They just don’t want us there!
25.11.2021
Tomorrow, the 27 EU ministers for research and innovation will approve conclusions on the future governance of the European Research Area (ERA), and will adopt a recommendation on a Pact for Research and Innovation in Europe. The proposed R&I Pact ticks the right boxes and uses the appropriate language and R&I buzz words, but it is not legally binding and lacks (financial) ambition. The proposed ERA governance is clearly a matter of the European Commission and the Member States, and strikingly sidelines the European R&I stakeholder organisations (SHO).
One sentence of the Council conclusions on ERA governance reflects well the problems that LERU has with it: “The Council considers that the ERA Forum should co-design and coordinate the implementation of the ERA actions among the Commission, Member States and, on a case-by-case basis, associated countries, stakeholders, as well as relevant third countries.” Why can SHO only be involved “on a case-by-case basis”? SHO represent the core actors of the ERA: universities, RTO’s, researchers and innovators, research infrastructures, research funders, etc. They are the ones who in the end will realise the ERA. Another sentence of the conclusions confirms this reluctancy towards SHO: “the ERA Forum will ensure representative involvement at its relevant meetings of EU-level umbrella organisations or other appropriate representative organisations relevant at EU level of the following seven types of stakeholders (…)”. What is meant by “relevant meetings”? Are there also “non-relevant meetings” for SHO? Who will decide on what is relevant and not relevant?
Over the past weeks, LERU has clearly expressed its worries regarding this approach: in 2012, SHO like LERU were still invited to sign an MoU with the European Commission on ERA; today, SHO are completely sidelined, and their remaining involvement will depend on the judgment of ERAC, the European Research Area and Innovation Committee, being the European Commission and the Member States. The permanent seats and votes for SHO in the ERA Forum, as requested by LERU, are clearly one or more bridges too far for the Member States. Associated countries (like, let’s hope, the UK and Switzerland) get, regretfully, the same treatment as SHO.
So, what can now be expected from the Member States on ERA, since most of them have been dragging their feet on ERA issues for years? Is there any reason why things would be different from now on? Well, the ministers will adopt a nice Pact on Research & Innovation which ticks all the relevant R&I boxes and uses the right language, including the presently popular R&I buzz words. The same goes for the ERA Policy Agenda as annex of the ERA governance conclusions. Does that guarantee anything? Not really, since two crucial elements are missing: firstly, neither the Pact nor the Policy Agenda are legally binding, so they don’t oblige the Member States to do anything. Secondly, will they put the necessary money into the realization of ERA? No. Of course, Member States will again commit to contribute to the Union-level target of investing 3% of Union GDP in R&D. They have already done that in vain for 20 years. Further or more detailed financial commitments are not given, everything remains voluntary. So, should we then put our hope on the ERA Scoreboard, the ERA Policy Dialogues, the ERA Policy Online Platform, etc.? Well, these are more or less new labels for old practices, which have shown in the past not to be sufficient or efficient to make significant progress on ERA.
Finally, the Pact unfortunately does not contain any clear reference to the role that the European Commission should play, first and foremost, regarding the realization of the ERA: being the eliminator of national obstacles to the free circulation of knowledge, since this is what the ERA really is all about. Clearly, the European Commission is reluctant to take up this role and continues to believe that the ERA can be realized, together with the Member States, in a voluntary and bottom-up way. After twenty years of ERA policy, this is just naïve. As LERU has proposed earlier, a European Knowledge Act1 is urgently needed, to eliminate national obstacles which slow down the realization of the ERA.
Prof Kurt Deketelaere, Secretary-General LERU, concludes:
“Wherever the Pact and the Policy Agenda end up, LERU will continue to work hard on the key issues affecting the ERA. It is essential that the ERA is realized in combination with the European Education Area and the European Innovation Area. The European Commission and the Member States must urgently create the necessary preconditions to make this really and finally possible. They are not there yet, far from it in fact ...
