European visit


The European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potočnik, (on the right) visited the CMS assembly hall accompanied by Jim Virdee, Deputy Spokesman of CMS (on the left), and Robert Aymar, Director-General of CERN.

The European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potočnik, visited CERN on Tuesday 31 January. He was welcomed by the Director-General, Robert Aymar, who described the missions and current activities of CERN to him, in particular the realisation of the LHC with its three components: accelerator, detectors, storage and processing of data.

The European Commissioner then visited the CMS assembly hall, then the hall for testing the LHC magnets and the ATLAS cavern.

During this first visit since his appointment at the end of 2004, Janez Potočnik appeared very interested by the operation of CERN, an example of successful scientific co-operation on a European scale.

The many projects (30 on average) that CERN and the European Commission carry out jointly for the benefit of research were recalled. Some good examples relate to the activities of the Marie Curie programme (fellows, etc.), the diffusion of scientific culture towards the public, teachers and students, or the development of the information technology for the simultaneous benefit of several scientific disciplines and European industries (projects related to EGEE, Enabling Grids for E-sciencE).

The terms of an effective coordination and a shared financing of future programmes supported by the Commission and of those under consideration within the framework of the strategy group of the CERN Council were discussed, regarding the activities related to accelerator physics and elementary particle physics. The discussion explored extending the terms implemented for the CARE programme (a European collaboration for the development of the techniques of the accelerators). The role of EIROs (European Intergovernmental Science Organisations) in the European programmes was also discussed.