Europe’s €80 billion plan to boost research and innovation

With a proposed budget of €80 billion (US$105 billion), the European Commission’s new Horizon 2020 plan complemented the approach being taken in most of the European Union's member states to increase investment in research and innovation as the routes to future growth, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, EU commissioner for research, innovation and science, said last week.

“Europe is focusing huge efforts on fiscal consolidation but we must ensure that this is smart fiscal consolidation, with the measures that will produce jobs, growth and competitiveness today and tomorrow,” Geoghegan-Quinn said in a keynote address to the Universities Australia annual conference.

“Cutting spending in areas such as education, R&D and innovation would be exactly the wrong thing to do.”

She said Horizon 2020 should be seen as an economic policy measure as much as a research policy instrument, and follows on from the world’s largest public programme for research, the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, better known as FP7.

Developed through the Innovation Union, “the EU’s new initiative that puts research and innovation at the heart of the EU action to boost growth and jobs”, Horizon 2020, according to Geoghegan-Quinn,was structured around three distinct but mutually reinforcing pillars.

Under the first, the aim was to raise the level of excellence in Europe's science base and to ensure a steady stream of world-class cutting-edge research “to secure our long-term competitiveness”.

The proposed budget of €24.6 billion would, she said, support the best ideas, develop talent within Europe, provide world-class research infrastructure and make Europe an attractive location for the world's best researchers. As part of this, investment in the European Research Council would be nearly doubled, to more than €13 billion.

“Horizon 2020’s second pillar, ‘industrial leadership’, aims to make Europe a more attractive location to invest in research and innovation by funding actions where businesses set the agenda,” Geoghegan-Quinn said.

“This pillar will provide major investment in key enabling technologies – including enabling technologies such as nano, biotech, advanced manufacturing and advanced materials – with a proposed budget of €17.9 billion.”

She said that under the third pillar – societal challenges – people's major concerns would be addressed by bringing together resources and knowledge across different fields, technologies and disciplines. Here the proposed budget would be €31.7 billion.

“We have listened and responded to calls from stakeholders for a dramatic simplification of how we finance research and innovation at the European level. Horizon 2020 means more research and less bureaucracy – we are slashing red tape to make it easier to take part.

“Scientists and innovators will spend more time in the laboratory or workshop and less time filling in forms. Horizon 2020 has a much simpler structure than previous Framework Programmes, based on the three pillars that I already mentioned. This will make it easier for participants to identify where funding opportunities exist.”

Geoghegan-Quinn said the new scheme would offer European and Australian scientists, researchers and innovators many opportunities to work together, to make the discoveries and breakthroughs that would improve economies and people’s day-to-day lives.

Europe might not be the only region in the world that is facing the challenges of how to stimulate growth, maintain competitiveness and create jobs, she said. But these issues, of course, were at the top of its agenda.

Europe was continuing to invest heavily in research and innovation even in times of austerity and was carrying out the necessary reforms to create an even more favourable climate for research and innovation in Europe while also intending to compete for the best scientific talent worldwide.

“Australia and the European Union are natural partners and, as we celebrate in 2012 a half-century of EU-Australia relations, we have proved time and again that distance is no obstacle to a commitment to work together to make life better for our peoples.

“That’s what it means to unite our scientific resources and talents. If we stay interconnected, if we are determined and imaginative, I know that we can fulfil our potential even more.”

* A copy of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn's address can be downloaded here.