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Czech Republic Member State Service on CORDIS
Research Infrastructures and the regional dimension of ERA
2009-03-24 - 2009-03-25, Prague
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ESFRI the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures meeting
2009-03-25 - 2009-03-26, Prague
Ondrej Liska,
Minister for Education,
Youth and Sports
The Czech Republic takes over the Presidency of the Council of the EU at the time, when debates over a number of fundamental topics of research and development culminate. The further development of the European Research Area (ERA) is considered as the key topic. There is no need to explain at length how important part of the Lisbon Strategy the ERA is. Logically it is one of the most important agenda items of the Czech Republic as the presiding country.
Innovation nowadays no longer manages without openness and cooperation of developed economies. Synergy has hardly anywhere such conclusive results as in research and development. And it specially applies to really big infrastructures. The research and development priorities of the Czech Republic are complementarily linked. We may as well talk about big infrastructures as a backbone of research leading to innovation, as about the condition of high-quality and flexible researchers without whom the backbone would be motionless. Thanks to these people can Europe of knowledge succeed in the global competition, which is more demanding than ever before. Yes, we need Europe without barriers. And not only at the entry but also at the exit. We need Europe without barriers for knowledge that is a result of cutting-edge research. The fifth freedom, freedom of knowledge, must be a permanent objective of the EU.
The mobility of young researchers is inseparable from all that. Let us remind that the mobility is still not very high and that is a mistake. We want to create a truly single European market in the field of human resources in research and development. We want to contribute to a precipitated removal of barriers to mobility within the European area. Otherwise we are going to deal with the departure and low rate of return of young researchers from Europe. This is another problem the Czech Republic would like to point out during the Presidency and would like to contribute to finding appropriate instruments to deal with it.
Our next priority is the evaluation of the national impact of the European research coordination. We will deal with the evaluation methodology of the investments to research and development, i.a. on the basis of the ex-post evaluation of the 6th Framework Programme. The debate will certainly contribute to improvement of management in this field.
I am convinced that during the Czech Presidency the EU will succeed in following up the achievements of the French Presidency and at the same time to prepare the ground for the upcoming period under the Swedish leadership.
[Last update: 2009-03-23]
