The European Commission has adopted a European Charter for Researchers and a Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. These two documents, addressed to researchers as well as to employers and funders in both the public and private sectors, are key elements in the European Union's policy to make research an attractive career.

The Charter and Code aim to give individual researchers the same rights and obligations wherever they may work throughout the European Union. This seeks to address a situation where research careers in Europe are fragmented at local, regional, national or sectoral level. The goal is to allow Europe to make the most of its scientific potential.

In particular, the European Charter for Researchers addresses the roles, responsibilities and entitlements of researchers and their employers or funding organisations. It aims at ensuring that the relationship between these parties contributes to successful performance in the generation, transfer and sharing of knowledge, and to the career development of researchers.

The Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers aims to improve recruitment, to make selection procedures fairer and more transparent and proposes different means of judging merit: Merit should not just be measured on the number of publications but on a wider range of evaluation criteria, such as teaching, supervision, teamwork, knowledge transfer, management and public awareness activities.

A UK HE sector working group, co-ordinated by UUK and Research Councils UK (RCUK), has produced a mapping of the European Charter and Code against existing legislation, guidelines and good practice in the UK in order to provide a comprehensive gap analysis. The gap analysis demonstrated that in most cases the UK already meets the requirements of the European Charter and Code and no major conflicts with current practice in the UK were identified. Some aspects of the Charter and Code require further clarification and these are highlighted within the gap analysis. These are being considered as part of the updating of the UK’s Researchers Concordat.

There is no major barrier to UK HEIs wishing to adopt the Charter and Code in a more formal way and the mapping report offers suggestions on how these recommendations may be interpreted within the UK context. The report supports the European Commission’s recognition that adopting the Charter and Code is a commitment to a continuous process by building on existing structures and mechanisms. This report can be downloaded via the link provided.