Let’s get down to business - Priorities for the next European research and innovation framework program

Europe lags behind the US and China in R&D and technological development but there is nothing to suggest that this course is neither predestined nor inevitable.

With the right conditions, Europe can once again rise to its historic role of providing world-class research and development and create conditions for the best and the brightest minds and businesses to explore and conquer new intellectual territory. This would render more of the entrepreneurial ingenuity that Europe so desperately needs.

For this to happen, the need for reforms cannot be understated. Politicians need to go back to basics and underscore the need for a more market-oriented approach and a clear focus on global competitiveness for attracting private investments. EU needs to find the right balance between urgent concerns in a new world (dis)order, and the necessity to embrace openness and competition. At the same time, more resources need to be invested in research and development. A new and more ambitious Lisbon-target needs to be expressed.

Europe needs to streamline the next framework program with a clearer focus on building competitiveness and attracting private investments. This requires more of bottom-up allocation of resources rather than politically motivated top-down initiatives. Only then can EU unleash the technological ingenious which the continent so utterly depends upon.