EUROPE
bookmark

Calls to tap research talent in Central and Eastern Europe

Europe will never be a 21st century science and technology superpower to match the United States and China unless it widens its base by drawing on the potential of researchers and innovators in Central and Eastern Europe, participants at a recent conference were told.

It was an outrage that 94% of funding from the European Union’s last flagship Horizon research and innovation programme went to countries that already had the largest national research budgets, a Latvian member of the European parliament (MEP) told a conference on bridging Europe’s research and innovation gap.

The conference, hosted by Science|Business on 7 September, focused on the need for a Europe-wide approach to widening and strengthening the continent’s science and technology base so it can compete on a more equal footing with global research giants like China and the United States.

That includes unlocking the talent potential of researchers and innovators in the EU13 member states, the group of countries that joined the EU after 2004, situated mainly in Central and Eastern Europe.

The conference, attended by Brussels-based European diplomats in person and 700 participants taking part online, featured an interview with Mariya Gabriel, European commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth, who welcomed a new newsletter launched this week by Science|Business to keep the issue of widening participation in European research and innovation in front of EU policy-makers.

Gabriel told delegates the European Commission had tripled the ‘widening component’ in the new €95 billion (US$94.8 billion) Horizon Europe 2021-27 programme budget, from €1 billion to €3.3 billion, to support twinning and teaming initiatives and other forms of networking and knowledge transfer to widen participation and spread research excellence in the EU13 countries.

Tackling bias in the system

While welcoming this huge funding boost, speakers from both east and west Europe said the current system was still biased in favouring applications and bids from countries that were already getting the lion’s share of EU money to support research and development.

Fewer than 8% of Central and Eastern European applicants, for example, won European Research Council (ERC) grants between 2007 and 2021, compared to between 15% and 16% of applicants in the Netherlands, Germany and France, the conference heard.

Latvian MEP Ivars Ijabs said: “The best way to widen the Horizon programme is to make the programme and all its parts more efficient and create more of a level playing field which would help many innovators and researchers in the widening countries.

“That 94% of the money [from the Horizon 2020 programme covering 2014-20] went to the non-widening countries is really an outrage.”

He claimed that some of the EU’s richer countries were “subsidising the use of consultants” to boost their own researchers’ and innovators’ chances of success in competitive research grant applications for EU funding.

Gabriel said the European Commission was aware of the use of consultants by some countries to improve their chances of success in Horizon competitive bids for funding and told the conference: “We will be looking into this and the bias of evaluators,” adding that “more transparency and real dialogue” would be healthy.

Europe needs critical mass

Alain Beretz, president of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) association, which connects researchers and innovators across Europe and beyond, said Europe needed critical mass to compete with China and the US, which are spending three to 10 times more in certain areas of science and technology.

He said: “You can’t just have a widening component without the excellence and Europe needs its excellent centres wherever they are and that includes Switzerland and the United Kingdom.”

Researchers based in the UK and Switzerland are currently barred from full participation in the Horizon Europe programme because of political fallouts between the European Commission and the two non-EU European countries, as University World News has previously reported.

Nevertheless, Beretz told the conference COST is still building networks with UK and Swiss researchers and innovators because it uses the geographical boundaries of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe rather than limit its activities to the 27 countries inside the EU, despite being funded from the Horizon Europe budget.

“And we’re very happy about that,” said Beretz, adding that the bulk of the COST budget goes to supporting researchers in the 13 so-called ‘widening countries’ in Central and Eastern Europe and that 96% of its actions include at least one member from one of the EU13 states.

“When you come from a COST action you triple your chance of getting another tool of the European research area and currently we see COST applicants achieving a 35% success rate,” he said.

A wide research and innovation gap

The EU has set a target for its member states to spend 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) on research and innovation, but the research and innovation gap is wide, with EU states in north-western Europe spending on average 2.7% of GDP in 2019, compared with an average of between 1.3% and 1.4% in the eastern and southern region.

Although the European Commission cannot force member states to spend more on science and research, Ijabs said it should not back away from using the powerful tool of ‘naming and shaming’ countries like his that are investing too little in research and innovation.

Kinga Stanislawska, co-founder of the Experior Venture Fund and a Polish member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) board, said while companies in France received €200 million from the EIC Accelerator, start-ups in Bulgaria and Croatia got less than €2 million, and other countries in the region nothing at all, according to data published in 2021.

She said one of the reasons was the lack of assistance for companies in drawing up business plans and helping founders understand what will be expected of them.

Compounding this problem is the legacy of the Soviet past, when economic planning did not acknowledge the need for early-stage investment or start-ups.

To improve matters, companies not only need more investment but also support through networks, said Stanislawska.

Simpler application processes

In an earlier session at the Science|Business conference, Georgina Lupu Florian, chief executive and co-founder of Wolfpack Digital, based in Romania and Ireland, called for the whole process of applying for funding from Horizon Europe and its components to be made simpler and clearer.

“Match the funding available to the innovators and not just to those who know how to write European projects,” she said.

“Make the opportunities more accessible by improving the user experience on all the online platforms when responding to all the calls.”

There is already a myth among companies and start-ups in Central and Eastern Europe, she said, “that it is incredibly difficult to apply for EU funding, that you usually need to use external consultancies to have a chance to access the funding, and there are very few success stories.

“So why not promote success stories more and create a networking and mentoring space where people who have been successful in achieving some funding can meet and get inspired by each other.”

Universities have a key role to play here, said Florian, as they are better at understanding the whole process and language used by the EU, and can help businesses get through what can seem like a daunting process.

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. Follow @DelaCour_Comms on Twitter. Nic also blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com.