The EU-FORA programme focus on the objectives of which are to:

• attract and motivate mid-career professionals to become risk assessors, thus increasing the pool of experts available in Europe;
•  intensify exchange and cooperation among national food safety agencies and EFSA, hence stimulating the involvement of MS in regulatory risk assessment work;
•  contribute to harmonising and further developing food safety risk assessment practices and methodologies across Europe, with the aim of building a common EU culture for risk assessment.

The scientists that will participate in the programme as fellows, supervisors, tutors, programme coordinators and others will constitute a pool of experts, available to support the risk assessment activities of EFSA and the MS. The programme will contribute to strengthening the overall capacity in regulatory food safety risk assessment in Europe allowing more countries to support such EU activities.

The main focus of the EU-FORA fellowship programme will be targeted to chemical and microbiological risk assessment and, more generally, to activities falling within EFSA’s remit, so as to attract professionals from relevant fields such as: agriculture, biochemistry, bioinformatics, biology, biometrics, biotechnology, chemistry, dietary exposure, environmental sciences, epidemiology, food science, food technology, genetics, health and food safety, human medicine, life sciences, mathematics, microbiology, molecular biology, natural sciences, nutrition, pharmacy, public health, statistics, toxicology, veterinary medicine or related areas.

Each 12-month fellowship is complemented and completed by a common training programme of seven weeks in total, comprising one three-week induction training module and four separate one-week training modules.

Grant applicants must be included in the list of competent organisations designated by the Member States to assist EFSA with its mission.

Proposals submitted by consortium:

• The Applicant submits the proposal to EFSA on behalf of the consortium. The applicant is the leading entity of the consortium and the hosting site, in charge of the working programme and training of the fellow. There can be only one applicant per application.
• The Partner is the other entity in the consortium and the fellow sending organisation, in charge of the identification of the staff member to be trained under the proposal. There can only be one partner per application.

Once the grant is awarded, the grant agreement is signed between EFSA and the applicant (leading entity of the consortium).
Partners do not sign the grant agreement directly but instead sign a mandate (template provided by EFSA) authorising the applicant to sign the grant agreement and any future amendments on their behalf.
As soon as the grant agreement is signed, the applicant becomes the Coordinator and partner becomes co-beneficiary. The coordinator and co-beneficiary are referred to as the beneficiaries.