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Former EU research commissioner Carlos Moedas will be the new mayor of Lisbon after beating the polls that forecasted the victory for his rival Fernando Medina, a socialist candidate running for re-election.
The conservative’s win in Lisbon, which had been ruled by the socialist party since 2007, was the biggest surprise in Portuguese local elections on Sunday.
Moedas served as commissioner for research, science and innovation in the Juncker Commission from 2014 to 2019. During his time in office, he pioneered the establishment of the EU’s new start-up funder, the European Innovation Council, and the creation of the five Horizon Europe missions, a new type of massive goal-oriented projects which are set to launch under the new EU research programme later this week.
During his mandate, Moedas was Europe’s leading proponent of science diplomacy. As the 2021-2027 Horizon Europe programme was taking shape, Moedas frequently called for EU research and innovation to be, “open to the world.” The European Commission’s pivot to “open strategic autonomy” is a significant departure from this philosophy.
The European Commission on Saturday pledged €140 million to support CGIAR, a network of 15 research centres looking into transforming food systems in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The EU support will help CGIAR, which has been running for 50 years, to renew its research and innovation plans and address production methods, practices and policies in a bid to improve productivity of food production based on ecological processes.
The announcement is part of a wider push to transform global food systems ensuring nutrition security in the face of the climate crisis leading to depletion of natural resources.
The basic research agency Austrian Science Fund is set to receive €806 million to fund pioneering science projects until 2023, a 27% increase compared to the last three years.
A total of €338 million will be invested directly in projects, €185 million support international cooperation, while another €152 million will be invested in furthering the careers of outstanding researchers.
“The financing agreement is about nothing less than the future viability of our country,” said the agency’s president Christof Gattringer. “From archeology to artificial intelligence, mathematics to medicine, ecology to economics - excellent basic research in all its breadth prepares us for the challenges of tomorrow.”
France’s research, innovation and education ministry will have an extra €706 million to spend next year compared with 2021 as part of the country’s recovery plan which foresees a €7.8 billion investment in youth, training and research.
A €472 million top-up will be invested in boosting the country’s research capacity next year, with funding going to raising researcher salaries and better equipping laboratories and companies that carry out innovation activities.
In line with the European Commission’s renewed call for member states to raise public and private R&D expenditure to 3% of GDP, France has been steadily increasing funding for research, innovation and education, with the budget going up by €2.4 billion since the start of the country's five-year plan in 2017.
European universities collaborate with other institutions on teaching, research and knowledge sharing more than universities in other regions, this year’s U-Multirank higher academic ranking found.
The finding is in line with the EU’s ambition to create transnational university alliances to enable Europe-wide student, staff and researcher mobility, knowledge sharing and joint research. There are already 41 such EU-supported alliances in the EU bringing together more than 280 universities. Closer collaboration, the European Commission believes, will boost university performance.
U-Multirank is a university ranking started by the Commission in 2011 to give more visibility to European universities, which often do not make it to the top of other league tables.
The UK has begun the construction of its £93 million quantum computing centre, the locus of the country’s 10-year £1 billion programme for the transition of quantum technologies from laboratory to industry.
The new centre promises to become a world-leading research institution dedicated to accelerating the development of quantum computing.
“This is an important step forward in the journey towards creating a flagship facility for the UK quantum community to harness the exciting potential of this technology,” said Ottoline Leyser, chief executive of UK Research and Innovation.
Starting today, the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) will share knowledge on financing and innovation opportunities to provide better services and financing for European SMEs and start-ups.
The EU innovation agency and the fund will share information in areas such as equity investments, climate, energy and environmental technology sectors, strategic digital technologies, educations and skills. The new knowledge sharing partnership promises to boost Europe’s innovation potential for the green and digital transitions.
“An enhanced access to finance is a core element of any successful innovation policy. By bringing together the EIT and the EIF, we ensure that all innovators and SMEs in Europe that are able to boost the recovery and the green and digital transitions can get the support they need,” said EU research and innovation commissioner Mariya Gabriel.
The EU innovation agency, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, has opened a new community hub for knowledge sharing and business creation and acceleration for healthcare, climate, urban mobility and raw materials sectors.
The new hub is one of many EIT locations across Europe and beyond, where the agency brings together innovators in a bid to boost the EU potential to innovate thought knowledge sharing. The agency hopes the new location in Hungary will help support more innovators in Central and Eastern Europe.
“Collaboration makes us stronger: students and entrepreneurs with innovative ideas will benefit from this new Hub and I look forward to seeing the results and more ground-breaking innovations emerging from Central and Eastern Europe,” said EIT Director Martin Kern.
A year after announcing it, the European Commission today outlined how it hopes to deliver the New European Bauhaus, a culture and innovation initiative that will serve as the face of the EU’s Green Deal, starting with a €85 million investment for the next year.
To get the project fully off the ground, this month, the Commission will launch a call for five demonstrator projects for social, affordable and sustainable housing districts. These first projects will be funded through the EU’s research programme Horizon Europe. Alongside the demonstrators, it will run “a think and do tank to co-create, prototype and test new tools, solutions and policy recommendations”, according to the newly released plans.
“The new European Bauhaus combines the grand vision of the Green Deal for Europe with concrete changes on the ground. Changes that improve our daily life and that everyone can perceive not only in buildings and public spaces, but also in fashion or furnishings,” said Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
The call set to go live this month is only the first step in the Commission’s grand plans for the New European Bauhaus. The new plan promises to integrate the initiative “as an element of context or priority” across many EU-funded programmes. For one, it foresees Bauhaus-themed calls for proposals from the EU’s innovation agencies, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and the European Innovation Council.
Just five to fifteen percent of artificial intelligence applications will be affected by the European Commission’s proposed AI act, according to internal market commissioner Thierry Breton.
“The draft regulation covers a narrow set of applications,” he said. “Most companies will be able to look at the regulation and say, fine, they don’t concern me, and get on with their business,” he told an AI conference on September 15.
Responding to a question about whether the proposed rules, set out in April, will stifle AI development in Europe, he said it was likely to be quite the opposite, especially for small and medium sized businesses, as the regulations would create both “trust” and “legal certainty”.
“Both are absolutely key requirements for any business wishing to invest in a technology,” he told delegates at ‘From Ambition to Action: A High Level Conference on AI’.
He also argued that the EU was leading in the way globally in the push to create ethical rules for AI. “We should not underestimate the advantage of the EU being the first mover,” he said.
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