The European Commission, Directorate F of the DG Research, has been fully devoted to the evaluations of a large number of proposals corresponding to the second call of FP7 Health  during the months of November and December 2007. The evaluation procedures were finished with the final meeting of the ranking panel composed by external experts during the second week of January 2008 although the ethical review of some proposals will start by mid February. 

The Commission sent all information, including the Evaluation Summary Reports (ESR), to the members of the Programme Committee at the end of January and then sent the ESRs to applicants. 

On the 11th  of February  a Programme Committee meeting took place and the final outcome of the evaluation has been disclosed to the NCPs.

The invitation letters for opening the contract negotiations will be sent out at the end of February.  

In the meantime, the Commission showed some preliminary and still provisional information regarding the response to this call. 902 proposals were submitted out of which 864 proposals were considered eligible. 37 proposals have been declared ineligible and 1 proposal has been withdrawn: the main reasons: of ineligibility were outside budget limits, minimum number of participants not respected, or out of scope proposals.

A total of 640 independent experts were involved in the evaluation process.