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The Code in Europe

Dr Dafna Feinholz, Dorian Karatzas, Prof. Doris Schroeder, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, MEP Stelios Kouloglou, Prof. Klaus Leisinger, Leana Snyders, Joyce Adhiambo Adhimabo, Dr Michael Makanga (from left) © Stelios Kouloglou

Relevant for Horizon Europe

The code is one of the pillars in the European Commission’s Global Approach to Research and Innovation:

“Research ethics and integrity: The rapid development of new technologies necessitates a continuous evaluation of current approaches to address ethical challenges and ensure human-centred technological innovation. The EU should continue to promote internationally the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings.” (18 May 2021)

See also the coverage in ScienceBusiness and the EC press release.

One of the Horizon 2020 reference documents

On 29 June 2018 Dr Wolfgang Burtscher, the European Commission’s Deputy Director-General for Research announced:

“As a concrete step forward, I would like to inform you that the Code developed by TRUST will be soon included in the Participant Portal of Horizon 2020 as a reference document to be consulted and applied by all relevant research projects and serve as an education tool for the younger generation of researchers”.

The Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings is a reference document on the Participant Portal and is included in the Horizon 2020 Programme ethics guidance (see pages 27 and 28).

A video recording of the day is available from GUE/NGL. The full transcript of Dr Wolfgang Burtscher's speech is published in a TRUST newsletter.

One of the strongest speeches at the TRUST final event was the speech of Joyce Adhiambo Odhiambo, who represented the interests of sex workers from Nairobi. Joyce spoke about fairness, respect, honesty and care. As the moderator said at the end of her speech: “The fabulous Joyce who confirms what I have always believed, which is that African women are going to end up ruling the world”.

The speech is now available as a TRUST-video on YouTube.

“TRUST and the Global Code were a game changer in our fight against ethics dumping.”

“The ERC funds a lot of research in LMICs. We needed the Global Code.”

Tweet from Jean-Eric Paquet (@JEPaquetEU), Director-General for Research & Innovation,  EU Commission.