Visionary or Unrealistic? The Latest Prescription for European Research

The European Research Area Board (ERAB), a new group of 22 science, business, and industry experts advising the European Commission, was asked to come up with a vision for the so-called European Research Area (ERA). This vaguely defined concept, launched in 2000, is interpreted by most policy wonks as a common market where ideas and scientists flow as freely as they are thought to do in the United States. But "the ERA has been talked about so much that it has become humdrum," says panel member Frank Gannon, who heads the Science Foundation Ireland.

While some of the recommendations do address transnational obstacles—for instance, by 2030 researchers' mobility needs to triple, with up to 20% of E.U. doctoral candidates working abroad—the panel took the opportunity to plead for a vastly increased role for science and innovation in Europe, one that not only leads to economic benefits but also solves humanity's biggest problems. One-third of science spending should be reserved to tackle "Grand Challenges" such as climate change, energy, and aging, for instance. The European public also needs to become more informed about science, and research results should be available to all.

Implementing the panel's lengthy wish list would require something close to a revolution, however. Spending 5% of GDP on R&D? Even the 3% goal E.U. countries agreed to in Lisbon almost a decade ago isn't in sight. By 2030, the panel wants eight universities in the top 20 of global hit parades. (The past 5 years, there were only two in the so-called Shanghai ranking.) And 50% of scientists, at all levels, should be women. (To illustrate that challenge, note that women won 12% of the "advanced grants" given out by ERC last year.)

"I found their long-term view very refreshing," ERC vice-chair Helga Nowotny told ScienceInsider today. "Yes, it's wildly optimistic. ... But this is a visionary report—they don't have to be realistic."

Gannon says the goals may turn out to be more realistic than they look, especially given the 20-year window. The 5% target, for instance, may "start to make more sense," he says, when countries that have upped their R&D investments start reaping the benefits and when European politicians realize that the answers to society's great problems can only come from science.

Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik said that he got what he wanted when he instructed the panel to think outside the box. With its "visionary strategy," ERAB "is putting the bar very high," Potočnik said.

Some of the plans may not take 20 years, however. ERAB wants a chief scientific advisor for Europe, a plan endorsed recently by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Nowotny applauds that idea, but says such an adviser's resources and position within the Brussels hierarchy are key issues. The adviser could easily become a lame duck, she cautions.

ERAB also proposes spending half of the E.U.'s science budget on basic research, a major increase from the roughly 15% in Framework Programme 7 (FP7), the funding program that dominates E.U. research spending via multi-national collaborations. A shift in that direction could be made as early as 2014, when FP8 is scheduled to start.