”The European Research Area is one of our top priorities,” said Anja Karliczek, Germany’s research minister. “It is very important as a central arena for action, for promoting digitalisation, for the implementation of the European Green Deal and for ensuring Europe’s technological sovereignty.”

ERA is a long-running EU effort to make it easier for researchers, students and intellectual property to move around the EU – through a collection of changes to national pension, professional qualification, networking and IP rules. For more than 15 years the Commission has tried to advance this idea as analogous to the treaty-enshrined Single Market in goods and services, but has consistently run into opposition from member states not wishing to yield national prerogatives to the Commission. Research Commissioner Mariya Gabriel has made moving this portfolio forward one of her top priorities.

But the timing of the research ministers’ meeting was unfortunate – coming hours after EU leaders left a summit with a deal to cut the Commission’s research budget proposals as part of a grand, pandemic-crisis bailout initiative. When asked by journalists about the Horizon Europe budget agreement, both Gabriel and Karlicsek emphasised the new deal means work on launching the EU’s next seven-year research programme can now move forward without further delays. 

Gabriel said “we need to be aware we now have a base” for Horizon Europe and can ensure ongoing research will not suffer from any interruptions when transitioning between programmes. Now, she said, the focus should fall on strengthening European cooperation instead of fixating on the budget. The Commissioner had earlier that day tweeted that the cuts were “regrettable.”

“The community of nations has shown that despite their differences, they’re able to take action,” said Karlicsek. “Anyone who may criticise this, I would say of course this deal is a compromise, but Europe has always lived in compromises.”

In the private meeting, the ministers were joined by Gabriel, who said she received “very valuable inputs” on the new objectives for the ERA in the meeting. “In the last 20 years, we have taken important measures to coordinate our policies, but we can and should go further,” said Gabriel. “Today’s discussion has shown there is a lot of will for strengthened cooperation in ERA.”

Gabriel said reviving the ERA is especially important now, at a turning point for European research, as the next research programme, Horizon Europe, is about to launch in 2021.

Read the Science Business full article here