European Research and Innovation Beyond 2020 presented by EBRAINS

    03 December 2020


    European science and innovation policy are in transition. As Horizon 2020 draws to a close, the European institutions are putting the final touches to the next budgeting cycle and the new-look program Horizon Europe.

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    In a recent webinar where Paweł Świeboda, Chief Executive Officer, had the opportunity to present EBRAINS, Politico was joined by Nathalie Conrad, Marie Curie Fellow at KU Leuven, Marc Oliver Gewaltig, Chief Technology and Chief Scientific Officer at Mindfire, Pascal Lamy, President of the Paris Peace Forum, and Jean-Eric Paquet, Director General, DG Research & Innovation, European Commission, to discuss the future of research and innovation in Europe.

    Laura Greenhalgh, News Editor at Politico Europe, led a lively panel discussion on the new Horizon Europe program, the impact of COVID-19 on research and innovation, and Europe’s research relationships with its competitors and collaborators including the U.K., China, and the U.S.A.

    Watch the webinar below:

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    Live reaction to the event from POLITICO and EBRAINS

    The winning formula of European Research

    In his welcome remarks, Paweł Świeboda emphasized the need for a multidisciplinary approach to the growing complexity of scientific research in Europe.

    He explained that the EBRAINS research infrastructure is a state-of-the-art enabler to address this challenge: “We aim to encapsulate the winning formula of European Research. Namely to partner best-in-class research infrastructures with great science.”

    Horizon Europe is in peril if budget block persists

    POLITICO, December 1 2020, 5:46pm, Brussels.

    Horizon Europe, the EU’s research program, might not start in January 2021 as planned if EU countries fail to agree on the bloc’s long-term budget, Jean-Eric Paquet, the European Commission’s director general for Research and Innovation said during the webinar. 

    “If there is no budget, there is no program, and the program cannot start without an agreement on the [multi-annual financial framework], and from the MFF then on the yearly budget 2021,” Paquet said.

    “It is indeed absolutely essential that member states come together and realize that putting a veto on the MFF [means] blocking very many programs with high EU added value for each member state, but then also for the Union together,” he noted. “Research, I think, is a good example of that.”

    Republished with permission of POLITICO Europe.

    EU can still attract research tie-ups without UK

    POLITICO, December 1, 2020, 7:42 pm, Brussels.

    The European Union will remain an appealing environment for international research collaborations even after Brexit, Jean-Eric Paquet, the European Commission’s director general for Research and Innovation said during the webinar.

    “We are absolutely attractive with 27 member states and associated countries. I think there should be absolutely no doubt, this is absolutely obvious,” Paquet said, while noting that, in any case, Britain would probably still be part of the EU’s research program Horizon Europe after leaving the EU.

    “If we have this overall agreement with the United Kingdom, then I would very much expect that association to Horizon Europe is a component of it, and that would of course be a positive outcome,” he said.

    Pascal Lamy, a former EU trade commissioner, also said he believes that Britain won’t leave the European Research Area — which already includes other non-EU countries such as Switzerland.

    “There should be no Brexit research and innovation-wise,” he said at the same event.

    “I cannot think, for one second that — either from the British side, or from the EU side — the notion that Oxford and Cambridge would float somewhere on the middle of the Atlantic makes any sense,” Lamy added.

    Republished with permission of POLITICO Europe.