becoming more permanent because the environmental issues take a long time to resolve and the tolerance of Article 185 to the lack of a single common pot allows the participating states to avoid addressing ways and means to create one. This imposes a systemic risk of lock-in. The purpose of the Framework Programme is to improve European performance along a number of dimensions. To do this, it must respond to developing needs and itself change its programme in order to improve EU performance. Allowing BONUS or other Article 185 programmes to become permanent would prevent the Framework Programme from acting as a change agent in this way. The Commission should consider requiring future users of Article 185 to define an exit strategy, as a condition for receiving funding. This strategy should explain how, why and when the programme will cease to be dependent upon Article 185 funding – either because it will no longer be needed or because it plans to find an alternative source of income

The Article 185 co-funding mechanism militates against differentially building 4.capacity among weaker participants. The Commission should consider whether it can introduce rules that would permit such capacity building, such as allocating co-funding at the programme level rather than the project level, allowing differential co-funding rates among projects or participants

Any continuation of BONUS would naturally have to be consistent with the 5.objectives and rules of the Framework Programme as well as other relevant policies. In addition to Article 185, alternative instruments such as EJP Co-Fund should be considered. In the meantime, using the EraNet Co-Fund scheme could be an option for bridging between the present and the start of the Ninth Framework Programme, allowing a further call for proposals to be organised.

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However, the Commission should in any case consider adding the following criteria in the case of BONUS:

There should be a real common pot. i)

The proposal and strategy should explain the ‘exit’: how, when and why will ii)Commission funding no longer be required?

It should include a mechanism to allow more capacity building among the iii)participating states with limited national budgets.

It should address behavioural as well as scientific problems and devise iv)mechanisms to demonstrate greater potential for policy effects. This will probably involve a greater role for social sciences for a better science-policy interface.

It should continue to engage the Russian Federation. v)

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Glossary Appendix A

Abbreviation Meaning

AFISMON Development of the current Automatic Flow Injection Sampler to monitor microbially driven biogeochemical processes in the Baltic Sea water (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

ANCHOR The captain assistant system for navigation and routing during operations harbour (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

Article 185 (Art. 185)

Article 185 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) [ex-Article 169 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC)] enables the EU to participate in research programmes undertaken jointly by several Member States, including participation in the structures created for the execution of national programmes

BALTCOAST A systems approach framework for coastal research and management in the Baltic (a BONUS project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call)

BALTICAPP Wellbeing from the Baltic Sea – applications combining natural science and economics (a BONUS project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call)

BalticSTERN Systems Tools and Ecological-economic evaluation - a Research Network, an international research network with partners in all nine Baltic Sea countries

BALTISPACE Towards sustainable governance of Baltic marine space (a BONUS project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call)

BAMBI Baltic Sea marine biodiversity – addressing the potential of adaptation to climate change (a BONUS project funded under Viable Ecosystem call)

BASMATI Baltic Sea Maritime Spatial Planning for Sustainable Ecosystem Services (a BONUS project funded under Blue Baltic call)

BB Blue Baltic (a BONUS call) BEMIP Baltic Energy Market Interconnection Plan BG Blue Growth BIO-C3 Biodiversity changes – causes, consequences and management

implications (a BONUS project funded under Viable Ecosystem call) BLUEPRINT Biological lenses using gene prints – developing a genetic tool for

environmental monitoring in the Baltic Sea (a BONUS project funded under Viable Ecosystem call)

BONUS Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme BONUS EEIG

The European Economic Interest Grouping responsible for the BONUS programme. EEIGs are legal bodies under EU law

BSAP Baltic Sea Action Plan BSRP (Interreg) Baltic Sea Region Programme BSSSC Baltic Sea States Subregional Cooperation CAP Common Agricultural Policy (of EU) CBC Cross Border Collaboration CBSS Council of the Baltic Sea States CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research CFP Common Fisheries Policy (of EU) CHANGE Changing antifouling practices for leisure boats in the Baltic Sea (a

BONUS project funded under Viable Ecosystem call) COCOA Nutrient COcktails in COAstal zones of the Baltic Sea (a BONUS

project funded under Viable Ecosystem call) COSME Europe’s programme for small and medium-sized enterprises DDE Dichloro-diphenyl-dichloro-ethylene, a chemical compound, a

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breakdown product of the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane); a pollutant more potent than DDT

DG RTD European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation

EEA&NG European Economic Area and Norway Grants EIB European Investment Bank EJP European Joint Programming EMBL European Molecular Biology Laboratory ERA The European Research Area is a unified area open to the world

based on the internal market, in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely. Through ERA, the Union and its Member States will strengthen their scientific and technological bases, their competitiveness and their capacity to collectively address grand challenge

ERA-NET The ERA-NET scheme, launched in 2002 as part of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6)

ERC European Research Council ESABALT Enhanced Situational Awareness for Improved Maritime Safety in the

Baltic Sea (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call) ESF European Science Foundation ESPRIT European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology,

a series of integrated programmes of information technology research and development, running from 1983 to 1998

EU European Union EUSBSR EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region FERRYSCOPE Bridging the divide between satellite and shipborne sensing for Baltic

Sea water quality assessment (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

FISHVIEW Assessing fish passages by the use of a robotic fish sensor and enhanced digital imaging (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

FP Framework Programme of the EU to fund research and Development

FP7 Seventh Framework Programme of the EU which bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under a common roof playing a crucial role in reaching the goals of growth, competitiveness and employment. It is also a key pillar for the European Research Area (ERA)

G20 Group of Twenty, an international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies

GEOILWATCH Geopositional early warning system integration for disaster prevention in the Baltic Sea (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

GES Good Environmental Status (of European marine waters, required to be achieved by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive)

GO General policy objective (of BONUS) GO4BALTIC Coherent policies and governance of the Baltic Sea ecosystems (a

BONUS project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call) GOHERR Integrated governance of Baltic herring and salmon stocks involving

stakeholders (a BONUS project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call)

HARDCORE Harnessing coastal radars for environmental monitoring purposes (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

HELCOM Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (Helsinki Commission), the governing body for the 1992 Convention on the

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Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, known as the Helsinki Convention, signed by all the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea and by the European Economic Community

HYPER Hypoxia mitigation for Baltic Sea Ecosystem Restoration (a BONUS+ project)

ICES International Council for the Exploration of the Sea -a global organisation that develops science and advice to support the sustainable use of the oceans

INSPIRE Integrating spatial processes into ecosystem models for sustainable utilisation of fish resources (a BONUS project funded under Viable Ecosystem call)

JPI Joint Programming Initiative juste retour Principle that the funding granted to project participants from a

given country/region under a joint call is in proportion to the budget contributed to the joint call by that country/region

KPIs Key Performance Indicators MICROALGAE Cost efficient algal cultivation systems – a source of emission control

and industrial development (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

MIRACLE Mediating integrated actions for sustainable ecosystem services in a changing climate (a BONUS call funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call)

MISTRA Foundation of Strategic Environmental Research MITA Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (a research funding

agency in Lithuania) MS Member State, Member States MSFD Marine Strategy Framework Directive MSP Maritime Spatial Planning Directive ODI Overseas Development Institute (UK) OPTITREAT Optimisation of small wastewater treatment facilities (a BONUS

project funded under Innovation call) PCBs Polychlorinated biphenyls, a group of organic chlorine compounds

which used to be widely deployed in various industrial applications; toxic and extremely persistent pollutants

PINBAL Development of a spectrophotometric pH-measurement system for monitoring the Baltic Sea (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

PROMISE Phosphorus recycling of mixed substances (a BONUS project funded under Innovation call)

RFH Russian Foundation for Humanities SC Steering Committee (of BONUS) SEPA Swedish Environmental Protection Agency SES Sustainable Ecosystem Services (a BONUS call) SHEBA Sustainable shipping and environment of the Baltic Sea (a BONUS

project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call) SMEs Small and medium sized enterprises SO Specific objective (of BONUS) SOILS2SEA Reducing nutrient loadings from agricultural soils to the Baltic Sea

via groundwater and streams (a BONUS project funded under Viable Ecosystem call)

