On Wednesday 7 May, the Member States’ representatives to the EU approved the agenda for the Competitiveness Council to be held on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 May. European ministers will discuss artificial intelligence (AI) in science and the mid-term evaluation of the Horizon Europe framework programme.
Regarding the first subject, according to the draft conclusions dated Friday 2 May, the ministers intend to urge the European Commission “to provide quality benchmarks for AI in science in close cooperation with the scientific community, and monitoring the effects of AI uptake in R&I, counteract malicious uses and alert on inappropriate practices and other misuses, in close cooperation with Member States and based on a human-centric approach and the principles of digital humanism”.
The EU Council will also stress the need to develop and frequently update guidelines, benchmarks and best practices for the use of AI in science to ensure integrity and transparency and to enhance the reliability and validity of R&I outputs, while also promoting technical standardisation to enhance interoperability and reproducibility and foster the environmental performance of AI.
Read the draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/gr5
Regarding the second subject, ministers are due to discuss three questions put forward by the Polish Presidency of the EU Council: – the results of the interim evaluation of Horizon Europe which they consider to be essential; – ways of easing and accelerating the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Framework Programme; – the prospects for the announced new role of the European Innovation Council (EIC) in supporting dual-use technologies as part of the programme.
In its note, the Presidency pointed out that almost 70% of high-quality projects were not funded due to Horizon Europe’s budget limitations, and that only 16% of applications were successful. In order to have funded them, Horizon Europe would have needed nearly €82 billion more.
Read the note from Poland: https://aeur.eu/f/gr6 (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)