Last developments in Greece

In September 2017 the Greek Ministry of Education has summed up a panel of seven experts in order to draft guidelines for the operation of Ethical Committees at an institutional level.

The driving force behind this initiative was that a part of the Ethical Assessment of upcoming EC funded research should be implemented within the Institute that has succeed to obtain funding through the evaluation on technical matters; in Greece the legal framework for such a procedure is not up to the demands of the EC. The draft document, once it is finalized, will have legal mandate and all Universities will have to harmonize their Codes of Conduct and the operation of their Ethical Committees with the new guidelines. This legal document is going to be a part of the new legal framework for the Greek Educational system and will address both issues of Research Ethics and Research Integrity.

This progress is important, since until now there was no coordination between Ethical Committees in Greek Universities, due to the lack of a National Ethics Committee and a National Code of Conduct. We believe that this progress is a decisive step towards the creation of a National Committee of Research Ethics and Research Integrity in Greece. The panel will finalize its tasks until the end of November 2017. One of the members of the panel is Prof. C.A. Charitidis, coordinator of EARTHnet – member of the ENRIO.