SRA Strategic Research Agenda (of BONUS) S&T Science and Technology STORMWINDS Strategic and operational risk management for wintertime maritime

transportation system (a BONUS project funded under Sustainable Ecosystem Services call)

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SWAM Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management SWERA Sunken wreck environmental risk assessment (a BONUS project

funded under Innovation call) TBT Tributyltin, a class of organotin compounds which used to be

deployed as biocides in antifouling paints, extremely toxic to marine life

TRAFI Finnish Transport Safety Agency A research funding agency in Finland

VASAB Vision and Strategies around the Baltic Sea, an intergovernmental cooperation of 11 Baltic Sea Region countries in the issues of spatial planning and management

VE Viable Ecosystem (a BONUS call) VINNOVA Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems VTS Vessel Traffic Service ZEB Zero emissions in the Baltic Sea (a BONUS project funded under

Innovation call)

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List of people interviewed Appendix B

Institution Person

BONUS Advisory Board Baltic Sea Region Programme Eeva Rantama IFREMER Gilles Lericolaise BONUS Steering Committee Members FORMAS Lisa Almesjö Estonian Research Council Maria Habicht Forschungszentrum Jülich Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH Joachim Harms

Ulrich Wolf

State Education Development Agency Linda Klūga-Rajčeviča Maija Bundule

Innovation Fund Denmark Fritz Köster Academy of Finland/FiRD Laura Raaska Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management Mats Svensson Research Council of Lithuania Aiste Vilkanauskyte BONUS EEIG EEIG, Executive director Kaisa Kononen EEIG, Programme director Andris Andrusaitis EEIG, Financial Manager Minna Ulvila Project managers Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR) Thorsten Reusch University of Copenhagen Lasse Riemann Aarhus University, Department of Biosciences Jacob Carstensen University of Tartu Henn Ojaveer Leibniz-Institut für Ostseeforschung, Warnemünde Matthias Labrenz Astri Polska Sp. z. o. o. Karol Brzostowski Tallinn University of Technology Maarja Kruusmaa Finnish Meteorological Institute Mikko Lensu IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute Helene Ejhed Leibniz-Institut für Ostseeforschung, Warnemünde Gerald Schernewski Aalto University, Department of Applied Mechanics Pentti Kujala European Commission DG-RTD Joerg Niehoff DG-RTD Ivan Conesa Alcolea DG-RTD Alexander Grablowitz DG-RTD Peter Crawley Other stakeholders JPI Healthy and productive seas and oceans Katherine Angell-Hansen Baltic Sea Marine Environmental Protection Commission (HELCOM) Monika Stankiewicz Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Finland Elina Nikkola

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Funding commitments of participating agencies Appendix C

Table 23 Commitments to BONUS projects by national agencies, 2012-2016

No Country National funding institution

Commitments to projects (EUR) Co-financing agreements

signed

(EUR)***

Remaining funds

(EUR) Original* Additional Total**

1 DK

Innovation Fund Denmark (before 2015 Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation)

3429589 2075542 5505131 3905064 1600067.00

2 DE Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

5000000 2878961 7878961 3836247.20 4042713.80

3 EE

Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (delegated to Estonian Research Council)

1000000 0 1000000 884864.86 115135.14

4 EE Estonian Environmental Investment Centre

0 227917 227917 227917 0.00

5 EE Estonian Ministry of Rural Affairs

0 67690 67690 0 67690.00

6 LV

Latvian Ministry of Education and Science (delegated to State Education Development Agency) (before Jan 2015 Latvian Academy of Science)

597000 0 597000 447370 149630.00

7 LT Research Council of Lithuania 500000 0 500000 407934 92066.00

8 LT

Lithuanian Ministry of Economy (delegated to Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA))

89200 0 89200 50000 39200.00

9 PL National Centre for Research and Development

2900000 0 2900000 1205397.41 1694602.59

10 FI Academy of Finland 6744000 24953 6768953 4010458 2758495.00

11 FI Ministry of Employment and Economy

26760 0 26760 23599 3161.00

12 FI Finnish Transport Safety Agency (TRAFI)

17840 0 17840 15733 2107.00

13 FI Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry

0 88000 88000 88000 0.00

14 SE

Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS)

