The directors of Central European agencies, including the National Science Center (NCN) from Poland, associated in the initiative of the Central European Science Partnership (CEUS), have signed an agreement on a grant competition that will finance joint bilateral or multilateral research projects of scientists from Poland and Austria, Czech Republic and Slovenia.

The competition, scheduled for launch in 2020, will be based on the so-called the procedure of the lead agency procedure.

The National Science Center emphasized, that thanks to this procedure, it will be possible to submit an application for financing an international research project and conduct its substantive evaluation only in one agency, as part of the national standard competition offered by this agency, and then the project will be supported by the other institutions basing on the results of the assessment . Research consortia will have freedom in choosing the agency to direct the application.