At the close of the call on 30 November, the European Commission announced that 841 new clinical units in hospitals across Europe had requested to become members of the existing 24 ERNs. 31 of these are applicants to eUROGEN. The full evaluation process is now starting to determine which of the applicants will eventually join the networks.
First, the EC will conduct an eligibility check of all submitted applications, which will take about a month and a half. Then, the Board of the ERNs will have up to three months to assess all the eligible applications. In the case of an unfavourable opinion, the applicant will have a month to respond to the comments. The Board of the ERN will then issue its final opinion within one month. Afterwards, the applications with favourable ERN decisions will be provided to the Independent Assessment Body which will have up to six months to conduct an independent assessment. The final phase is formal approval of each candidature by the ERN Board of Member States, which will take up to two months.
It should be emphasized that the final number of new members will only be known at the end of the whole assessment process, which is expected to be at the end of 2020.