5650000 0 5650000 5281321.5 368678.50

15 SE Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)

2600000 0 2600000 2858687.5 -258687.50

16 SE Foundation of Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA)

3000000 0 3000000 305056 2694944.00

17 SE Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency

917202 0 917202 917202.00

18 SE Swedish Research Council 902527 0 902527 902527.00

19 SE Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA)

3032800 0 3032800 707994 2324806.00

20 SE Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SWAM)

902527 0 902527 902527.00

TOTAL: 37309445 5363063 42672508 24255643 18416865 * Data of BONUS Annual Report 2012 ** Data of BONUS Annual Report 2016 *** Does not include data from the Blue Baltic call

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Detailed analyses of coherence Appendix D

Table 24 Strategic Objectives defined in BONUS SRA vs EUSBSR objectives and sub-objectives (data for Blue Baltic call not included)

EUSBSR Objectives and sub-objectives

BONUS Strategic Objectives

Save the Sea Clean water in the sea, Rich and healthy wildlife, Clean and safe shipping, Better Cooperation

Connect the region Good transport conditions, Reliable energy markets, Connecting people in the region, Better cooperation in fighting cross-border crime

Increase Prosperity Baltic Sea Region as a frontrunner for deepening and fulfilling the single market, EUSBSR contributing to the implementation of Europe 2020 Strategy, Improved global competitiveness of the Baltic Sea Region, climate change adaptation, risk prevention and management

Strategic Objective 1: Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

- Ecosystem resilience and dynamics of biogeochemical processes, including cumulative impacts of humans pressures (VE); - causes and consequences of changing biodiversity (VE); - food web structure and dynamics (VE); - multilevel impacts of hazardous substances (VE); - eco-technological approaches to achieve good ecological status in the Baltic Sea (INNO); User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO)

-User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO) -Integrated approaches to coastal management (SES); -Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES)

- User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO) -Integrated approaches to coastal management (SES)

Strategic Objective 2: Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment area

-Natural and human-induced changes in catchment land cover patterns, including the role of e.g. agriculture, forestry and urbanisation (VE); -The role of the coastal systems in the dynamics of the Baltic Sea (VE); -Developing and testing innovative in situ and remote sensing and laboratory techniques (INNO)

-Developing and testing innovative in situ and remote sensing and laboratory techniques (INNO) -Integrated approaches to coastal management (SES); -Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES); -Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale (SES)

- User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO) - Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES)’ -Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale (SES);

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EUSBSR Objectives and sub-objectives

Strategic Objective 3: Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

-Improving stock assessments and resolving spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of the Baltic Sea fish stocks (VE); -Evaluation framework for fisheries management (VE)

--Integrated approaches to coastal management (SES); - Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES); - Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale (SES)

-Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES); - Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale (SES)

Strategic Objective 4: Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea Region

-User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO)

-User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO); --Integrated approaches to coastal management (SES); - Governance structures, policy performance and policy instruments (SES); -Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES); - Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale (SES)

- Evaluation framework for fisheries management (VE); -Governance structures, policy performance and policy instruments (VE) - Governance structures, policy performance and policy instruments (SES) -Linking ecosystem goods and services to human lifestyles and wellbeing (SES); -Maritime spatial planning from local to Baltic Sea region scale (SES)

Strategic Objective 5: Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea Region

-Developing and improving scientific basis for integrated monitoring programmes for continuous assessment of ecological status and human pressures (VE); - Developing and testing innovative in situ remote sensing and laboratory techniques (INNO); -User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO)

-User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO)

-Developing and improving scientific basis for integrated monitoring programmes for continuous assessment of ecological status and human pressures (VE); -User-driven new information and communication services for marine environment, safety and security in the Baltic Sea area (INNO)

Note: BONUS call themes alignment (VE = Viable Ecosystem call 2012; INNO = Innovation call 2012; SES = Sustainable Ecosystem Services call 2014)

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Table 25 BONUS vs EUSBSR Policy Areas: BONUS project alignment (data for Blue Baltic call not included)

BONUS Strategic Objective (SO)

EUSBSR Policy Areas

Strategic Objective 1: Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

Strategic Objective 2: Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment area

