Dear ERN Members,

We are happy to inform you that on Tuesday 15 May a new collaborative space called ‘Plaza’ had been added to the ERN Collaborative Platform (ECP). ‘Plaza’ is the Spanish word for city square and this is exactly what we want it to be: a vibrant, central place in a community where people can come together, meet, connect and collaborate.

So, Plaza offers you the ideal forum for the whole ERN community. It will be the forum where ECP users from Member States, different ERNs, patient organisations and the European Commission can enter and exchange information. It will be the place where messages can be posted across the ERN community. Access to Plaza will be automatically granted during your next connection to ECP and this new network will appear on your main ECP dashboard.
As Plaza is a common collaborative platform for the ERN Community we expect you to publish posts that are of relevance for the whole ERN community, or a large part of it. The specific collaborative spaces are still there for exchanges on information strictly related to their activities. But if, for example, you want to share information related to a survey conducted by a working group, you can post that on Plaza. As a representative of a Member State you may want to use Plaza, for example, to announce cross-border health initiatives by your Ministry.

From the Commission side we will inform through Plaza on our activities which concern the ERN community (e.g. press release, ERN videos available in all EU languages). Also news on the publication of calls for tenders or calls for proposal could be posted on Plaza. Note however that we will continue using e-mail communication via the well-known DG SANTE functional mailboxes. We hope that Plaza will prove to be useful in the sharing of information between ERN stakeholders.

Access the Web Platform.