Brussels, 24/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - Despite the imminent 2014 deadline set by the European Summit, a European Research Area (ERA) is a distant dream, explains the European Commission in a report on progress in implementing ERA, published on Monday 23 September with facts and figures showing that the European research area is still fragmented and a number of obstacles prevent Europe from acting as a unified ERA where researchers, scientific knowhow and technology can circulate freely.
The report underlines that progress has been achieved in all target areas, but highlights a number of areas of continued concern, such as the general problem of lack of public spending. Research is seeing increasingly dwindling public funding. The EU has returned to the funding levels of 2002, accounting for 1.47% of all public spending. Germany and Estonia are the only exceptions to the rule here. European cooperation has been negatively impacted by this and only 1% of R&D budgets in the member states are destined for genuine transnational research.
In addition to financing problems, there are also many legal obstacles to cooperation, which is holding back the emergence of ERA. Member states' research programmes are organised differently, there is little transparency about the recruitment of researchers and half of all vacancies are never advertised at EU level on the EURAXESS website, although the number of job ads on the website has increased from 7,500 in 2010 to 36,500 in 2012. The development of infrastructure such as very high intensity lasers and giant telescopes is also held back for financial, administrative and political reasons and it is hard for foreign researchers to access such infrastructure. One area where the least progress has been seen is that of sexual equality.
In order to attempt to move towards ERA in 2014, the Commission recommends a number of priority actions to improve the spread and transfer of scientific knowledge online, ensuring a more open labour market for researchers, promoting sexual equality and automatically integrating gender mainstreaming in bodies that select and implement research projects. (JK/transl.fl)