EU needs new, proactive international research policy, says EURAB
The EU needs to make a stronger commitment to research, development and innovation and 'beef up' its international strategy in science and technology if it wishes to strengthen its competitive position and contribute to the solution of global problems that imperil its future. This is the message from a largely critical report by the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) on the EU's international research cooperation policies. They call for the mainstreaming of international cooperation in the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), with each theme having a specific, horizontal budget line for international activities. The framework programmes have had an international component since the early 1980s. Under FP6, international cooperation fell primarily into the INCO (support for international cooperation) and Marie Curie (international mobility of researchers) programmes. Third countries were also able to participate in the thematic priorities. While these measures have resulted in a number of success stories, in particular in the fields of environmental and health research, much still remains to be done. In the report, EURAB sets out five recommendations which it believes could ensure the EU's role as a world leader in research and development. In particular, the EU needs a systematic international policy in science and technology which will both strengthen the EU research sector and help the EU contribute to the solution of global problems. Concretely, this means that all areas of FP7 need to be more open to non-European partners. In particular, EURAB recommends that the EU develop large, visible projects addressing shared problems in emerging economies such as Brazil and China. These would serve to strengthen research links and convince the partners of the importance of the EU as a scientific and technological actor. EURAB also highlights the importance of making the EU attractive to the best researchers in the world, and to this end it recommends lowering the barriers to cross-border mobility, and investing more in scientific infrastructures, including global, large-scale facilities. The authors note that researchers from third countries often see the framework programmes as being too Eurocentric, and so question its value to them. This stems in part from the emphasis in the programmes on generating European added value. EURAB suggests that this concept should be seen more broadly, to allow for more 'win-win' situations in international scientific and technological cooperation. They also recommend that the EU simplify application procedures and provide more information to help researchers outside the EU take full advantage of the framework programmes. Furthermore, funding and policy instruments should be refined to meet the specific needs of developing, emerging and industrialised countries, which are currently treated as a single group. However, the authors note that to compete effectively at the international level, the EU urgently needs to up its research spending. They point out that the EU spends under two per cent of its GDP on R&D, far less than the US and Japan, and still some way off the target of three per cent which, the Commission believes, is needed for the EU to achieve the Lisbon goal of becoming the most dynamic and competitive region in the world by 2010. Other indicators of innovation give similarly depressing results - both the US and Japan did better than the EU on 11 out of 15 indicators. In the longer term, the EU will also face growing competition from emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. Europe's businesses are also more reluctant than their Japanese and American counterparts to fund research and development, although the EU's Barcelona goals state that two thirds of R&D spending should come from the private sector.