Strategic Objective 3: Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

Strategic Objective 5: Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea Region

Bioeconomy – Agriculture, forestry and fisheries

INSPIRE (VE) GOHERR (SES)

FISHVIEW (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) GO4BALTIC (SES) GOHERR (SES)

INSPIRE (VE) FISHVIEW (INNO) MICROALGAE (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) GO4BALTIC (SES) GOHERR (SES)

INSPIRE (VE) FISHVIEW (INNO) MICROALGAE (INNO) GO4BALTIC (SES) GOHERR (SES)

Culture – Culture & creative sectors

BALTICAPP (SES)

BALTICAPP (SES)

Education – Education, research and employability

CHANGE(VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) AFISMON (INNO) BALTICAPP (SES)

COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) BALTCOAST (SES) BALTICAPP (SES) GO4BALTIC (SES) MIRACLE (SES)

CHANGE (VE) COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) BALTCOAST (SES) BALTICAPP (SES) GO4BALTIC (SES) MIRACLE (SES)

COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) AFISMON (INNO) ESABALT (INNO) PINBAL (INNO) BALTCOAST (SES) BALTICAPP (SES) GO4BALTIC (SES) MIRACLE (SES)

Energy –Baltic Energy Market Interconnection Plan Action Plan (for competitive, secure and sustainable energy)

Hazards – Reducing the use and impact of hazardous substances

GEOILWATCH (INNO) PROMISE(INNO) SWERA (INNO) MIRACLE (SES) SHEBA (SES) ZEB (INNO) STORMWINDS (SES)

CHANGE (VE) GEOILWATCH (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) MIRACLE (SES) SWERA (INNO) SHEBA (SES) ZEB (INNO) STORMWINDS (SES)

GEOILWATCH (INNO) MIRACLE (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

Health – Improving and promoting people’s health, including its social aspects

OPTITREAT (INNO) BALTICAPP (SES)

CHANGE (VE) OPTITREAT (INNO) BALTICAPP (SES)

CHANGE (VE) BALTICAPP (SES)

Innovation – Exploiting the full potential of the region in research, innovation and SME, utilising the Digital Single Market as a source for attracting talents and investments

BAMBI (VE) BIO C3 (VE) BLUPRINT (VE) CHANGE (VE) INSPIRE (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) AFISMON (INNO) FERRYSCOPE (INNO) PINBAL (INNO)

MICROALGAE (INNO) OPTITREAT (INNO) PINBAL (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) BALTCOAST (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) MICROALGAE (INNO) OPTITREAT (INNO) PINBAL (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) BALTCOAST (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

BAMBI (VE) BIO C3 (VE) BLUEPRINT (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) AFISMON (INNO) ESABALT (INNO) FERRYSCOPE (INNO) FISHVIEW (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) MICROALGAE (INNO) PINBAL (INNO) STORMWINDS (SES)

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BONUS Strategic Objective (SO)

Nutri – Reducing nutrient inputs to the sea to acceptable levels

COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE)

COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) MICROALGAE (INNO) OPTITREAT (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) MIRACLE (SES)

COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) MICROALGAE (INNO) OPTITREAT (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) MIRACLE (SES)

COCOA (VE) SOILS2SEA (VE) FERRYSCOPE (INNO) MICROALGAE (INNO) MIRACLE (SES)

Safe – To become a leading region in maritime safety and security;

GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) SWERA (INNO) BALTICAPP (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) SWERA (INNO) BALTICAPP (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

ANCHOR (INNO) ESABALT (INNO) GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) BALTICAPP (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

Secure – Protection from land-based emergencies, accidents and cross-border crime;

OPTITREAT (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) MIRACLE (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

OPTITREAT (INNO) PROMISE (INNO) MIRACLE (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

MIRACLE (SES) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

Ship – Becoming a model region for clean shipping;

GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) SWERA (INNO) ZEB (INNO) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) SWERA (INNO) ZEB (INNO) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

ANCHOR (INNO) ESABALT (INNO) GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

Tourism – Reinforcing cohesiveness of the macro-region through tourism;

BALTICAPP (SES)

BALTICAPP (SES)

