Consortium Agreements for Research Projects

Consortium agreements for research projects of the European Commission are managed in Brussels. Therefore Belgian law is often applicable to these contracts. As organizations from all EU Member States and associated countries are potential contracting parties, numerous basic questions about Belgian contract law - and multiparty agreements in particular - exist for the legal advisors of these organizations. This inspired the Institute for the Law of Obligations at K.U. Leuven to invite Belgian experts of contract law to a one-day conference in Leuven in order to examine model agreements from a Belgian contract law perspective and look for answers to many of the "frequently asked questions" in this area of law. The expert contributions are presented in this book. All contributions simultaneously discuss the rules of general Belgian contract law, the pitfalls of multi-party agreements, and the specifics of agreements regarding research consortia, through a detailed review of the relevant articles of three model contracts: the DESCA model and IPCA model of consortium agreement and the FP7 grant agreement model. Where necessary, suggestions are made on how to improve these documents and the legal certainty they provide.