14.3.2013   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 76/31

1.1

For the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), creating the European Research Area (ERA) is a priority objective for facilitating growth and economic, social and cultural development in the EU, as well as scientific excellence and cohesion between the Member States, regions and societies. The funding policy under the Horizon 2020 programme should be at the crucial level that enables this objective to be met.

1.2

The EESC has described its vision of the ERA in a number of previous opinions (1) and has opened an in-depth debate and dialogue on the question with the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council, and therefore welcomes the Communication.

1.3

The EESC agrees with the Commission when it points to growth as one of the ERA's priority objectives. In the present deep economic and social crisis, this indication is of crucial importance to European organised civil society.

1.4

The EESC believes that free movement of researchers, scientific knowledge and technology must become the internal market's ‘fifth freedom’.

1.5

The EESC considers that completing a unified research area is a constantly-changing process and that the 2014 deadline is over-ambitious, given that austerity measures are being imposed in many European countries, cutting national public investment in research and innovation.

1.6

The EESC welcomes the proposal to build the ERA through a reinforced partnership based on best practices rather than through regulation. It is, however, concerned that the Memoranda of Understanding with stakeholder organisations are of a voluntary nature rather than legally binding, and are informal.

1.7

The EESC calls for strong political will that can uphold effective and competitive national research systems. These can best be achieved through peer assessment, based on an evaluation of the quality of research terms, the structures involved and the results produced.

1.8

The EESC believes that publicly-funded research must give priority to sectors of particular importance to the well-being of European citizens, and that public funds must continue to finance projects as part of substantial, shared European cooperation.

1.9

The EESC urges the Commission and the Member States to take all the steps needed to remove the obstacles to completing the ERA concerning the lack of a European labour market for researchers, their working conditions, mobility and the social security system.

1.10

The EESC recalls the urgent need to change the situation regarding pensions and pension funds for researchers involved in transnational projects, and to set up a European supplementary pension fund to cover/offset the losses caused by moving from one country, and one social security system, to another.

1.11

The Committee warns that the new initiatives proposed by the Commission must not jeopardise or cancel out all the efforts to reduce the administrative burdens on researchers within the ERA.

1.12

The EESC alerts the European Commission and the Member States to the need to adopt all initiatives geared to effectively eradicating the gender discrimination and inequality that still persists in academic, scientific and research circles. It particularly welcomes the decision to ensure a female presence of at least 40 % on all committees involved in recruitment and drafting and/or reviewing project evaluation criteria, and on those that establish staff policies in academic, research and scientific centres.

1.13

The EESC welcomes the Commission's proposal to draw up a roadmap for einfrastructure development to support escience. It refers to its opinion (2) and supports the Communication (3) on accessing, preserving and disseminating the results of research and scientific knowledge.

1.14

The EESC backs the appeal from researchers and the European scientific community (4) addressed to the Heads of State and Government and to the Presidents of the EU institutions, pointing out that Europe cannot afford to lose its most talented researchers and teachers, especially young ones, and that European funding is essential to make its national counterpart more efficient and effective and in order to enhance pan-European and international competitiveness. It therefore calls for no reduction to be made in the corresponding item in the 2014-2020 European budget.

1.15

The EESC considers that the announced mapping of activities for priority areas, the Forum for disseminating and transferring the results of scientific and research projects, and the final assessment of the results produced by the Communication should be carried out with the full and active involvement of civil society involved in the ERA.

1.16

For all the above reasons, the EESC hopes that an internal group can be set up within the Committee to serve as a reference point for the European institutions during the various assessment, monitoring and decision-making stages involved in completing the ERA.

2.1

The EESC has expressed how it sees the ERA in numerous opinions, and this vision remains relevant; it welcomes the present Communication in favour of a stronger partnership, demonstrating the urgent need for the EU and the Member States to uphold and extend the commitments they have undertaken. Progress is, however, uneven across the Member States and remains sluggish in some cases. The Communication is innovative in that it extends the cooperation between the Commission and the Member States to ERA stakeholder organisations (5). The EESC considers that there is a need for wider and more efficient reinforced cooperation.

2.2

The EESC shares the Commission's view that the completion of the ERA must support economic growth, scientific excellence and cohesion amongst regions, countries and societies. At the same time, it must take account of the interaction that is needed between science and the market, between innovation and businesses, and between new ways of organising work and an increasingly interconnected research community.

2.3

The EESC however considers that in the current context of global crisis, more specific and decisive measures are needed to counter the negative impact of national fragmentation in framing and implementing research policies, and to optimise activities that help to boost their efficiency. Measures must also seek to increase healthy competition and cross-border synergies between national research systems, promote research careers and facilitate mobility and the free movement of knowledge (6).

2.4

The public consultations carried out in preparation for the Communication revealed that:

3.1

The EESC backs the Commission's argument for reinforcing national research systems through best practices, and agrees that resources should be allocated by means of open calls for proposals, evaluated by panels of experts (peer review  (7)), whether from the same countries, other Member States or third countries. It agrees that an assessment of the quality of research-performing teams and organisations and their outputs should be used as the basis for institutional public financing decisions. Researchers, teams and research proposals and programmes are still often not assessed according to comparable standards, although they involve projects and research that are funded and implemented in similar ways. For the EESC, this represents an unacceptable loss of value at a time when research budgets are being slashed in many Member States.

3.2

The EESC is aware that European research is among the best in the world. Research in universities and scientific institutes has enabled European businesses to pioneer technological development and take a lead in the field. The EESC is consequently concerned at the conclusion reached by the Commission in its impact assessment, where it argues that the gap between Europe and the US, Japan and other developed economies, is widening (8). This would suggest that Europe is losing ground in knowledge production, and that global innovation leaders are ahead of the EU27 for certain indicators. The EESC considers that, in view of the global crisis and the shifting balance of power that comes with it, the ERA should consolidate the leading position of European science. Its quality and level of excellence must serve as a competitive advantage when competing with other international players.

