EFSA’s Management Board Endorses Work Plan and Budget for 2011

In its Management Plan 2011, EFSA sees demand for its scientific opinions on food and feed safety issues remaining high in the coming year as it plans to deliver more than 730 scientific ouputs and issue over 100 supporting publications.

12/17/2010 --- The Management Board of the European Food Safety Authority has adopted EFSA’s 2011 Management Plan. Guided by EFSA’s 2009-2013 Strategic Plan, EFSA outlines how it will address its workload in the area of public health risks while meeting growing demands for evaluations of regulated products, or so-called applications.[1] The Board also adopted the €77.3 million 2011 budget which EFSA requires to carry out its work to protect consumers and support the Europe 2020 Strategy for smart and sustainable innovation.

Members of the Board adopted EFSA’s Communication Strategy for 2010-2013, which aims to further increase awareness and understanding of EFSA’s scientific advice among key target audiences and promote coherence of risk communications messages through cooperation with relevant authorities at national, European and international level.

In its Management Plan 2011, EFSA sees demand for its scientific opinions on food and feed safety issues remaining high in the coming year as it plans to deliver more than 730 scientific ouputs and issue over 100 supporting publications. The number of applications will grow, particularly in the areas of enzymes and feed additives. The complexity of evaluations is also increasing to include, for example, environmental impacts, post-market monitoring of GMOs, or the efficacy of pesticides. The allocation of resources for the evaluation of regulated products has doubled over 2008-2010 from 20% to 40% and about two-thirds of EFSA’s annual scientific ouputs involve applications.

EFSA aims to hold a number of technical meetings and similar events, particularly on regulated products, to enable all parties to share a common understanding of EFSA’s requirements and will introduce streamlined, centralised services for applicants preparing submissions to EFSA. The activities of EFSA’s Stakeholder Consultative Platform[2] - the key forum for exchanging information and views on such topics as new technologies will also be reinforced to strengthen the contribution of stakeholders to EFSA’s work.

In determining more effective ways of working with European Union Member States, EFSA has shared and begun to work with national food safety agencies on its medium-term planning so that they can plan any future involvement in the Authority’s work programme more easily. Involving Member State institutions in EFSA’s work through (Article 36) grants[3] and procurement contracts will grow in 2011 to €8.3 million (it was €7.7 million in 2010).

Also in 2011, EFSA is scheduled to move to its new seat in Parma by the end of the year.

The Management Board also discussed various options for holding their meetings in public. In order to maintain transparency while reducing costs, Board members decided to provide as of next year live audio broadcasts instead of live webcasts. This will be kept under review and user satisfaction assessed through an online survey. Management Board meetings will remain open to the public through pre-registration.