EARTO-ledare möttes i Göteborg
Ledningarna för EARTO, European Association of Research and Technology Organisations, träffades nyligen i Göteborg (text på engelska).
The Presidents and senior management of Europe’s leading Research and Technology Organisations, gathered in Gothenburg on 16th October 2011 as the EUROTECH Group within EARTO, issue the following statement:
In the coming weeks the European Commission will publish its proposals for the Horizon 2020 research, development and innovation framework programme for the period 2014-2020, to be followed by discussion and decision in the European Parliament and among the EU Member States. This will happen against a backdrop of economic stagnation and fiscal austerity in Europe as a whole. It is, therefore, a critical moment – a moment for bold and ambitious decisions which will lay the groundwork for sustained economic recovery and for Europe’s future prosperity in a globally competitive world.
The past few months have seen the publication of two important European reports, the findings and recommendations of the High-Level Expert Group on Key Enabling Technologies and the European Research Area Board’s opinion on the Common Strategic Framework for Research and Innovation (since renamed Horizon 2020). These two reports share important messages:
• Europe must concentrate its science, technology and innovation investment on a limited number of high-impact areas, so as to tackle societal grand challenges and to exploit future economic opportunities;
• it must shift more investment towards mission-driven research, including emerging and enabling technologies and support for economic competitiveness, so as to stimulate growth and create jobs, and
• it must give stronger support to near-market research and innovation (validation, demonstration, pilots) just as our major global competitors do.
The EUROTECH Group therefore calls upon the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Member States of the European Union to:
• ensure a clear focus in Horizon 2020 – backed by substantial resources mobilised from across the full range of European policy areas and institutions, including the Structural Funds and the European Investment Bank – on a limited number of high-priority societal challenges and global economic opportunities for Europe;
• implement an integrated policy for developing and rolling out key enabling technologies, targeting the whole innovation chain from fundamental to technological research, from product development to prototyping, and on to implementation in globally competitive European manufacturing, with intellectual property provisions which optimally protect European interests (1) ;
• clearly shift the balance in Europe’s public research and innovation investment towards applied and technological research, and towards high-risk product and process development, which account for upwards of two-thirds of the public investment made by Europe’s leading competitors such as the United States, South Korea or China (2);
• put in place governance structures and funding models (3) to ensure that Europe’s RTOs and other organisations can contribute fully to the achievement of these strategic priorities, for which the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) of the SET-Plan – provided it is properly funded– may serve as a model.
Press Information
EUROTECH is a Special Interest Group within EARTO, the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations. Media materials regarding EARTO are available here.
EUROTECH groups the CEOs and senior management of Europe’s larger, publically mandated RTOs. They meet every six months to discuss national, European and global market and policy developments as well as other subjects of common interest.
The core members of EUROTECH are:
Germany (Chair) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Hans-Jörg Bullinger
Austria Austrian Institute of Technology Anton Plimon, Wolfgang Knoll
Belgium imec Luc Van den Hove
Denmark Danish Technological Institute Søren Stjernqvist
Finland VTT Erkki Leppävuori
France CEA Hervé Bernard
Netherlands TNO Jan Mengelers
Norway SINTEF Unni Steinsmo
Spain Tecnalia Iñaki San Sebastian
Sweden SP Group Maria Khorsand
In addition, DGA (France), IABG (Germany) and FOI (Sweden) participate in EUROTECH meetings and, especially, in the EUROTECH Security Research Working Group. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has Observer status.
1. The “Europe-First” IPR recommendations of the High Level Expert Group on Key Enabling Technologies have occasioned some discussion. The EUROTECH Group considers that optimal protection of European interests should preclude the grant of exclusive licences to non-European entities, while fully encouraging productive engagement with leading global players through active knowledge partnerships.
2. cf. presentation by Gabriel M. Crean to the ITRE Committee of the European Parliament, 30th August 2011.
3. Europe must facilitate effective and efficient cooperation between its centres of excellence in order to build the critical mass necessary for competing globally with success. We still lack effective instruments for this. The present JTI funding instruments for ARTEMIS and ENIAC, for example, basically allocate funding to participants according to national contributions to the programme. Such an arrangement marginalises top-class players which happen to be located in a small Member State or in a Member State for which the particular programme (JTI) is not a priority. Moreover, it often suffers from the “EUREKA deficit” whereby national monies notionally committed never materialise, or only partially, or with substantial delay. We urgently need instruments that ensure that the best European players can participate fully.
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