ESS welcomes new Chief Negotiator Lars Anell
Lars Anell has been appointed as Chief Negotiator for the coming final negotiations with the ESS Partner Countries. The appointment is welcomed by ESS as a key decision in the preparation for the future ESS international convention.
The appointment has been made by the Swedish Government. As the Chief Negotiator, Lars Anell will lead the negotiations on the share and participation of the ESS Partner Countries on behalf of the host countries Sweden and Denmark. European Spallation Source ESS AB will support Lars Anell in this task, which starts on 1 September 2011 and will result in binding agreements with all Partner Countries on participation and financing.
- We warmly welcome the appointment of Lars Anell, and look very much forward to our coming collaboration, says Colin Carlile, ESS Director-General.
- We are currently in the important preparatory phase that will lay a technically, scientifically and financially solid foundation for the coming research facility ESS. The Chief Negotiator has one of the key roles to ensure this vast task, which aims at the ESS being able to deliver opportunities for advanced science for the Partner Countries, from energy to life science, says Sven Landelius, President of the ESS AB Board.
Lars Anell is currently the President of the Board of the Swedish Research Council. He is a former Swedish Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, and a former Ambassador to the European Communities. He has also been President of the Board of Umeå University and President of the UN Intergovernmental Group on Science and Technology. The earlier Chief Negotiator for ESS Allan Larsson led the negotiations leading up to the decision on the site for ESS.
Today, ESS works mainly with programme planning, technical design, building preparations, licensing, and planning of future research programmes. In the beginning of 2013, the technical design will be finalised, as well as the financing plan for construction and operation. In connection with this work, negotiations on the contributions from and partnership of all ESS Partner Countries will take place, resulting in binding agreements. When these are concluded, an international convention can be signed and construction work start.
For more information, please contact:
Colin Carlile, ESS Director-General. E-mail colin.carlile@esss.se, Tel. 46-(0)46-222 83 02
Marianne Ekdahl, Communications Officer Press & Politics. E-mail marianne.ekdahl@esss.se, Tel. 46-(0)46-222 83 89
ESS IN SHORT:
The European Spallation Source – the next generation facility for materials research and life science
The European Spallation Source (ESS) will be a multi-disciplinary research laboratory based on the world’s most powerful neutron source. ESS can be likened to a large microscope, where neutrons are used instead of light to study materials – ranging from polymers and pharmaceuticals to membranes and molecules – to gain knowledge about their structure and function. ESS will be up to 100 times better than existing facilities, opening up new possibilities for researchers in for example health, environment, climate, energy, transport sciences and cultural heritage.
ESS is an intergovernmental research infrastructure project, and it will be built in Lund in southern Scandinavia. At least 17 European countries will take part in the construction, financing and operation of the ESS. Sweden and Denmark will co-host the ESS and cover 50 percent of the 1,4 B€ investment costs and 20 percent of the operating costs together with the Nordic and Baltic states.
The European Spallation Source ESS AB is a public limited company, today owned by the Swedish and the Danish states. ESS AB is planning the future international ESS organisation. Building is expected to start around 2013, the first neutrons to be produced in 2019 and the facility to be fully operational around 2025.
ESS will support a user community of 5000 researchers and will have great strategic importance for the development of the European Research Area. Near by there will be complementary laboratories, such as the synchrotron MAX IV in Lund and XFEL and PETRAIII in Hamburg.
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