ERRIN News & Events provides reports of main ERRIN activities (public events and project news) and EU research and innovation news from other sources. For more info on ERRIN activities see the weekly newsletters or check check the Director's Blog.
Where now for European innovation strategy?
29 January 2010
Plans to unveil an Innovation Act in time for the spring meeting of EU leaders have been stalled while the new European Commission beds down and looks at broadening the scope of the strategy. In September 2009, the European Commission announced its plan to publish a European Innovation Act before spring 2010. The plan is being drafted by the EU executive's enterprise arm – which will soon be renamed 'Industry and Entrepreneurship'. This drive towards a more coherent innovation strategy took place during the 2009 European Year of Creativity and Innovation (EYCI ), which culminated in the publication of a 'manifesto' for innovation. A further effort to streamline EU policy in this area came with the appointment of the first European commissioner with responsibility for innovation.
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Source: Euractiv
EU innovation chief to leverage structural funds for research
14 January 2010
Europe's incoming innovation commissioner is pledging to tap the EU's structural funds to build research infrastructure and capacity. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn also revealed she would chair meetings of EU commissioners with responsibilities for innovation as part of her new "cross-cutting" portfolio.
Policy in this area has, until now, been split between a dozen or so separate directorate-generals. In particular, the EYCI and European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) have been run by the education commissioner, while the outgoing commissioners for enterprise and research also had a direct interest.
In unveiling his new college of commissioners last November, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso named Ireland's Máire Geoghegan-Quinn as the EU's first innovation commissioner (EurActiv 30/11/09).
Juggling the new cross-cutting innovation job within the big-spending research brief is seen as the major challenge for the new commissioner. The EU executive is also expected to publish a major new innovation strategy this spring, something the new commissioner will look to put her stamp on.
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Source: Euractiv
Europe catches up on clean tech venture investment
12 January 2010
Venture capital investment in clean technology continued strongly in 2009 despite the financial crisis, with European investment declining by just 12% as opposed to 42% in North America, according to market researchers Cleantech Group and Deloitte.
Last year's clean technology venture investments in Europe, North America, China and India totalled $5.6 billion in 557 deals, a preliminary report compiled by the companies shows. They expect the figures to increase by 5 to 10% once investors have announced all their activities from the past year, making 2009 a record year for the sector in terms of the number of deals struck.
The economic decline took its toll on total venture investment, which was down 33%, but cleantech investment suffered less than other sectors, declining only to 2007 levels.
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Source: Euractiv
New changes in FP7 Grant Agreement
18 December 2009
European Commission adopted a modification to the FP7 Model Grant Agreement that allows “non-profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs” that are eligible to apply the 75% reimbursement rate for direct costs and the 60% flat rate for indirect costs to continue to use these rates for the whole duration of the project, even if their status changes during this time. Moreover, to ensure equal treatment for all such participants, the Commission will apply this new provision retroactively in a tacit way to all already signed Grant Agreements. The modifications to the FP7 Model Grant Agreement can be found under:
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Link to the modifications to the FP7 Model Grant Agreement
Source: SwissCore
Policy drivers of international cooperation in research
14 December 2009
The European Commission published the final report of a study undertaken by experts from the Technopolis Group and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research entitled “Drivers of international collaboration in research”. The study sought to examine the rationales why countries and their science communities enter into cross-border S&T collaborations and what policy considerations are made when establishing and implementing such linkages.
The experts found a growing policy attention for international S&T collaborations. Indeed, such collaborations can be used for goals going beyond the exchange of scientific expertise and the pooling of resources. Often, they are used as a way to improve national competitiveness, tackle global societal challenges, create stable diplomatic relationships or support less developed countries by developing S&T capabilities.
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Link to the report
Source: SwissCore
Parliament-commissioned report tackles ERA governance
11 December 2009
In a report commissioned by the European Parliament and presented at the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee meeting of 2 December, a team led by Professor G. Serrano of the Polytechnic University of Madrid addresses the open issues of the European Research Area (ERA) governance. Through an analysis of both the structures governing the ERA and the initiatives set up to realise it, the authors identify current challenges and make recommendations to address these. Regarding the ERA initiatives, they found “patched scenarios”, where governance approaches are implemented by following a “learning by doing” process. While this results in a large accumulation of experiences and flexibility in the implementation, many issues are found to be inadequately resolved, leading also to a lack of policy coherence.
The report’s recommendations are divided in three sections:
• High-level political recommendations to speed up the ERA construction: In this section, the authors recommend to accelerate legislative changes in Member States to allow a better participation in ERA initiatives, to readapt the composition of ERA decision or advisory bodies with a “knowledge triangle” view in mind, to better involve private and public stakeholders and to facilitate the participation of non-EU partner organisations in ERA initiatives.
• Common recommendations for ERA governance: Here, the simplification and speeding up of approval processes for ERA initiatives is proposed, as well as allowing structural changes in the governance of such initiatives after they have started. Moreover, transparency and equal opportunity, as well as an active role of all stakeholders should be ensured.
• Specific recommendations: In this section, the authors list a whole series of recommendations for specific ERA initiatives like ERA-NET Plus, Art. 169 and Art. 171 initiatives. While for the first one, a smoother transition from ERA-NET Plus to Art. 169 based on transparent success indicators is proposed, for the two others a common governance structure is advocated. In addition, more harmonised funding rules and more transparent access to participation and funding are recommended.
In general, this report contains several interesting proposals, based on a thorough analysis of the current state of the different ERA initiatives. In addition, the document contains a very useful glossary of terms commonly used in research policy, as well as a series of tables comparing the main characteristics of all current initiatives under Art. 169 and Art. 171. Anyone struggling with the current complexity of EU research funding instruments will be utterly grateful to the authors for this comparative overview.
Source: SwissCore
Link to the report.
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