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COMMUNITY-CCOMMUNITY-COST CONCERTATION AGREEMENT

on a concerted-action project in the field of artificial intelligence and pattern recognition (COST project 13)

THETHE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY,

hereinafter referred to as 'the Community',

AUSTRIA, FINLAND, NORWAY, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND and YUGOSLAVIA,

hereinafter referred to as 'the participating non-member States',

WHEREAS, by its Decision of 11 September 1979, the Council of the European Communities adopted a four-year programme for the development of data processing;

WHEREAS, by its Decision of 22 November 1984, the Council amended the programme adopted by its Decision of 11 September 1979 and this amendment includes a concerted-action project in the field of artificial intelligence and pattern recognition, hereinafter referred to as 'COST project 13';

WHEREAS the Member States of the Community, the participating non-member States, hereinafter together referred to as 'the States', and the Community intend, subject to the rules and procedures applicable to their national programmes, to carry out the research described in Annex A and are prepared to integrate such research into a process of concertation which they consider will be of mutual benefit;

WHEREAS implementation of the research covered by the concerted action project will require a financial contribution of some 15 million ECU from the States and the Community,

HAVE AGREED AS FOLLOWS:

Article 1

The Community and the participating non-member States, hereinafter referred to as 'the contracting parties', shall participate for a period extending until 21 November 1986 in a concerted-action project in the field of artificial intelligence and pattern recognition.

The project is described in detail in Annex A.

The States shall remain entirely responsible for the research executed by their national institutions or bodies except research under contract with the Commission of the European Communities, hereinafter referred to as 'the Commission'.

Article 2

Concertation between the contracting parties shall be effected through a Community-COST concertation committee, hereinafter referred to as 'the Committee'.

The Committee shall draw up its rules of procedure. Its Secretariat shall be provided by the Commission.

The terms of reference and the composition of the Committee are defined in Annex B.

The structure of the Committee may be revised by the contracting parties.

Article 3

In order to ensure optimum efficiency in the execution of this concerted-action project, a project leader may be appointed by the Commission after having consulted the delegates of the participating non-member States on the Committee.

Article 4

The estimated financial contribution by the contracting parties to the coordination costs for the period referred to in the first paragraph of Article 1 shall be:

1 300 000 ECU from the Community,

57 000 ECU from Austria,

50 000 ECU from Finland,

53 000 ECU from Norway,

70 000 ECU from Sweden,

70 000 ECU from Switzerland,

58 000 ECU from Yugoslavia.

The ECU shall be that defined by the Financial Regulation in force applicable to the general budget of the European Communities and by the financial arrangements adopted pursuant thereto.

The rules governing the financing of the Agreement are set out in Annex C.

Article 5

1. Through the Committee, the States shall exchange regularly all useful information concerning the execution of the research covered by the concerted-action project. They shall also endeavour to provide information on similar research planned or carried out by other bodies. Any information shall be treated as confidential if the State which provides it so requests.

2. After having consulted the Committee, the Commission shall prepare yearly progress reports on the basis of the information supplied and shall forward them to the States.

3. At the end of the concertation period, the Commission shall, after having consulted the Committee, forward to the States a general report on the execution and results of the project. This report shall be published by the Commission not later than six months after it has been forwarded, unless a State objects. In that case, the report shall be confidential and shall be forwarded, on request and after having consulted the Committee, solely to the institutions and undertakings whose research or production activities justify access to knowledge resulting from the performance of the research covered by the concerted-action project.

Article 6

1. Each of the contracting parties shall, after signing this Agreement, notify the Secretary-General of the Council of the European Communities as soon as possible, of the completion of the procedures necessary under its internal provisions for the implementation of this Agreement.

2. For the contracting parties which have transmitted the notification provided for in paragraph 1, this Agreement shall enter into force on the first day of the month following that in which the Community and at least one of the participating non-member States transmitted these notifications.

For those contracting parties which transmit the notification after the entry into force of this Agreement, it shall come into force on the first day of the second month following the month in which the notification was transmitted.

Contracting parties which have not yet transmitted this notification at the time of entry into force of this Agreement shall be able to take part in the work of the Committee without voting rights for a period of six months following the entry into force of this Agreement.

3. The Secretary-General of the Council of the European Communities shall notify each of the contracting parties of the deposit of the notifications provided for in paragraph 1 and of the date of entry into force of this Agreement.

Article 7

This Agreement shall apply, on the one hand, to the territories in which the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community is applied and under the conditions laid down in that Treaty and, on the other hand, to the territories of the participating non-member States.

Article 8

This Agreement, drawn up in a single original in the Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek and Italian languages, each text being equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Communities, which shall transmit a certified copy to each of the contracting parties.

