The European Commission must increase its investment in the entire R&I continuum
06 March 2025
In line with our long-standing and consistent message to build Europe on the pillars of education, research and innovation (see here our latest statement), Coimbra Group is pleased to support and share the Open Letter sent today by LERU and The Guild to the Presidents of the European Union (EU) institutions on R&I funding.
This Open Letter is jointly signed by the LERU Chair, Prof Linda Doyle, President and Provost of Trinity College Dublin, a Coimbra Group member university, and the Chair of The Guild, Prof Anders Hagfeldt, Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University, also a Coimbra Group member university.
One year ago Coimbra Group launched, together with 15 other leading R&I organisations, the Research Matters campaign calling for increased investments in research and innovation. Over 80 organisations have already supported it, and this campaign is still open for participation. Cooperation and unity across the European R&I sector are key to making a real impact.
Open Letter’s extracts:
“As the key actors generating breakthrough ideas, galvanising local innovation ecosystems and training future leaders, universities warmly welcome the European Commission’s objective to put research and innovation (R&I) at the heart of our economy. As university leaders, we fully endorse the ambition of Europe’s Competitiveness Compass to gear EU and national policies towards an innovation-based productivity model, and we fully share the Commission’s urgency to increase not just European, but also national expenditure to exceed 3% of GDP“.
“Even though it is accounting for only around 10% of total EU expenditure in R&I, the EU framework programme for R&I has been instrumental in boosting Europe’s scientific leadership and generating socio-economic impact. No national scheme – worldwide – has this capacity to bring together the best minds across countries. To harness this unique capability, the European Commission must increase its investment in the entire research and innovation continuum leading to increased competitiveness and societal advancement, through an ambitious framework programme with a substantially increased and ring-fenced budget“.
“Europe’s competitiveness strategy must also build on where we excel. As underlined by the Draghi and Heitor reports, it is critical to expand the European Research Council and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, while maintaining their bottom-up nature and the autonomy of the ERC Scientific Council. We also call for an emboldened, autonomous European Innovation Council, including the bottom-up open Pathfinder and Transition schemes, to help translate breakthrough knowledge into innovation.
“The European Commission’s ambitions to become a leader in strategic technologies and address complex societal challenges cannot succeed without optimised collaborative research along the entire research pipeline, and instruments to translate its results into innovation. While revision of Horizon Europe‘s Pillar II is necessary, excellent pre-competitive R&I collaboration across sectors, borders and
disciplines needs to be continued in FP10 to enable companies to leverage researchers’ creativity and expertise to develop breakthrough innovation and thereby improve their competitiveness”.