Östros urges balance between environmental and aeronautics research
Europe can expect a successful future in the field of aeronautics as long as environmental aspects are not ignored, was the message from Thomas Östros, Swedish Minister of Education and Science and current chairman of the EU's Research Council, speaking to CORDIS News at the 4th Aeronautics Days in Hamburg. Mr Östros emphasised the centrality of research in politics today, and also outlined how aeronautics research fits in with the Swedish Presidency's three priorities: environment, employment and enlargement. Enlargement of the EU will stimulate economic growth, which in the field of aeronautics will increase the importance of an environmental programme in order to tackle the increase in fuel consumption, said Mr Östros. The environmental aspect is the 'greatest and most important challenge,' he said. An environmentally friendly strategy is not only important for the environment, but for reasons of competitiveness, the Minister told CORDIS. 'Any long-term effort in aeronautics must take in the environmental aspect because we will see a world demanding, consumers demanding, people demanding aeroplanes to be much more environmentally friendly. So if you want to compete, you must put a lot of effort into that.' The EU must also find a balance between the preservation of existing centres of excellence and the creation of new ones, said Mr Östros. He added that the European capacity for innovation must be boosted, and that mobility is one of the keys to this. 'Europe should not go into its shell,' warned Mr Östros 'we must remain open to worldwide cooperation.' Sweden has embodied this since it became a member of the EU in the last wave of enlargement in 1995. Mr Östros claims there has been a noticeable change amongst the scientific community. 'European membership has really made us work together with European partners much stronger than earlier,' he told CORDIS News. Although Sweden is one of the smaller EU Member States, the Minister pointed out that the country has a very strong aeronautics industry, which is proud of its development of the Gripen fighter plane, 'the driving force for Sweden's aeronautics industry'. Questioned on the role of smaller countries in future European R&D, where larger projects may take precedence, Minister Östros stressed that he is not concerned. 'I know that the Commission can't make a proposal that would be negative for small countries and possibly for large countries [...]. So we have to have a Framework programme that takes into account that small and big countries must be able to compete and that's where scientific excellence is the important thing, not the size of the country. I'm sure that you can have concentrated efforts in certain interesting fields [...] and at the same time having the structure of such concentrated efforts built in such a way that it is possible for small countries to be very successful.'
Countries
Sweden