Annual Report 2005

The fourth Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Government of Flanders, the United Nations University and the College of Europe concerning the funding of the Research and Training Programme on comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) stipulates that every year by March 31 at the latest, UNU-CRIS will submit an annual report to the Community.

The present document is the first of those reports and covers the year 2005. As mentioned in Article 8 of the MOU, this report contains:

- an overview of the scientific activities carried out;
- a detailed financial overview of all income and expenditure;
- the envisaged use of possible budget transfers;
- a self-assessment of the progress realised with a reference to the strategic directions 2005-2009 of UNU-CRIS;
- the performance realised in terms of scholarly output, capacity building and policy impact;
- a self-assessment of the impact generated by the activities of UNU-CRIS;
- an assessment of the societal relevance of the research carried out by UNU-CRIS;
- a quantitative and qualitative projection of the performance objectives for the subsequent year.

UNU-CRIS is part of the United Nations University and as such the deployed activities reported here have to be framed into the overall UNU strategic directions. At present these are the UNU strategic Directions 2005-2008 as adopted by the UNU Council. Within that framework the Council adopted in 2003 the UNU-CRIS Strategic Directions 2004-2005. In line with the UNU policy, this biannual strategic plan has also been presented to the UNU-CRIS Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) who endorsed the budget and programme of activities for 2004-2005 as presented by the Director.

The present document consists of three parts: (i) an overview of the 2005 academic activities; (ii) a financial overview and (iii) a self–assessment of the activities. Together this will allow the reader to appreciate what UNU-CRIS is doing and where it hopes to go. For more information about the projects outlined in this reports, the reader is referred to the UNU-CRIS website.

Luk Van Langenhove
Director of the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies