For some time now, the EU has lagged behind the global leaders of innovation. Owing to the reducing of state funding for economic and financial crisis, so we must find ways to involve new resources in research, development, and innovation (R+D+I). This is how Zoltán Cséfalvay, Minister of State for Economic Strategy of the Ministry for National Economy, described the current situation of research and innovation in Europe, in a press briefing held during the EU ministers’ meeting. The State Minister emphasised that in addition to stabilising public finances, “There are three factors that could create competitiveness together”: strengthening the internal market and the research market, removal of bureaucratic barriers and powerful actions in the field of investment stimulation and innovation.

The Presidency’s Discussion Paper prepared for the meeting, invited ministers to answer seven questions. First, the guest external speakers shared their experiences from the period between 2007 and 2013, about the seventh Research Framework Programme, and then Commissioner for Research, Innovation, and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, spoke and among others, presented the first results of the debate on the Commission’s Green Paper of innovation, published on 4 February 2011. She acknowledged that Member States exhibited a unanimous need for simplifying the research framework programme of the EU, including the stability and predictability of rules of grants.

The rigid system

It has been a reoccurring thought in the debate too, that we need to give more flexibility to the system. The lack of such flexibility decreases the interests of industry in EU-funded research programmes, even though - as Mr. Cséfalvay noted in the press briefing - “innovation is the driver of industry.” At the same time, several participants stressed the constant importance of basic research, support of excellence in science, pointing out that no one can predict which research direction or discovery will prove to be a driver factor of technological and economic development in the next 10-15 years.

It was a strong opinion that there is an imbalance in the utilization of EU funds of R+D+I: in the first three years of the 7th Research Framework Programme only 5 percent of the payments went to the 12 Member States that joined the EU after 2004. Now it is the task of the Commission to assess the reasons why these states are underrepresented; and then to submit proposals on how it could reduce this. In the press briefing, Polish Minister for Science and Higher Education, Barbara Kudrycka, indicated that her country considers the increase of coherence between the EU’s research framework programme and the Presidency’s cohesion policy.

Commission Geoghegan-Quinn, said in the press briefing that the next, eighth Research Framework Programme will be a “new start, new adventure”, therefore the Commission called for proposals of a new name. We must submit such proposals by 10 May 2011 on the web site of the Commission, where application rules and participation conditions are also available. The Commission highlighted that according to one of the surveys of the interim assessment of the seventh Research Framework Programme, 85 percent of the respondents found the programme generally efficient. According to the Commissioner, the main challenges, is how to tackle the far-reaching simplification, and how to ensure that “Laboratory-based research can meet engineering skills, and innovation.”

This is the first time that the ministers in the Council assessed the outlooks of the next budgetary period to begin in 2014, in four workshop discussions held after the working lunch. They assessed how the innovation chain from research to the market could be most efficient, how to promote investments into research and innovation by new financial means, and how the public procurement market, standardisation, and the protection of intellectual property rights could be made to support innovation.

There was a consensus that we should streamline the EU’s research strategy, i.e. it should focus on well-defined and precise objectives. In one of the workshop discussions, a separate analysis was carried out for the opportunities of R+D+I in health care and energy management, as well as in the field of food and raw materials. They focused especially on the role of the so-called frontier research in the development of a world-class research infrastructure. The subject of the fourth workshop discussion was how to overcome the involvement of the division of Europe, in the field of research and innovation, and how the spread of excellence all over Europe could be promoted.

Zoltán Cséfalvay, who surprised his partners by distributing a recent Hungarian invention, the “Gömböc” as a souvenir, reaffirmed in his closing speech that Europe’s competitiveness is at stake. He said that the informal ministerial meeting provided a valuable contribution to the reform of the EU’s research policy, and the implementation of the Innovative EU, which is the flagship innovation of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

Source: http://www.eu2011.hu/news/ministerial-debate-innovation-reform