Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 23 ISSUE 3
Written by Maria Luiza PASCAL, Adrian TUREK-RAHOVEANU

This article aims to provide insights on how to create a sound financial model to secure the financial sustainability of a pan-European distributed research infrastructure (RI). The financial sustainability is a key challenge for any Research Infrastructure (RI) sustained by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) along its construction and implementation process (nearly 10 years) due to its large-scale size and complexity. Therefore, the Horizon 2020 (H2020) and Horizon Europe call dedicated to the different phases of ESFRI RIs requested/request thorough financial calculations, pushing the RIs’ members to pay special attention to the financial aspects in order to overcome any financial shortcomings and make sure that these RIs will survive on a long-term with the aim of fulfilling their mission and objectives. In this regard, the article presents the approach applied in showing the long-term financial sustainability of METROFOOD-RI, a future distributed-RI operating in the ESFRI domain of Health & Food. METROFOOD-RI was included in ESFRI Roadmap in 2018 as an Active Project and in May 2022 completed its preparatory phase financed under the H2020 METROFOOD-PP project. It focuses on moving forward to METROFOOD-ERIC and becoming an ESFRI Landmark. National R&D Institute for Food Bioresources – IBA Bucharest is an active member of this RI and it was fully involved in preparing its financial plan, cost book and business plan. The document describes the steps taken in showing the financial sustainability of METROFOOD-ERIC, financial options, costs and revenues.

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