France's CNRS and EU's Joint Research Centre sign cooperation agreement

The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC) have signed a cooperation agreement.

The aim of the agreement, which was signed on 06/01/2026, is to "strengthen the place of science in European public action, structure exchanges between scientists and decision-makers and offer French researchers new prospects for collaboration," according to the two organisations. For CNRS researchers, this partnership "will facilitate mobility, open up access to JRC infrastructures and offer new opportunities for participation in work carried out by European Commission teams".

Two areas of collaboration have already been identified:
• nuclear energy, because of the JRC's historical expertise and France's major role in this field;
• and the humanities and social sciences, whose growing integration into European public policies is opening up new areas of interdisciplinary approaches.

"A meeting between CNRS Humanities and Social Sciences and the JRC in Brussels recently confirmed a shared desire to move forward together on issues of ethics, scientific…