International R&D organisations represent a specific type of research infrastructures, which the Czech Republic participates in, being their Member State. As far as their typology is concerned, international R&D organisations are international research infrastructures established under the public international law. International research infrastructures founded under the ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) legal framework or under national legal frameworks of their hosting countries differ from international R&D organisations only by legal framework of their establishment. The international legal framework of establishment provides international R&D organisations a number of benefits, including, inter alia, full tax exemption, freedom to adjust internal policies or diplomatic immunity. In addition to the memberships in the UN (United Nations), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), which also implement their internal R&D programmes, the Czech Republic is a Member State of the following 6 international R&D organisations:
- CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research)
- EMBC (European Molecular Biology Conference)
- EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory)
- ESA (European Space Agency)
- ESO (European Southern Observatory)
A particular kind of membership of the Czech Republic in international R&D organisations is participation of the Czech Republic in:
- ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)
- VKIFD (Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics)
ESO – Extremely Large Telescope
Obligations and benefits resulting from the memberships
In general, membership in an international R&D organisation brings a commitment for a Member State to cover its annual contributions, which may be of mandatory or optional nature. On the other hand, membership brings also a number of significant opportunities and benefits to research and industrial communities of an international R&D organisation´s Member State. These are particularly possibilities to use the research capacities of international R&D organisations, which are usually provided on the competitive basis while the allocation of experimental/observation time is decided by an independent evaluation body composed of renowned experts in the respective scientific field or by the organisation itself. Moreover, internships to citizens of Member States and vacancies are offered by international R&D organisations. Last but not least, suppliers from Member States usually have a favoured position in technology and services procurements launched by international R&D organisations. These benefits may, in some cases, take even the form of a guarantee that a part of the membership fee should be invested in guaranteed returns from a given Member State.
ESA – Mission of PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars)