On Monday 17 June 2019, the top representatives of GACR, FWF (Austria), NCN (Poland), ARRS (Slovenia) signed the ‘’CEUS – Central European Science Partnership” Lead Agency Agreement: Memorandum of Understanding on the unilateral administration and mutual recognition of evaluation procedures”. This new collaboration will enable scientists from the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Slovenia to carry out scientific projects with new foreign partners based on the Lead Agency evaluation, which belongs to the most preferred forms of cooperation among foreign agencies supporting basic research in reducing administrative burdens. As part of the CEUS Initiative to support basic research in the Central European Region, researchers will now be able to submit bilateral and trilateral LA based project proposals.
GACR currently plans to announce the first call within this new initiative next year. At the end of June this year, The Research, Development and Innovation Council approved a new material enabling the agency to launch multilateral projects based on the Lead Agency principle. At this point, the material will be submitted to the Czech government for approval.