“The proposals in the declaration are well in line with the Swedish Presidency’s priorities. Our focus is on strengthening the so-called knowledge triangle – cooperation between education, research and innovation – and to make the European research area more effective and transparent,” says Sweden's Minister for Higher Education and Research Tobias Krantz, who received the document in the Lund University Hall on Wednesday.

The ‘Lund Declaration’ is the end result of the research conference ‘New Worlds – New Solutions’, where participants have outlined Europe’s future research requirements and the direction in which the EU’s research policy should develop until 2025. Some of the most important issues the EU will have to address in the future are Europe’s aging population, the climate threat and the limited access to energy and water. It will therefore be important, the researchers suggest, to break up boundaries between different research areas, for example between environment and social research. The researchers also stated that the EU institutions now play a crucial part in pushing for more European cooperation, in collaboration with private and public actors.

Source: Leonardo Piccinetti; Swedish EU Presidency at http://www.se2009.eu/en/2.543/2.578/2.610/2.618/1.8371, as accessed on July 9, 2009.