The document was developed by the Ministry of Education and Science following Government Directive No 718-r of 4 May 2012.
The Convention on Building and Exploiting the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility of 18 December 1988 (hereinafter referred to as the Convention and Facility) was signed by 11 European nations to create a centre of physical experiments in the area of nano-materials, X-ray optics, protein crystallography, disorder system physics, and so on.
In December 1991, the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands joined the Convention.
The Facility was created in Grenoble, France, in 1992, and every year it supports about 1,000 unique scientific tests.
The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility Centre was founded to implement the Convention (hereinafter referred to as Company) headed by a council that appoints a General Director of the Centre. The council includes three representatives from each nation – a participant of the Convention forming a relevant national delegation.
The council deals with all issues concerned with exploiting the facility, including the purchases of equipment, finances and audit, as well as adopting a mid-term research programme and principles of access to this facility for national and international research organisations. Decisions are taken while taking into consideration the contributions made by each participant nation.
To ensure the implementation of the technological updating programme whenever a participant nation is running into financial difficulties, a decision was taken to sell shares of the initial participants to attract new countries to the Convention.
The Russian side received such proposals in 2011. It was offered a 6% share of the company. In addition, Russian scientists would gain a priority for their proposals in implementing a project on creating two new experimental stations previewed by the modernisation programme.
The directive instructs the Kurchatov Institute National Research Centre to represent the Government in the company. In addition, the Kurchatov Institute is instructed to make a 10 million euro contribution on behalf of the Government to cover the expenses for building the facility and as of 2014, make contributions of 5.26 million euro (in 2012 prices) annually. These payments will be made from the federal budget funds extended to the Ministry of Finance under the subsection International Relations and International Cooperation of the section National Issues.
The accession of the Russian Federation to the convention will ensure the guaranteed access of the Russian scientists to the unique equipment of the company, improve the efficiency of their participation in the research, and make it possible to create a modern platform for training students, post-graduate students and experts in physics.