During Phase VI, EUFORGEN carries out its activities through:
- Discussion Platforms where national experts (one per member country) meet, share, discuss and analyse relevant issues, share perspectives and identify needs;
- Working Groups, which can be established directly by the Steering Committee where selected experts develop specific outputs.
Discussion platforms
The Discussion Platforms will address issues that need a pan-European perspective. Each member country will be invited to nominate a representative for each Platform. These Platforms are the instrument to analyse and discuss relevant issues, to maintain the overall knowledge and understanding of issues relevant to FGR in Europe and to build capacity among the members of the forum. The Steering Committee will indicate a defined timeframe within which each Platform will operate.
The Discussion Platforms will be organised so as to optimise interactions among more- and less-experienced experts, as a contribution to capacity building. Progress and findings will be reported to the Steering Committee and presented at relevant events. Discussion Platforms can make recommendations to the Steering Committee to establish working groups to address specific issues.
Ongoing activities:
- Ash Dieback Task Force (ongoing activity from previous phase)
- Adaptation to climate change (list of experts nominated by the countries)
- Working Group: Production and use of forest reproductive material
Past meetings:
- Meeting on "GCU Network management in case of biotic outbreaks: the case study of ash dieback” back-to-back to the training on data curation, 21-23 February 2023 in Ahrensburg, Germany.
- Meeting of the Discussion Platform on "Adaptation of the Genetic Conservation Units to climate change", 18-20 October 2022, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Working Groups
Once the need for a working group has been identified, either by the Steering Committee itself or through the Discussion platforms, the Steering Committee will define the tasks, deadlines and expected outputs. The Secretariat, in consultation with the Advisory Committee, will develop a tentative list of experts from the pool of nominated experts from all member countries. The experts will be selected based on their experience and knowledge to match the tasks of a given working group. The geographical distribution of experts as well as their participation in previous working groups will also be considered. The tentative list of selected experts will be circulated to the Steering Committee for comments and final approval. The Secretariat will then inform the selected experts, coordinate their work (including meeting arrangements) and provide technical and scientific inputs to the tasks of the working groups.
Draft outputs of the working groups will be circulated to relevant nominated experts under a given area of work for their comments and review to ensure that every expert, whether present at the meetings or not, has an opportunity to provide their contributions and ideas. Prior to publishing their final output, the leaders of the working groups will present their results to the Steering Committee and at relevant workshops.
