Priorities
Spain will drive forward the ERA within three areas that define our priorities – the axis of Integration, the axis of Involvement and the axis of Inclusion.
The INTEGRATION axis must make it possible to respond to the need to place R&D and innovation policies at the centre of the European project and integrate the ERA into the new EU Strategy for 2020.
The axis of INVOLVEMENT is decisive in order to progress from discussion to action in a short period of time, and this encompasses all those actions that are focused on ensuring that the different instruments for promoting R&D and innovation in Europe – be they community, national or inter-governmental ones – provide a better response to the “major challenges” we are facing, which include finding new sources of energy, tacking climate change, ageing and associated illnesses of its population, and growing international competition, a consequence of globalisation. European science and innovation must become involved, and we must be able to convey that science and innovation are key factors for the recovery and strengthening of the economy, and that a large part of our future wellbeing rests on non-oriented research of excellence.
Finally, it is important to stress that science and innovation can and must play a more active role in social cohesion and the battle against poverty and exclusion. This role is based on the third axis, that of INCLUSION. There are significant shortfalls within our society, and more seriously in most of the world population outside the EU, although science and innovation can provide solutions to these issues, or will be able to do so in the near future. Europe has the duty and the opportunity to lead the battle against inequality and to put science and technology to use in this fight. The ERA must be built with this scientific, technological and ethical challenge in mind.
As a result of our efforts in the areas of integration, involvement and inclusion, we hope to improve specific aspects of science and innovation in Europe – basic research of excellence, administrative simplification of the Framework Programme, opportunities for researchers and technologists and mobility for them within the European Union, the management and deployment of the European roadmap for scientific infrastructures, the connection between research and innovation policies – and between these and other European policies – and the provision of solutions, through R&D and innovation, to the needs of excluded people, thereby improving their opportunities.