European Commission
Brussels, 16 September 2014
EU 'single market for research' now depends on national reforms, study finds
The
ERA partnership between Member States, research stakeholders and the
Commission has made good progress in delivering ERA. The conditions for
achieving a European Research Area (ERA),
where researchers and scientific knowledge can circulate freely, are in
place at the European level. Reforms must now be implemented at the
Member State level to make ERA work.
This is the main conclusion of the latest ERA progress report, presented today by the European Commission. The report updates last year's overview (IP/13/851),
and presents individual country reports that give a snapshot of
implementation on the ground, notably at the level of research
organisations.
European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said: "We
have made good progress on the European Research Area in recent years.
It is now up to Member States and research organisations to make good on
their commitments and put in place the necessary reforms. The
Commission will help where it can, including with the €80 billion
investment from our new research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020.
In particular, national and EU research efforts need to be much more
closely aligned if we are to increase impact at EU level."
The following initiatives announced in the ERA Communication have been firmly established:
-
Member States are increasingly adopting measures in support of ERA, and reflecting them in their national reform programmes;
-
The EU has embedded ERA in the European semester. It also provides substantial funding for ERA measures, for instance promoting open recruitment, open access to publications and data as well as gender equality through Horizon 2020;
-
Research organisations such as research funders and research-performing institutions have shown strong support for the ERA agenda;
-
An ERA Monitoring Mechanism has been set up and is delivering increasingly strong data to evaluate performance at the Member State and institutional level.
The analysis confirms that the conditions for the completion of ERA that the Commission identified in 2012 are in place.
At
the same time differences still remain at Member State and
institutional level. For example, while competitive project-based
funding occurs in all Member States, the extent of it varies
significantly between countries. And while more than half of the Member
States have initiatives in place supporting gender equality in research,
the pace of real change is too slow. While the report concludes that
there is no single path to achieving ERA, it is also clear that ERA is
most effective and beneficial when national measures are in place.
Member
States are due to put forward 'ERA Roadmaps' by mid-2015, which will
outline their next steps towards ERA implementation. The Commission,
research stakeholder organisations and Member States will meet in
Brussels in March 2015 to take stock.
Background
ERA
is about enabling researchers, research institutions and businesses to
better move, compete and co-operate across borders. This will strengthen
EU Member States' research systems, increase their competitiveness and
allow them to work together more effectively to tackle major societal
challenges.
EU leaders
have repeatedly stressed the importance of completing the European
Research Area, setting a deadline of 2014 in European Council
conclusions of February 2011 and March 2012. This led the Commission to
propose "A Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth",
which identified actions Member States, Stakeholders and the European
Commission should take to achieve ERA. The five priorities on which
progress is assessed are: effectiveness of national research systems;
transnational cooperation; an open labour market for researchers; gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research; and optimal circulation and transfer of scientific knowledge.
ERA
has already proven to be good for performance of Member States and
research institutions. The report includes findings such as:
-
open and attractive research systems are more innovative;
-
research institutions implementing ERA produce a higher number of publications and patent applications per researcher, generating more knowledge;
-
the research impact of researchers who have moved between countries is nearly 20% higher than those who have not.
The information in the ERA Progress Report was
gathered from several sources, notably from the National Reform
Programmes 2014. The Commission also conducted a survey of
research-funding and research-performing organisations in all Member
States and countries associated to the EU research programme, and this
information was complemented by the MORE 2 study and Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014.
The
ERA monitoring put in place is delivering data on levels of progress
made on the ERA policy actions. However, the fact that much of this data
must be gathered on a voluntary basis puts limits on its effectiveness
for policy making. Further work will be needed to identify and fine-tune
the essential components and enable data collection to evolve. The
Commission will launch a debate with Member States on the best possible
level of coordination and alignment of national research strategies and
pooling of funding in the domains of the societal challenges in order
to increase impact at EU level.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου