R&D in the in-tray: a raft of science policy issues awaits the new parliament

The 751 members of the new European Parliament – a pastiche of Christian Democrats, socialists, greens, liberals, extremists and pirates – will have plenty of big science policy issues to sift through in the next half decade. 

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) last week called on the new crop of policymakers due to be installed in Brussels to make “smart decisions.”

But the make-up of the new parliament does not appear conducive to this, with the unprecedented surge for parties with a mandate to cut back on the EU’s powers, prompting fears that pan-European research policies could be slowed down.

Efforts to increase the impact of the national R&D budgets of member states through joint programming, in which several countries agree research priorities, for example in Alzheimer’s disease or the development of new antibiotics, is growing in popularity as a way to avoid duplication and to scale-up research. But for a lot of Eurosceptics, this is the turf of individual governments and the EU should back away.

Despite Francois Hollande, prime minister of France saying he wants a Europe that would, “withdraw from where it is not necessary,” the evidence is that the impact on science policy will be limited. The parliament makes decisions based on consensus among parties, and research is an area where MEPs across the political spectrum have shown solidarity in the past.

Europe’s scientists and small businesses will have to pin their hopes on MEPs finding this sort of unity, with a number of important research files primed to pass through the parliament.

“Big public-private innovation projects backed by the parliament’s research committee helped change the direction of EU industrial policy,” said re-elected MEP Christian Ehler. He’s confident there will be more of this in the next term.

Research due for scrutiny

Amongst the most pressing innovation-related issues in next term will be digital and energy policy questions, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership currently being negotiated with the US, and the ongoing task of minimising red tape.

There’s also a mid-term review of the R&D programme Horizon 2020 in 2017, and a review of the EU's budget for 2014-2020, scheduled for 2016.

Brussels has been in thrall these past few months over the guessing game of who will emerge as the next president of the European Commission. The parliament’s formal role will be to approve whoever is nominated.

The novelty is that the European Council must “take into account” the elections to the European Parliament. With the European Peoples’ Party (EPP) winning the majority of seats, their candidate for the post, Jean-Claude Juncker, should be in the driver’s seat. However, electing Juncker will mean turning a deaf ear to the reservations of some, including the British Prime Minister David Cameron.

For the parliament, it will be a moment to see if its members can assert their grip. To be ignored would be “unthinkable”, in the eyes of Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the parliament’s liberal group (ALDE). How things unfold will set a marker for the parliament’s self-confidence in pushing the executive and seeking more institutional reforms over the next five years.

Digital futures

The new parliament will have to negotiate a new telecomms package, including rules on roaming charges, and pick up on the long-running effort to update data protection regulation.

On data protection, Europe’s universities and leading medical research bodies warn that the EU needs to strike the right balance. Any new restrictions on the use of personal data risks undermining important health and medical research, they say.

But the new rules could also present opportunity. During his campaign, Verhofstadt said, “Smart privacy regulation can and should be an incentive to develop new applications and technologies.” Just as the carbon emission standards delivered more efficient and cleaner cars, privacy protection can kick-start our own European technology environment, he said.

Policymakers will also face the more general pressure to keep tweaking incentives and build on the momentum of the continent’s growing app and mobile games economy.

Europe’s brain drain will remain an issue. At a talk last week, Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said, “There are more than 50,000 Germans in Silicon Valley, there more than 500 start-ups established there by French people, because the environment, the ecosystem for being entrepreneur is better.” Returning German MEP Lidia Geringer de Oedenberg wants see policies to keep these people in Europe. “A progressive entrepreneurship action programme should be introduced, using a broad definition of entrepreneurship, with special attention to young people, female entrepreneurs, the elderly, migrants and those at a disadvantage,” she said.

Trade

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), is billed as potentially the most ambitious trade agreement ever, accounting for a third of global trade. It has also been promoted as a spur to innovation in Europe, making it easier to sell products in the US.

If there is to be a free trade agreement, the parliament will have to approve it. Concerns about the deal are prevalent, not just among far-right and far-left groups, but shared by the Greens, a mainstream force in European politics.

“We don’t want this kind of agreement,” was the blunt assessment of Ska Keller, Green candidate for the European Commission, at the European parliament on Sunday.

Energy

Europe’s energy and environment goals for 2030 must be decided by October. While the last parliament was a consistent voice on these subjects, the new parliament will have slightly fewer Green party members, and less overall clout due to weaker alliances.

Kathleen van Bremp, one of Belgium’s re-elected MEPs, wants a big push on the EU’s energy file during the new term. “An important subject is the further development and improvement of more renewable energy,” she said. “This is the only way to secure our energy supply in the future, respect the climate and lower the bills.”    

Energy efficiency is her main interest though: how to do more with less. “Europe is not high on resources and raw materials, so we cannot afford to be wasteful,” she said. In the long run, when the shale gas bubble in the US bursts, the competitive advantage will be on Europe’s side, she adds, if we devote our energy to production efficiency.

There is likely to be a strong challenge from energy-intensive industries such as metals and chemicals on this. They claim to be nearing their energy efficiency limit and say any further regulation risks knocking them out of global competition.  

For Green party MEP, Reinhard Bütikofer, “The focus of the EU's research and innovation agenda should be on green tech, additive manufacturing as well as industry 4.0 rather than pouring billions into dead-end endeavours such as the ITER fusion project."

Removing red tape from scientists and small businesses

The parliament and the Commission can do more to remove administrative and practical obstacles for scientists who want to travel to study and work, according to Struan Stevenson, MEP.

The amount of red tape confronting small businesses is still unacceptably high, he says. The new parliament will be under special scrutiny not to add to this. “When I first joined the parliament in 1999, the EU book of rules – the acquis communitaire – was 86,000 pages. Barrosso has [frequently] promised to cut red tape, but when I asked him recently, he told me the book of rules is now 166,000 pages.”