CHANGE (VE)

Transport – Improving internal and external transport links

ZEB (INNO) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

ZEB (INNO) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

ANCHOR (INNO) ESABALT (INNO) GEOILWATCH (INNO) HARDCORE (INNO) SHEBA (SES) STORMWINDS (SES)

Note: BONUS call themes alignment (VE = Viable Ecosystem call 2012; INNO = Innovation call 2012; SES = Sustainable Ecosystem Services call 2014)

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Table 26 BONUS vs MSFD ; alignment of BONUS calls vis a vis MSFD

MSFD objectives

BONUS Strategic Objectives

Achieve / maintain GES by 2020

Protect / preserve / restore marine environment

Prevent / reduce inputs

Apply ecosystem-based approach to management of human activities

Contribute to coherence between different policies concerning marine environment

Strategic Objective 1: Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

VE BLUE BALTIC

BLUE BALTIC INNO BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

Strategic Objective 2: Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment area

VE BLUE BALTIC

BLUE BALTIC INNO BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

VE BLUE BALTIC

Strategic Objective 3: Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

SES BLUE BALTIC

VE BLUE BALTIC

INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

Strategic Objective 4: Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea Region

SES BLUE BALTIC

INNO SES BLUE BALTIC S

INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

Strategic Objective 5: Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea Region

VE BLUE BALTIC

INNO BLUE BALTIC

INNO BLUE BALTIC

INNO, SES BLUE BALTIC

SES BLUE BALTIC

Note: BONUS call themes alignment (VE = Viable Ecosystem call 2012; INNO = Innovation call 2012; SES = Sustainable Ecosystem Services call 2014). BLUEBALTIC is an unresolved 2015 call

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Table 27 BONUS Strategic Objectives vs EU Common Fisheries Policy (data for Blue Baltic call not included)

EU Common Fisheries Policy: main policy areas

BONUS Strategic Objectives

Fisheries management: - -Safeguarding stock reproduction for high long-term yield; Laying the foundations for a profitable industry Sharing out fishing opportunities fairly Conserving marine resources

International policy : Fishing agreements; Regional fisheries management organisations; International organisations; Trade in fisheries products

Market and trade policy: Common Organisation of the Markets; Common marketing standards; Competition rules; Market intelligence

Funding of CFP: European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF 2014-2020)

SO 1 Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

INSPIRE (VE)

SO 2 Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment area

SO 3 Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

INSPIRE (VE) GOHERR (SES)

SO 4 Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea region

INSPIRE (VE) GOHERR (SES)

SO 5 Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea region

FISHVIEW (INNO)

Note: BONUS call themes alignment (VE = Viable Ecosystem call 2012; INNO = Innovation call 2012; SES = Sustainable Ecosystem Services call 2014).

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Table 28 BONUS Strategic Objectives vs. components of the EU Blue Growth Strategy

EU Blue Growth Strategy components

BONUS Strategic Objectives

Develop sectors that have a high potential for sustainable jobs and growth

Essential components to provide knowledge, legal certainty and security in the blue economy

Sea basin strategies to ensure tailor-made measures and to foster cooperation between countries

SO 1 Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

SO 2 Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment area

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

SO 3 Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

SO 4 Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea region

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUE BALTIC

SO 5 Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea region

INNO BLUEBALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUEBALTIC

VE INNO SES BLUEBALTIC

Note: BONUS call themes alignment (VE = Viable Ecosystem call 2012; INNO = Innovation call 2012; SES = Sustainable Ecosystem Services call 2014).

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Table 29 BONUS contribution to ERA

European Research Area priorities

BONUS Strategic Objectives

More effective national research systems

Optimal transnational cooperation and competition

An open labour market for researchers

Gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research

Optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge

International cooperation

SO 1 Understanding the Baltic Sea ecosystem structure and functioning

National components in BONUS projects

BONUS calls

national funding not available to non-nationals, except for PhDs and post-docs

addressed in project evaluation

Data in open databases

SO 2 Meeting the multifaceted challenges in linking the Baltic Sea with its coast and catchment area

