Press Release: Research on population ageing: Commission awards new EU legal status to cross-border databank

A major multi-national research databank on population ageing will be the first ever research infrastructure project to enjoy a new European legal status that will make such projects easier to set up and simpler to run.

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) will become the first European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). This will give it many of the administrative advantages and tax exemptions enjoyed by major international organisations, with much simpler procedures. SHARE-ERIC is hosted by Tilburg University in the Netherlands, provides open and free of charge access to data, and aims to help researchers understand the impact of population ageing on European societies and thus to help policy makers make decisions on health, social and economic policy. Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands, with Switzerland as an observer, are the founding members of the new European Research Infrastructure Consortium SHARE-ERIC. Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, Estonia, Luxembourg, Hungary and Slovenia are the other EU countries (along with Israel) which have so far taken part in the SHARE project and may sign up later to the new legal status.