The EC announced the board members for the five R&I missions. These include the Swiss, Bertrand Piccard, for the climate-neutral and smart cities mission.
As already reported in our SwissCore article in early July, European research and innovation (R&I) missions are a key novelty under the new framework programme for R&I, Horizon Europe. The European Institutions have agreed on five areas for R&I missions during interinstitutional negotiations (trilogue), which are now listed in the Annex of the Horizon Europe Regulation. Each of these mission areas shall be governed by a mission board of 15 experts, who are responsible for proposing concrete R&I missions within the wider areas and overseeing their implementation.
The European Commission (EC) issued a public call for experts in May this year to identify suitable mission board members from academia, private industry, governmental bodies, non-governmental organisations and civil society. Following the naming of the chairs of the mission boards on the occasion of the informal council for research ministers in Helsinki on 4 July, the EC has now announced the names of the remaining 14 members of each mission board. In addition, the EC will establish an assembly for each mission area gathering a large number of experts and providing a pool of ideas and knowledge.
The call for mission boards resulted in more than 2’200 individual applications of experts from various backgrounds and 62 countries to the EC, including 10 from Switzerland. The selection of suitable members was therefore a challenge and aimed at a good geographical and sector-wise balance. From Switzerland, the EC chose Prof. Bertrand Piccard of the Solar Impulse Foundation, psychiatrist and balloon pioneer as a member of the mission on climate-neutral and smart cities. Piccard is joined by the former Viennese Vice-Mayor, Maria Vassilakou, and former Swedish finance minister, Allan Larsson, in the mission board chaired by former Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz.
The mission boards will have their first formal plenary meetings alongside the R&I Days in Brussels from 24-26 September. In addition, the R&I Days’ programme foresees dedicated co-creation sessions for each of the mission areas to gather input from a wider set of stakeholders.