Marta Agostinho shares EU-LIFE’s vision for European research in The FP10 Podcast
EU-LIFE Executive Director Marta Agostinho talked about the alliance’s vision for the future of European research in The FP10 Podcast’s latest episode. The FP10 Podcast, conducted by Charlotte van Velthoven-Geerdink, discusses the next European Framework Programme for Research & Innovation (R&I) with key players in the EU R&I bubble.
Marta explained some of the key points made at the EU-LIFE statement ‘The future of EU research: 5 key actions for a competitive Europe’, which was released recently. The conversation included a comment on the recent European Parliament hearing of Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner-designate for Startups, Research & Innovation, as well as Marta’s reflections on the priorities laid out in the pivotal reports by Letta, Draghi and Heitor Group .
“One of the important things that we call for is to strike the right balance. […] We really need more investment in discovery-driven, open-ended, excellent research, which is missing in Horizon Europe. The ERC is a critical element of the EU. It’s one of its highest successes […]. We are really missing, that is not the role of the ERC, is the large collaborative consortia at the earlier stages of the open-ended research. This is not happening right now. When we talk about the European Union’s Framework Programme, we talk about added value at the European and worldwide level. And this is the added value, because the single member states cannot promote these large-scale collaborations. That’s what we mean when we say that there is too many top-down, prescriptive instruments that are usually very much focused on finding a very concrete solution for a very concrete problem, and on top of that, it’s usually on a very implementation stage already, so usually it’s even not about innovation or research, but implementation. There is where the balance is not right,” said Marta Agostinho during the interview.
