Europe will never be a 21st century science and technology superpower to match the United States and China unless it widens its base by drawing on the potential of researchers and innovators in Central and Eastern Europe, participants at a recent conference were told.
It was an outrage that 94% of funding from the European Union’s last flagship Horizon research and innovation programme went to countries that already had the largest national research budgets, a Latvian member of the European parliament (MEP) told a conference on bridging Europe’s research and innovation gap.
The conference, hosted by Science|Business on 7 September, focused on the need for a Europe-wide approach to widening and strengthening the continent’s science and technology base so it can compete on a more equal footing with global research giants like China and the United States.
That includes unlocking the talent potential of researchers and innovators in the EU13 member states, the group of countries that joined the EU after 2004, situated mainly in Central and Eastern Europe.
The conference, attended by Brussels-based European diplomats in person and 700 participants taking part online, featured an interview with Mariya Gabriel, European commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth, who welcomed a new newsletter launched this week by Science|Business to keep the issue of widening participation in European research and innovation in front of EU policy-makers.
Gabriel told delegates the European Commission had tripled the ‘widening component’ in the new €95 billion (US$94.8 billion) Horizon Europe 2021-27 programme budget, from €1 billion to €3.3 billion, to support twinning and teaming initiatives and other forms of networking and knowledge transfer to widen participation and spread research excellence in the EU13 countries.
Fewer than 8% of Central and Eastern European applicants won European Research Council (ERC) grants between 2007 and 2021, compared to between 15% and 16% of applicants in the Netherlands, Germany and France, the conference heard.
The EU has set a target for its member states to spend 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) on research and innovation, but the research and innovation gap is wide, with EU states in north-western Europe spending on average 2.7% of GDP in 2019, compared with an average of between 1.3% and 1.4% in the eastern and southern region.
Kinga Stanislawska, co-founder of the Experior Venture Fund and a Polish member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) board, said while companies in France received €200 million from the EIC Accelerator, start-ups in Bulgaria and Croatia got less than €2 million, and other countries in the region nothing at all, according to data published in 2021.
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