The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) calls in its policy paper for a new ambition for Research Infrastructures in Europe.
Amid the ongoing discussion on the renewal of the European Research and Innovation Area (ERA), ESFRI ‘s paper “Making Science Happen” focuses on one of the main priorities of the ERA agenda 2015-2020: Building an optimal system of research infrastructures (RI) in Europe. The paper comes just after the European Commission (EC) has started to flesh out its major policy objectives, especially on carbon neutrality and the digital transformation, over the last months; and just weeks before the EC’s communication on the renewal of the ERA that is expected for July.
The ESFRI paper builds on the Opinion on the future of ERA that the European Research Area and Innovation Committee (ERAC) adopted in December 2019. The intergovernmental ESFRI presents ideas how the European system of RIs could help achieve the overarching policy objectives of the EC and contribute to the four priority areas under the headings of directionality, inclusiveness, connectivity and visibility that ERAC highlighted in its Opinion. The reflection process that led to the policy paper has engaged EU Member States (MS) and Associated Countries (AC), the EC, and the scientific community already since early 2019.
The ESFRI paper states that, thanks to a concerted effort over the past one and a half decade, Europe commands now a strong RI system that covers all scientific domains: “To date, the ESFRI Roadmap has enabled the design and development of 55 strategic RIs, mobilising almost €20 billion of investments across the EU. To this end, Europe now has one of the most advanced and integrated Research Infrastructure systems in the world.” This, according to the ESFRI, was possible thanks to the “effective mechanisms to identify potential new investment priorities and to develop any new facilities”.
While much has already been achieved since the early 2000s, the ESFRI study establishes that the European RI landscape needs further optimisation. This is needed, in order to better facilitate cross-disciplinary research and the exploitation of data interoperability to produce new science. These advances in turn can help tackle the major challenges among EC’s policy priorities. The ESFRI is indeed aware that “Europe’s citizens are demanding that their investments in science help to bring solutions to the global challenges of the 21st century: the impact of climate change, the harnessing of industrial change and the digital transition, the threat of social inequality and its impact on our democracies.”
Through the ESFRI roadmap process, national RI policy priorities are already systematically analysed and considered at the European level. This allows ESFRI to provide long-term orientations for large investment decisions at national and European levels. ESFRI also sees room to further strengthen synergies and direction between various European and national sources of funding, The position of RIs would need to be strengthened in a renewed ERA through strategic investments across borders and sectoral domains, in line with European strategic agendas. European RIs should also be developed into knowledge and innovation hubs that are integrated into local ecosystems, and therefore form the basis of European competitiveness on a regional level, but with a global outreach. The ESFRI paper makes an appeal for a new step forward: “The EC and the MS/AC are invited to explore possibilities to more firmly anchor RIs in the Smart Specialisation Strategies, and to develop knowledge innovation hubs in which RIs are embedded in regional education, research and development, closely interacting with local businesses and industry, and introduce measures to maximise the impact of RIs on society.”
The envisioned optimisation of the European RI system should also contribute to another ERA priority: Open Science. To that end, RIs should be used as important promoters of Open Science providing FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) and quality certified Open Data, thereby contributing to the success and impact of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and improving their capacity to serve their users.