ANNEX A

PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

1.2 // 1. // Artificial intelligence (AI) and pattern recognition (PR) are now recognized as areas of great importance in the current development of information technology. The importance comes partly from new products which have been introduced as by-products of AI and PR research, such as LISP technology, expert systems, speech synthesizers, etc. In addition, the challenges of artificial intelligence and pattern recognition have proved excellent motors for advancing information technology. // // Recent national programmes and the ESPRIT programme of the European Communities have taken into account these developments. Most of these programmes are industrially oriented, in the sense that products are expected to be generated in a fairly short period of time and the major participants in the projects are large industrial companies. There is therefore a need for a complementary action programme which would specifically benefit advanced research and could contribute to education in AI and PR. // 2. // The main purpose of the project is to create an environment and mechanisms to: // // - initiate and stimulate cooperative research in AI and PR, // // - facilitate the exchange of ideas, identification of problems and harmonization of solution strategies, // // - coordinate existing activities at European level, // // - transfer possible solutions found in research into developments in these areas to other environments (e.g. industry), // // - strengthen the scarce educational resources available in Europe, // // - strengthen centres of excellence in Europe // // by means of the following actions: // // - short- and longer-term exchange of researchers, // // - sponsoring of working groups and workshops for problem identification, // // - sponsoring collaborative research projects, // // - sponsoring work in the form of small special projects (implementation, pilot projects, studies, etc.), // // - sponsoring advanced courses, // // - granting fellowships to enable students, or advanced staff to take part in collaborative research projects, // // - sponsoring usage of advanced information exchange systems. // 3. // Technical objectives // // This programme covers basic research enabling the develoment of advanced tools for artificial intelligence and pattern recognition. The areas include methods for knowledge-base design, distributed knowledge-base systems, logic programming and parallelism and advanced pattern recognition. // // Proposals may address the following topics: // // - knowledge acquisition and analysis (ICAI), // // - learning and inductive inference, // // - automatic programming, // // - distributed and cooperative problem solving, // // - man-computer synergism, // // - development of efficient systems for symbolic computation, // // - parallelism and distribution in logic programming systems, // // - non monotonic theorem provers, // // - interfacing high-level and low-level processing for signal understanding: the domains of development include speech understanding, image understanding and specific-signal understanding, // // - KR and cognitive modelling, // // - goal-driven feature extraction using syntax and semantics ('segmentation by recognition') with emphasis on the control problem, // // - 3D vision and movement understanding (hardware, software), // // - architecture and specific hardware for signal understanding with emphasis on the dependence between algorithm and architectures (parallelism).

ANNEX B

TERMS OF REFERENCE AND COMPOSITION OF THE COMMUNITY-COST CONCERTATION COMMITTEE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PATTERN RECOGNITION

1.2 // 1. // The Committee shall: // 1.1. // contribute to the optimum execution of the concerted-action project giving its opinion on all its aspects, including in particular: // // - promoting and coordinating activities at national level within the concerted action, // // - defining subjects of particular importance or of common interest, // // - allocating financial support from the coordination fund, // // - selecting contractors for specific tasks, // // - appointing the project leader, if any, // // - giving guidance to the project leader, if any; // 1.2. // evaluate the results of the projects and draw conclusions as to their application; // 1.3. // be responsible for the exchange of information referred to in Article 5 (1) of the Agreement. // 2. // The Committee's reports and opinions shall be forwarded to the States. // 3. // The Committee shall be composed of one delegate from the Commission, one delegate from each participating non-member State, one delegate from each Member State representing its national programme, and the project leader, if any. Each delegate may be accompanied by experts. // // The Committee may invite representatives of users, of CEPT and of European bodies supporting standardization activities, to give their views.

ANNEX C

FINANCING RULES

Article 1

The provisions lay down the financial rules referred to in Article 4 of the Agreement.

Article 2

On the entry into force of the Agreement, the Commission shall send to each of the participating non-member States a call for funds corresponding to the amount laid down in Article 4 of the Agreement.

This contribution shall be expressed both in ECU and in the currency of the State concerned, the value of the ECU being defined in the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Communities and determined on the date of the call for funds.

The total contributions shall cover the travel and subsistence costs of the delegates to the Committee, in addition to the coordination costs proper.

Each participating non-member State shall pay its contribution to the coordination costs under the Agreement at the latest three months after the issue of the call for funds by the Commission. Any delay in the payment shall give rise to the payment of interest by the participating non-member State concerned at a rate equal to the highest discount rate obtaining in the States on the due date. The rate shall be increased by 0,25 of a percentage point for each month of delay. The increased rate shall be applied to the entire period of delay.

Article 3

The funds paid by participating non-member States shall be credited to the concerted action project as budget receipts allocated to a heading in the statement of revenue of the general budget of the European Communities (Commission section).

Article 4

The provisional schedule for the coordination costs referred to in Article 4 of the Agreement is appended hereto.

Article 5

The Financial Regulation in force applicable to the general budget of the European Communities shall apply to the management of the appropriations.

Article 6

At the end of each financial year, a statement of appropriations for the concerted-action project shall be prepared and transmitted to the participating non-member States for information.

APPENDIX

PROVISIONAL TIMETABLE FOR THE CONCERTED ACTION PROJECT: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PATTERN RECOGNITION (COST PROJECT 13)

BUDGET ITEM 7702 'COMMUNITY OPERATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF DATA PROCESSING'

(in ECU)

1.2,3.4,5.6,7.8,9.10,11 // // // // // // // // 1985 // 1986 // 1987 // 1988 // Total // // // // // 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11 // // CA // PA // CA // PA // CA // PA // CA // PA // CA // PA // // // // // // // // // // // // 1. Initial estimate of overall requirements: // // // // // // // // // // // - administrative operating expenditure and contracts // 1 300 000 // 350 000 // - // 400 000 // - // 350 000 // - // 200 000 // 1 300 000 // 1 300 000 // // // // // // // // // // // // Total // 1 300 000 // 350 000 // - // 400 000 // - // 350 000 // - // 200 000 // 1 300 000 // 1 300 000 // // // // // // // // // // // // 2. Revised estimate of expenditure taking into account additional requirements arising from the accession of participating non-member States // // // // // // // // // // // - administrative operating expenditure and contracts // 1 300 000 // 350 000 // 358 000 // 520 000 // - // 470 000 // - // 318 000 // 1 658 000 // 1 658 000 // // // // // // // // // // // // 3. Difference between 1 and 2 to be covered by contribution from participating non-member States // 0 // 0 // 358 000 // 120 000 // - // 120 000 // - // 118 000 // 358 000 // 358 000 // // // // // // // // // // // 1.2 // CA // = Commitment appropriation. // PA // = Payment appropriation. // //