The Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, Alain Dorison, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the l'ineris, and Raymond Cointe, Managing Director, signed a new Goals and Performance Contract (COP) on 21 December 2020. This contract defines the strategic direction of the lneris for the next five years with a strong ambition: to secure the ecological transition and the renewal of the industry.
The 5th COP of lneris reinforces the "tripod" operating model of the lneris, which articulates its public policy support activity with its applied research and business services activities. This model gives the Institute's expertise a unique operational character, combining public interest, field experience and academic requirement.
In the context of the modernization of public policy that has led the Institute to reduce its staffing levels, this new COP foresees a more marked development of its partnerships in the public and private sectors and the tightening of its activity around three main themes:
- The continuation of its work around its historical foundation, the understanding and control of risks at the scale of an industrial site or a territory;
- The response to a strong societal expectation by deepening its expertise on the characterization of the dangers of chemicals and their impacts on humans and biodiversity;
- Supporting the ecological transition by devoting an increasing share of its resources to controlling the risks associated with the energy transition and the circular economy.
The COP, a framework of reference, a tool for steering and transparency
In particular, the 2021-2025 strategy aims to respond to the need, fuelled by the feedback of the mobilization of lneris during the fire at the Lubrizol site in Rouen in 2019, to significantly expand its capacity to support the public authorities in emergencies or environmental crisis. It also aims to strengthen the Institute's positioning on an all too often unrecognized aspect of biodiversity preservation, evaluation and control of the ecotoxicity of chemicals. Finally, in addition to further modernization of the important experimental resources available to lneris, it foresees a strengthening of the development of digital models and artificial intelligence, both for specific uses of lneris and to understand the key technical and organisational challenges for risk management in the industry of the future.
The COP - reviewable, and which does not have a commitment of means - is a tool of management and dialogue between the lneris, operator of the State, and its guardianship, the Ministry of Ecological Transition. It sets the direction of the operator's action and defines how they will be implemented. The variation of these guidelines is materialized by twenty objectives and actions with milestones and performance indicators.