The Slovenian Presidency Conference put individual researcher and a broader scope of themes related to the building of scientific careers into the focus of attention and the main theme of reintegration opened doors to different aspects of obstacles and problems that hinder or at least affect progress in individual career paths of researchers, particularly in the early stages of the career and with young researchers. The thematic background of the conference was structured in such a way that it gave floor to a broad scope of significant issues and created a coherent framework for discussions.
The MSCA conferences that are held under the presidencies of different countries to the Council of the European Union gain greater and greater importance under the general framework of efforts to establish relevant schemes of Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions as efficient instruments for building scientific excellence through sensible, sustainable career paths. The nature and the role of the MSCA conferences have changed significantly through years, mainly during the last two programming cycles (Horizon 2020 and the 7th Framework programme), the implementation of current MSCA schemes always requires relevant changes in the structure of the programme and also in the way of designing them.
With the evolution of the MSCA programme, the concern for strictly scientific aspects of a scientific career path grew and spread to other areas of great importance and high relevance for prospective scientific careers and smooth career paths. Since changes in the ways of designing and in implementing them have always been needed, involvment of more and more numerous stakeholders and partners from diverse areas were needed to, for introducing aspects of social and medical security, pension specific arrangements, family friendly measures, international mobility and employment regulations. Within the Horizon Europe framework, involvment of partners from different governmental sectors and from non academic institutions have become an urgent need and the conference participation reflected this need in the structure of invited speakers and attendees.
The conference aimed at addressing the issues of unballanced mobility flows of researchers and the process of their reintegration into their matrix environment. The structure of the conference programme provided floor broad enough to give opportunity to put forward many important issues of mobility with high relevance for future efforts for efficient brain circulation in Europe and also for building a New ERA. The preparatory work for the conference raised demand for specific studies and analytical contribution. The majority of presentations were based on special studies and delivered by speakers from diverse activity sectors, besides, they were complemented by personal testimonies of MSCA fellows, former and present, from geographically and culturally different environments. 40 stories on different careers paths had been received from MSCA fellows and many of them pointed to the obstacles that had hindered their careers, not only in the post-training phases and in phases of reintegration but also at the start of their careers.
Particularly valuable both in the introductory and in the concluding part of the conference programme were the emphasised mentions of research freedom and of research culture, of the awareness that research results might have different values in different environments and in different countries. By raising these issues, special emphasis was given to the importance and need for brain circulation, for mobility in different directions, for the utmost need to preserve research excellence along with care for individual researcher which actually is in the concept of MSCA actions.
