Brussels, 07/01/2010 (Agence Europe) - Spain has pledged to speed up the creation of the European Research Area (ERA) over the course of its six months at the head of the EU Council, Spanish Science and Innovation Minister Cristina Garmendia has announced on the Spanish Council Presidency pages on the CORDIS site. “It is only by having a common shared space for knowledge, the ERA, in which scientists and ideas can move freely, that research an innovation will be able to act as engines for economic and social progress over the coming decades,” she states. Spain has indentified three priorities for moving the ERA forward: integration, involvement and inclusion. Integration refers to the importance of integrating research and development (R&D) policies into other policies, and, more specifically, into the EU's 2020 strategy. Through involvement, Spain will seek to ensure that all instruments supporting R&D and innovation in Europe, whether they are regional, national or pan-European, address major challenges, such as climate change, the search for new energy sources, ageing and disease, and globalisation. And finally, inclusion focuses on the role science and innovation can play in promoting social cohesion and tackling poverty and exclusion. Along with Hungary, which will hold the Presidency in the first half of 2011, Spain and Belgium have put together an 18-month work programme in which they promise to take full account of the importance of research and development and innovation in the renewal of the post-2010 Lisbon Strategy. In addition to the creation and governance of the ERA, the trio's identified priorities include analysis of the mid-term review of the Seventh Framework programme (FP7) and the implementation of joint programming. (B.C./transl.rt)