EU Conference: New Worlds — New Solutions

A conference on research signalled the start of the Swedish Presidency of the European Union. Participants aimed to lay the foundation for future research and innovation policies in Europe. The conference, held July 7th and 8th, 2009, attracted 350 participants to Lund to participate in two days of discussions on designing EU´s future policies for research and innovation.

Scientists, politicians and other decision-makers, representatives of research funding bodies and voluntary organisations, and many others attended the meeting, which aimed to produce a document setting out the course for further work. The conference signalled the start of the Swedish Presidency of EU for the second half of 2009.

“I think it´s a good sign that the Government wanted to initiate Sweden´s half-year EU Presidency by discussing research. They believe that knowledge is an instrument that can help solve problems", says Gunnel Gustafsson, Deputy Director General of the Swedish Research Council. The Government appointed the Council to arrange the conference in cooperation with the other national research funding bodies in Sweden, i.e. Formas, FAS, and Vinnova.

The Presidency means that Sweden will, for the second half of 2009, lead the work of the European Union. The council of ministers for research issues is also being led by Sweden. Along with other events, Sweden will hold an informal ministerial meeting with the research ministers of EU Member States. Several other conferences will also be held, attracting scientists from throughout Europe to Sweden.

This half-year will be special because of the recent parliamentary election, and new commissioners will take charge. Uno Svedin, Director of International Activities at Formas, observes that this situation could offer an advantage.

“There is a possibility that, in this gap, Sweden can inject ideas that the new parliament, the new commissioners, and others can start with", he remarks.

What happens after 2013?

The introductory conference was called New Worlds — New Solutions. “We discussed what Europe must invest in to equip research and innovation systems to cope with turbulent future situations, some that we already see — such as the economic crisis and climate change — and new ones that we cannot foresee. Our knowledge system is our first line of defence, like a radar shield. But we must know what we want to detect. Therefore, we need a well conceived strategy at the cutting edge, we need to be prepared for different problems, and we need an innovation system that can find solutions quickly", says Uno Svedin.

The current Seventh Framework Programme ends in 2013. At the Lund conference, participants discussed what might happen afterwards as regards research initiatives. But the conference arrangers emphasised that the conference was not about an eighth framework programme. They did not want the discussion and ideas to be locked in to the past framework programmes. Those programmes have been ongoing for 25 years, and continue to have much the same form as from the outset, for instance, major thematic investments.

The question is whether it is time to discuss whether this is the best way to invest money. Or should we do something new? An external expert panel has assessed the Seventh Framework Programme and has developed ten recommendations for future research investments. Their input was used in planning the Lund conference.

Current social problems

The current situation in Europe and the world served as the starting point for the discussions.

“Rapid worldwide change is the focus. We need to look at research in that perspective", says Gunnel Gustafsson.

The issues discussed concerned problems that are both widespread and important from the citizens´ perspective. They addressed how research could contribute towards improving our ability to manage climate change, global recessions, interactions among different cultures, religions, and languages, and the fact that Europe is moving towards a situation where our part of the world will have an increasingly lower share of population and economic resources.

“We are sliding down the ranking lists of scientific publications and citations, the percentage of elderly in Europe are increasing more rapidly than in many other places around the world, and countries outside of Europe are increasing their investments in research more than what Sweden is doing. These are facts that we cannot ignore. Instead, we should try to do something about it. Not least, we need to identify the system changes that should be made in European research policy to address the problem in the best way", says Gunnel Gustafsson.

Conference participants were challenged to propose needed system changes and how these might be achieved. The results are presented in the Lund Declaration, a document describing how research policy efforts should continue after the conference. This action programme was prepared during four seminars in Europe in the spring and was completed during the conference with input from the conference participants.

Invest in the best

A conference participant from Finland, Howard Trevor Jacobs, Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Tampere, participated in a panel discussion during the conference. He thinks that the best way for Europe to successfully address the great challenges of the future would be to invest in research with scientific excellence.

“The initiatives from the European Research Council (ERC) are like a fresh breeze in research financing at the EU level. The ERC is governed by an independent scientific council with researchers who decide where the research money should go. The sole criteria is scientific excellence," says Howard Jacobs.

He disagrees with some of the criteria in the framework programme, for instance, that a certain number of groups from a particular number of countries should collaborate. “Partnership and collaboration should grow organically."

Funding from the ERC has been distributed very unevenly among countries. According to Howard Jacobs, every scientist would benefit if funds were distributed based on scientific excellence. “This creates pressure on the Member States to invest in research and create career pathways in academics."

Today, 15% of EU´s research funding goes to ERC. Howard Jacobs thinks that the figure should be 85%. If he could decide, the remaining 15% would be used to finance a few technology development programmes for future technologies.

These could include, for instance, third generation biofuels produced from bacteria, or magnetic levitation — a way of using magnetism to keep an object suspended. Germany already has a test track where this technique is used to run a train. “I believe that strategic support should be given to technologies that are 20 to 50 years away from being applied. Otherwise we are wasting our taxpayers´ money on yesterday´s industries."

Entire funding system

Uno Svedin emphasises that it is important for entire funding systems to commit to excellence and fairness between different regions in Europe, but not necessarily on the same project or type of work.

“A system that produces only a limited number of winners in a single European region is not sustainable, and the pan-European political system would be unable to support that. However, this does not negate the importance of excellence and how to best meet the grand challenges — and how to design the structures to successfully achieve all of this. There are common European goals that we should be able to agree on."

The issues addressed during the Lund conference were problems that EU citizens view to be widespread and important. Uno Svedin also points to the importance of greater interaction between citizens and the research/innovation community to generate a dialogue that opens the door for curiosity, understanding, and consequently support.

The idea is to create a sense of “This is Europe. Here, knowledge is important, interesting, and a motor for success."

“Citizens should feel that it is good to live in a part of the world where these values permeate the system," he says.

Text: Siv Engelmark

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Contact: Tomas Gustavsson

Updated: 2010-02-03