‘Bolder, better, bigger’

Potočnik: “Step up the building of ERA.” Photo Paul O’Driscoll.

Research policy needs to become:

• Bolder: putting the major focus on the Grand Challenges of the environment, climate change, energy and health and stepping up the push to joint programming in which nation states compare notes and collaborate to avoid duplication of the same research from country to country;

• Better: making national and EU policy more interactive;

• Bigger: increasing investment in research that is necessary to answer Europe’s main social problems.

Potočnik’s comments were made at the end of the Competitiveness Council meeting last week, where much of the agenda focused on how innovation and research can play a crucial role in making Europe more competitive.

The creation of the European Research Area is a project that Potočnik has made very much his own, and as he bows out, he called on ministers to “step up the building of ERA”.  

The plea came as the European Research Area Board, a panel of scientific experts from academia and industry, charged with setting out a vision for ERA in 2030, prepares to release its first strategy report next week.

Potočnik’s case was echoed by Sweden as current holder the EU Presidency. Future Framework Programmes must be “more about the grand challenges that we face in our time,” Sweden’s minister for higher education and research, Tobias Krantz, said at a joint press conference.

Krantz called also for a renewed effort to cut red tape on EU-funded research and for improved governance of ERA, using his home country to illustrate how member states that make proportionately higher investments in research and development “Don’t think they get as much as they should from the money.”

While on a national level this is known as “the Swedish paradox”, it is equally “the European paradox,” said Krantz. Money spent on research could generate more innovation if there was more coordination and cooperation, both at an EU level and between member states, Krantz said. “There is a strong feeling among member states that we should move forward with the development of the ERA along these lines,” he added.

A day earlier the Council discussed moves to formulate an EU innovation policy, which is promised for early in 2010. This will now be broadened out from innovation based on scientific research to embrace innovation in services.