A session of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries of JINR Member States was held on 21 – 22 November 2014 in Dubna. The results of JINR activity in 2014 and plans for 2015, the draft of the JINR budget for the  next year and the draft of the membership’s fee of the JINR Member States for 2016, 2017 and 2018 were among discussed issues.

Participants of the session observed a minute of silence in tribute to the memory of passed away RAS Academician Vladimir Kadyshevsky.

Russia will fulfill its obligations

Plenipotentiary representative of the Russian government at JINR, Deputy Minister of Education and Science Ludmila Ogorodova opened the session. She highly appreciated the role and the authority of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in the fields of fundamental physics and declared full support for JINR activities from the Russian government.

Deputy Minister attended special attention to the world-class mega-science project which is implemented in Dubna – development of the heavy ion collider NICA. As a representative of the Russian government, she stated the official position on this project:
– Today Russia actively participates in the implementation of the JINR mega-project NICA. Due to this the package of measures aimed at ensuring of the contribution of the Russian Federation on implementation of the priority targeted funding of the mega project NICA at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Deputy Minister emphasized that the RF Ministry of Education and Science highly appreciated efforts of the JINR Directorate on enhancement of international collaboration of participants of the NICA project; She assured that Russia will fulfill previously agreed obligations for contributions to the JINR budget in 2015-2018, and expressed support for the new method of calculating of contributions based on the principle of solvency of JINR Member States.

Ludmila Ogorodova has delegated authority of chairman of the JINR CPP sessions, which she performed during the year, to the newly elected to this position Plenipotentiary representative of the government of Bulgaria Latchesar Kostov. In addition to the governing authority the Bulgarian scientists was also awarded with the Diploma "Honorary Doctor of JINR".

Results, plans, comments

JINR Director, RAS Academician Viktor Matveev presented at the session a brief overview of the results of JINR activity in 2014 and plans for 2015; he also spoke about active efforts on implementation of two large-scale JINR projects – the NICA complex the factory of super heavy elements. The representative of the RF Government commended the report.

The CPP heard reports on prospects of development of relations between CERN and JINR and with the European Union’s science policy bodies – JINR Chief Scientific Secretary N.A.Russakovich, as well as on prospects for the involvement of new countries to JINR – Head of the JINR International Cooperation Department D.V. Kamanin.

DLNP Director Vadim Bednyakov presented the scientific report “Prospects for the realization of the JINR Neutrino Programme”.

Traditionally, all plenipotentiary representatives of the governments of JINR Member States participated in the general discussion. They expressed their gratitude for high level and informational content of reports, highly appreciated the scientific significance and perspectivity of projects implemented by JINR staff and considerable efforts invested in enhancement of international scientific cooperation.

Unique European project

On Saturday, 22 November Plenipotentiary Representative of the Government of Romania to JINR Academician N.V. Zamfir made a presentation about the project of the European Union in Romania «Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics». This project is a subject of intent observation of the entire European Community. Development of intense lasers, more than 6 times exceeding the capacity of all existing lasers, are planned after a few years in the frames of this project. The scale of the experiment is evaluated on the same level as the Large Hadron Collider.

At the opening of the exhibition «ELI – Nuclear Physics» JINR Director Viktor Matveev said:
– You have just heard the report of Academician N.V. Zamfir about this project. This is very interesting, and of course, I would like to understand how our Institute could participate in this project. This is nuclear physics, which is our specialty. This is an extremely promising area of research that promises perspective results for development of accelerator techniques and application in medicine. We thank you for the excellent report in this new direction of research.
The next CPP session will be held in Dubna on 25-26 March 2015.