National components in BONUS projects

BONUS calls national funding not available to non-nationals, except for PhDs and post-docs

addressed in project evaluation

Data in open databases

SO 3 Enhancing sustainable use of coastal and marine goods and services of the Baltic Sea

National components in BONUS projects

BONUS calls national funding not available to non-nationals, except for PhDs and post-docs

addressed in project evaluation

Data in open databases

SO 4 Improving the capabilities of the society to respond to the current and future challenges directed to the Baltic Sea region

National components in BONUS projects

BONUS calls national funding not available to non-nationals, except for PhDs and post-docs

addressed in project evaluation

Data in open databases

SO 5 Developing improved and innovative observation and data management systems, tools and methodologies for marine information needs in the Baltic Sea region

National components in BONUS projects

BONUS calls national funding not available to non-nationals, except for PhDs and post-docs

addressed in project evaluation

Data in open databases

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Table 30 Funding instruments (other than those already analysed) in operation within the Baltic Sea Region

Funding instrument Objectives / Priorities

European Investment Bank (EIB) (http://www.eib.org/)

The overall objective is to promote innovation as a key policy priority and implement the European innovation act as an integral part of the European reform agenda that explores the synergies between higher education, research and industry. EIB supports projects that make a significant contribution to growth and employment in Europe. EIB activities focus on four priority areas: innovation and skills, access to finance for smaller businesses, environment and climate, and infrastructure. EIB raises the money it lends on the international capital markets through bond issues. EIB generally finances one-third of a project.

Programme for the Competitiveness of enterprises and SMEs (COSME) 2014-2020 (http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/cosme/)

COSME objectives: -Accessing finance to make it easier SMEs to access finance in all phases of their lifecycle – creation, expansion, or business transfer. -Opening markets: offering help to businesses to access markets in the EU and beyond; the Enterprise Europe Network helps SMEs find business and technology partners, and understand EU legislation. -Supporting entrepreneurs: strengthening entrepreneurship education, mentoring, guidance and other support services. Actions support specific groups who may find it difficult to reach their full potential (young people, women and senior entrepreneurs) and help businesses access opportunities offered by digital technologies. -Improving business conditions: reducing the administrative and regulatory burden on SMEs by creating a business-friendly environment; support for businesses to be competitive by adoption of new business models and innovative practices, particularly in areas with high growth potential such as the tourism sector

European Economic Area & Norway Grants – EEA&NG (http://eeagrants.org/)

Represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to reducing economic and social disparities and to strengthening bilateral relations with 16 EU countries in Central and Southern Europe and the Baltics. Programme areas supported by EEA grants: integrated marine and inland water management, biodiversity and ecosystem services, environmental monitoring and integrated planning and control. Reduction of hazardous substances, environmental and climate change-related research and technology, energy efficiency, renewable energy, adaptation to climate change, civil society, NGO programmes, human and social development. Norway grants are financed by Norway alone in programme areas: Carbon capture and storage, green industry innovation, decent work and tripartite dialogue, research and scholarship, capacity-building and institutional cooperation with Norwegian public institutions and authorities, cross-border cooperation, public health initiatives, mainstreaming gender equality and promoting

European Research Council – ERC (https://erc.europa.eu/)

The overall objective is to make the European research base more prepared to respond to the needs of a knowledge-based society and provide Europe with the capabilities in frontier research necessary to meet global challenges. The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of Horizon 2020

European Science Foundation – ESF (http://www.esf.org/)

The overall objective is to promote collaborative research, networking and dissemination while targeting broad and complex topics of research across all scientific domains at the European level and in a global context.

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This document reports the final evaluation of the BONUS Article 185 programme by a group of independent experts. BONUS has successfully implemented its jointly programmed strategic research agenda, increased the quality and quantity of relevant research and contributed to building research capacity. Its impact on policymaking is more limited, though it is still rather early to expect to see significant effects. BONUS is consistent with wider EU objectives and coheres with other relevant policy measures in the Baltic Sea region. It provides EU Added Value because its structuring and joint programming effects could not have been achieved without supra-national involvement. Any continuation should involve a real common pot, specify how BONUS will become sustainable after EU funding stops, better support capacity building in smaller states and link more effectively to policy development.