On Wednesday 19 February, with 67 votes in favour, 5 against and 9 abstentions, the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) approved an own-initiative report proposing to strengthen Europe’s research and innovation capacities in view of the 10th Research Framework Programme (FP10).
The text's rapporteur, Christian Ehler (EPP, Germany), wants to “send a clear message to the Commission to uphold the Treaties and keep FP10 as an independent Union Programme". In a press release, he stated that he wanted to “especially underline that including FP10 in the announced Competitiveness Fund, would mean a focus of R&I funding on short-term policy ambitions (which) would be detrimental to fundamental and blue-skies research”.
MEPs acknowledge that they want to radically simplify the FP10 application and management processes. In addition, based on the extensive feedback from stakeholders, FP10 should focus on three main objectives: - creating a European competition of ideas by accelerating the development from fundamental science to innovation scale-up; - supporting strategic research initiatives which require large-scale and European collaboration; - advancing the European Research Area.
MEPs also advocate mission-oriented programmes, focusing on bottom-up research ideas and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.
To read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/fko (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)