RESEARCH
NEWS
EU Research’s Richard Davey takes a look at current events in the scientific news
© European Union, 2015
New Commissioner for Research and Innovation already facing criticism Since taking charge of the huge seven-year €80-billion Horizon 2020 (H2020) research programme, Carlos Moedas the new Commissioner for Research and Innovation wants scientists to change their mentality for H2020, breaking free of individual silos and including more social science. However he is already facing complaints that money is being stripped from the programme to finance other European initiatives, such as the proposed €16-billion European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), a Europe-wide bid to stimulate the region’s economy. Last November, Portuguese engineer-turned-economist Carlos Moedas was plucked from managing his country’s budget-cutting austerity programme to take charge of the research portfolio at the European Commission in Brussels. During a visit to London, Carlos Moedas assured the Royal Society’s President, Sir Paul Nurse and other scientific leaders that the idea would spur research as well as innovation.. “We are doing more and not less,” Moedas said he told Nurse during a visit to London today. “I’m extremely glad to reassure Sir Paul that the idea of the Juncker Plan will be to increase the firepower of Horizon 2020.” Moedas, a 44-year-old Portuguese ex-banker, was referring to a proposal made last November by Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission. Over lunch today, Moedas dropped by the commission’s outpost to answer questions from reporters about Juncker’s plan, called the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). The proposed fund would take €21 billion from various existing budgets and invest it in projects that can leverage 15 times more public and private investment, totaling €315 billion over the next 3 years. The plan was presented in January as draft legislation to the European Parliament, where it faces opposition from members who want to protect the budgets for research and infrastructure.
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This month, the European Court of Auditors pointed to gaps in the legal basis of the plan and said it had not been sufficiently vetted. The scientific community has raised concerns as well. Science Europe, an association of major European research groups, issued a plea last week not to dip into Horizon 2020. The commission’s claim that EFSI projects could replace the science done under Horizon 2020 was “a severe error,” Science Europe argues. At today’s briefing, Moedas said the goal is to stimulate private investment in European innovation. Part of the Horizon 2020 program, he noted, already leverages private and public funding. “We should open a little bit our minds to this project,” he said. At the same time, he said, basic research remains “the root of it all.” The Commission wants the European Parliament and the European Council to approve the investment fund by June so that it can start to be deployed this summer. June is also the deadline for the other difficult issue in Mr Moedas’ inbox – the matter of scientific advice within the EC. Previous Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, had appointed Scottish biologist Prof Anne Glover as Brussels’ first ever chief scientific adviser, in 2012. But her role was controversially abolished when Mr Juncker became president in November. Mr Moedas said Prof Glover was “an excellent scientist who had done an excellent job”, but that the Commission was now looking to “improve” the machinery used to receive scientific feedback on policy. “Mr Juncker has asked me to look for a mechanism that will work in the setting of the European Commission,” Mr Moedas explained. “We already have a lot of scientific advice in-house. We have highlevel groups of experts, such as the Joint Research Centre. Now, we have to get independent scientific advice. There are different models out there. The UK is one, but there are others.”
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