Brussels, 02/12/2004 (Agence Europe) - On 30 November in Brussels, the Regional Representation of Baden-Würtemberg hosted the "COSTday", a day's event providing information on the pro-European COST (Scientific and Technological Cooperation) organisation, which for the past 30 years has been supporting research network development. Under the guidance of Professor Thomas Herdegen from the University of Kiel in Germany, researchers spent the day presenting their work. Professor Herdegen spoke on the subject of new therapeutic therapies that could be sued for "repairing" neurotransmitters, which when faulty can lead to different illnesses such as Parkinson's disease. "Green chemistry" was the subject of the contribution made by professor Martyn Poliakoff from the British University of Nottingham, who managed, as COST president Francesco Fedi remarked, to demonstrate that, "science is not boring".
Former European Commissioner for research Philippe Busquin MEP used this occasion to highlight the need for the scientific community to get its voice heard in the political world and he promised researchers to be their spokespersons at the European Parliament. Busquin explained that the barriers between the institutions should be removed, as well as those between the Commission and organisations such as COST, the European Science Foundation or EUREKA. He also appealed for the consolidation of the European research area. In this perspective, he called for a combination of "bottom up and top down approaches" and to set up a European Research Council to provide visibility to excellence in all countries and laboratories where there was always an American reference and never a European one. Deploring the lack of intra-European attractiveness, Mr Busquin noted that French researchers did not go to Sweden and Swedish researchers never went to Italy apart for holidays. The link between universities and industry and technological platforms had to be "one of the pillars of the next framework programme", explained Mr Busquin, who also spoke about the necessity of giving research and the role of researchers the merit they deserved (because, "they are the men and women who do the research") . He also mentioned the importance that had to be accorded to European size infrastructures. He concluded that, "European is getting old and does not have natural resources. Europe has its intelligence to sell. It has to develop it".