3.3

The EU decided in 2002 that the R&D investment of all Member States should reach 3 % of European GDP (9). The subsequent failures to achieve this target and its postponement to 2020 prompt the EESC to wonder if it will be achieved. The EESC agrees that one of the ERA's priorities must be growth, especially during the current serious economic and social crisis, and is gravely concerned about the extensive cuts in research caused by austerity policies.

3.4

One of the main purposes of the European Higher Education Area, which ties in closely with the achievement of the ERA, is to encourage mobility in order to effectively enrich the training of students, teachers and researchers. These cuts will make it difficult for many European researchers to benefit from and play a full part in the ERA. The EESC expresses its concern at the decisions that have been taken (10).

3.5

The EESC restates its firm belief that effective and competitive national research systems require strong political will, and EESC urges the EU and the Member States to make more determined and faster progress in fulfilling the commitments they have taken on.

3.6

In recent years publicly-funded research seems to have given up on sectors of strategic importance for the well-being of people in Europe, which should, in fact, represent innovative research fields for the ERA, and in particular as part of European cooperation.

3.7

The EESC also points out that in order to optimise and/or reshape financial support for national research systems, the false dichotomy between applied and basic science, which seems to appeal to a number of Member States that are striving to reduce their budgets, must be avoided. It would be a serious obstacle as regards access to resources or funding.

4.1

In the EU, pan-European research cooperation has been concentrated on a number of major initiatives (11). However, only 0,8 % of national GBAORDs (12) are used for joint Member State programmes, including those supported or co-funded by the Commission. This is in spite of the fact that the evidence shows that thanks to transnational cooperation, the level of R&D can be raised, it can be extended to new sectors, and public and private support can be obtained for joint projects. This confirms the need for robust knowledge networks across Europe.

4.2

Introducing new research funding schemes, such as the ERC's Synergy Grants, launched in 2012 in support of small cross-border (and usually interdisciplinary) groups of researchers, can help to demonstrate the added value and complementarity of joint work, provided that they take a creative approach to management and combine complementary knowledge, skills and resources in new ways.

4.3

Obstacles and barriers also remain in access for non-nationals to national research centres of European interest, and to pan-European research infrastructures for researchers working in non-participating Member States. In both cases, access is granted on the basis of national preference. The EESC believes that these difficulties are hampering full completion of the ERA.

4.4

The EESC believes that the planned mapping of activities, which would identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps in transnational scientific cooperation, should not only rely on information provided by the Member States, but should also ensure effective and genuine participation by those parts of civil society that are involved in and/or concerned by the ERA.

6.1

The number of female researchers has grown significantly in recent years in practically all sectors, but the number of active women researchers in senior academic positions as high-level heads of research in scientific institutes and universities is still too low (16). This is in spite of the fact that there is evidence that mixed research groups perform better, benefiting from wider expertise, knowledge sharing, diverse points of view and a higher level of social intelligence. Women's academic careers remain marked by strong vertical segregation and the glass ceiling remains firmly in place alongside labour segregation (17).

6.2

The gender pay gap continues in the academic field and research centres, as in other sectors of the economy. Factors contributing to this include supposedly ‘neutral’ job description systems that ignore gender inequalities, the burden of unshared family responsibilities and the persistence of direct and indirect discrimination (18). This means that female scientific potential is undervalued and is not fully tapped; women are underrepresented and research and innovation decisions are not gender-balanced.

6.3

Not all Member States have national policies to encourage gender mainstreaming in research, and this undermines the quality and relevance of such research. More equal participation by women would increase the diversity of the talent pool, the workforce and the decision-making process, and would enhance research quality. This would avoid the high economic costs and even mistakes associated with failing to take the gender perspective into account in research. If gender mainstreaming in research content is not improved, the ERA's aims in terms of levels of excellence will be negatively affected. Greater involvement of women would contribute to European socio-economic growth and would also boost research excellence, performance and impact.

6.4

The EESC calls on the Commission and the Member States to redouble their efforts to effectively eradicate remaining gender inequalities in academia, research and science. More specifically, they should hold true on the promise to ensure that all committees involved in recruitment, drafting and/or reviewing project evaluation criteria, or establishing staff policies in academic, research and scientific centres are at least 40 % women. The EESC views the establishment, implementation and evaluation of actions plans for gender equality in universities and research centres as a positive measure, provided that women are fully and actively involved in the entire process.

6.5

Similarly, the EESC strongly urges the Commission to ensure that organised civil society is involved in preparing the Recommendation that is to set out the guidelines for institutional changes promoting real equality between women and men in universities and research centres.

7.1

In April 2008, the Commission published a Recommendation (19) on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities, together with a Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations (20). A Code is not, however, enough to ensure that the objectives of the Recommendation are achieved.

7.2

Access to scientific information is an essential prerequisite for successfully supporting research and innovation, and thus for Europe's competitiveness. This includes transfer of information between researchers, between research partnerships – particularly between research and business – and between researchers and the public, including open access to publications. The EESC welcomes the Commission Communication (21) on this question and refers to its specific opinion (22) on the subject.

7.3

The EESC also welcomes the intention to draw up a roadmap for e-infrastructure development to support e-science through access to research tools and resources.

7.4

The EESC urges the Commission to seek and harness the involvement of civil society organisations concerned with research and science through regular exchanges to take place as part of the Member State forum, which should serve as a reference point for disseminating and transferring the results of scientific programmes and projects.