Council adopted a recommendation to Commission and Member States on responsible internationalisation. Research ministers react to the Horizon 2020 evaluation.
On 23 May, the Competitiveness Council, in its configuration of research ministers, approved Conclusions on the EU Commission’s (EC) ex-post evaluation of the 8th EU framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020 (2014-2020), and a related outlook to the future of the framework programme (see SwissCore article). The Conclusions of the EU Member States provide political guidance for the development of the next, the 10th, EU framework programme (FP10) that will start in 2028. The research ministers highlighted the key relevance of Horizon 2020 in supporting research and innovation (R&I) at the EU level and its scientific, societal, and economic impact since 2014.
At the same time, the Conclusions mention the existence of considerable disparities in participation and success rates in different countries and call for exploring a more effective approach that supports wider participation. The Council also addressed implementation issues of the previous framework programme and identified a need to further optimise monitoring, including assessing the programme’s long-term effects. Representing the Belgian EU Presidency, Willy Borsus, Vice-President of Wallonia and Minister for Research and Innovation, drew conclusions for the future and underlined that “although Horizon 2020 is a success story, we cannot be complacent. Research and innovation will be critical for our competitiveness and sovereignty in the years to come. We need to make the most of the lessons learnt in Horizon 2020 to ensure that the next framework programme for research and development is even more ambitious, efficient and successful.” Ministers recognised the Horizon 2020 evaluation’s message that to boost the EU’s competitiveness, its attractiveness for R&I talent, and its capacity to leverage public and private investments, “an adequate budget and stability during the implementation phase of the Framework Programme is necessary”. Furthermore, the Council stressed that achieving these goals will require “a strong and interconnected European R&I system at the EU, the national and regional levels and recalled that the EU Member States remain far from achieving the EU-level target of investing 3% of GDP per year in R&D – with an EU investment of 2.22% of GDP in 2022”.
On 23 May, the Council also adopted a Council Recommendation on enhancing research security. The Recommendation follows on a Commission proposal for a Council Recommendation on enhancing research security, as part of the EC’s package of proposals on economic security of 24 January 2024 (see SwissCore article). The Council Recommendation identifies risks such as technology leakage, foreign interference, and ethical or integrity violations. The non-binding Recommendation offers guidance for measures that could be taken by the Commission, the Member States and the research community at large. Willy Borsus commented that “this Recommendation has been a priority for the Belgian Presidency in the field of research and innovation. While we are open to knowledge exchange and international cooperation in the field of research, we should not be naïve. The changing geopolitical context urgently requires our joint response to avoid the use of our own research against our security or our values. The scientific community needs guidance without delay.”
In their Council Recommendation, research ministers call for awareness raising when it comes to potential risks and enhancing research security in research cooperation with international partners. The document includes three sets of recommendations addressed to both EC and Member States, recommendations to Member States, and recommendations to the EC. The Recommendation asks the Commission and Member States to take into consideration key principles such as academic freedom and institutional autonomy when designing and implementing policy actions to enhance research security. R&I cooperation with partners in non-EU countries should be pursued “in a way that is both open and secure, in line with the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’, and with consideration to applicable restrictions”. In addition, the Council recommended to follow the principles of proportionality of safeguard measures, non-discrimination, and respect for fundamental rights. At the same time, the research ministers insist on a balanced approach and recommend that research security measures “should avoid protectionism and unjustified political instrumentalisation”.
The Council Recommendation offers fourteen recommendations to EU Member States: These include the development of national approaches, which may include the formulation of national guidelines or a list of relevant measures and initiatives; the creation or reinforcement of support services to help actors in the R&I sector to deal with risks related to international cooperation in research; the reinforcement of cross-sectoral cooperation within the government; or the development of the evidence base for research security policymaking. The Recommendation also includes a dedicated set of proposed measures for member states’ engagement with research funding organisations and research-performing organisations. Furthermore, the Council Recommendation directs eleven recommendations specifically to the EC, including exploring and assessing options for more structural support, like the possible establishment of a European Centre of Expertise on Research Security. The Recommendation mentions that the monitoring of the implementation will be done by the EC, in cooperation with the Member States. The EC will report to the Council every two years on knowledge security while relying on the existing biennial reporting on the global approach to R&I and can make use of the existing European Research Area (ERA) governance; the next report is foreseen for mid-2025.
The Council also reached a political agreement on 23 May on the regulation to amend the objectives of the European High Performing Computer Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC). The regulation aims at boosting the EU’s leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) by adding the new objective for the Joint Undertaking to develop and operate AI Factories in support of an AI ecosystem in the EU. The regulation will also make the EU’s supercomputing capacity further available to innovative European AI startups to train their models. The Council regulation will be published in the Official Journal of the EU after legal review and enter into force on the twentieth day following its publication.
Earlier in the month, on 8 May, the EC published the report ‘Directionality in R&I policy’ offering a methodology to assess practices in R&I policy in the EU Member States and Associated Countries. The report proposes a framework aiming to assess the use of directionality in national R&I systems. The report follows a dual approach: A macro perspective using publicly available datasets, and a micro-level approach focusing on specific programmes, including a focus on the example of Flanders. This combination aims to create a methodology for the development of a taxonomy framework for assessing R&I policy directionality in the EU and beyond.