Plans for EU Innovation Council Take Shape
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Updated daily at www.ResearchProfessional.com 21 January 2016 Director-general Smits sets ambitions for 2016 – p6 BRICs Back in the game – p4 Space Military communications top European agenda – p5 Plans for EU innovation council take shape Dual model floated to provide both advice and funding The proposed European Innovation Council is likely to by Laura Greenhalgh [email protected] take the form of a body to provide high-level advice on innovation policy coupled with a discrete funding However, there is general agreement that the EIC programme, early discussions suggest. would need to be much more flexible than the ERC, due An internal document summarising talks on the EIC to the greater complexity of innovation. “You need a in late 2015 concludes that balancing both functions very adaptive beast,” the Commission official says. would be the best way to improve innovation in Europe. Ehler suggests that the EIC could use challenge prizes A single funding programme would serve to unite to fund solutions to technological problems and pro- the complex arrangement of existing initiatives for vide support for “disruptive” innovation. Jerzy Langer, innovation, while the advisory function would allow chairman of the Commission’s Future and Emerging the EIC to direct framework conditions in Europe on Technologies advisory board, says that Horizon 2020’s issues as diverse as venture capital taxation, univer- FET programme could form the basis of EIC funding— sity reform and funding simplification. and that this could be piloted in 2017, whereas other The European Commission document, dated 16 options would take longer. “The Commission needs to December, states that a taskforce of officials set up take visible and immediate action to maintain credibil- by the Commission’s directorate-general for research ity in the idea of an EIC,” he says. to develop the concept has not yet determined a pre- Supporters of basic research are already voicing con- ferred model for the EIC. The Commission will launch a cerns that the EIC could divert Horizon 2020 funds away public consultation in January, with a firm proposal to from researchers. Peter Tindemans, secretary-general be circulated by the summer, it states. of Euroscience, describes the EIC as a “bad idea”, and The plan, which is being championed by EU research says that innovators should be securing venture capital commissioner Carlos Moedas, has the support of several rather than public funds to support business ideas. senior Commission advisers and MEPs, who say that it However, the Commission official says that discus- could act as a nucleus for political attention and addi- sions on the EIC should not become preoccupied with tional funding, as the European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020 funding. “It should be above all about has for basic research. “It could be a practical tool but policy and strategy,” the official says, adding that also a political tool—an important instrument to regain determining conditions for innovation will have much momentum,” says German MEP Christian Ehler, who is greater impact across Europe than the relatively small involved in the Parliament’s working group on the EIC. amount of funding the Commission has at its disposal. “The voice of innovation and the conversation Moedas must now persuade other commissioners to about innovation is not yet strong or loud enough,” support his plans, ahead of a discussion in June. a senior Commission official says. “This is the funda- Ehler says that MEPs are likely to back the idea, and mental problem, which the EIC could help to solve.” that it should also be possible to gain the support of One idea circulating is that the EIC’s funding arm member states—as long as it doesn’t could work on the core principles of the ERC, of high require additional funding. competition and freedom. “The administrative side The document says that the Every new opportunity should be as simple as possible,” says Luc Soete, an Commission intends to pilot the fund- for research funding economist at Maastricht University and chairman of the ing arm of the EIC during the second from every sponsor in the EU, US & beyond Commission’s main research advisory group. The EIC half of Horizon 2020, with a full-scale could select projects for their potential to leverage exter- launch only likely during Horizon Independent news nal funding, he says, and mirror ERC grant mobility by 2020’s successor programme, which Direct from Brussels ensuring recipients have full access to national markets. starts in 2021. Issue No. 422 2 editorial Research Europe, 21 January 2016 Edited by Colin Macilwain [email protected] Tel: +44 20 7216 6500 Fax: +44 20 7216 6501 Unit 111, 134-146 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AR elsewhere “Given these are the issues that will impact Management myth the way all Americans live for decades to come, why are they so often the exception in debates, rather than the expectation?” Sheril Kirshenbaum, executive director of the Europe doesn’t need another ‘innovation’ layer US campaign group ScienceDebate, wants to make issues such as mental health, climate change and research funding mainstream in presidential candidate debates. Scientific A European Commission document has proposed that a pilot European American blog, 11/1/16. Innovation Council be established this year, with a view to having a fully fledged EIC in the successor to Horizon 2020, due to start in 2021. “There’s no handy stripe in the rock layers to mark the Anthropocene yet.” As is clear, however, from the document reported in our cover story, It will be a big challenge for geologists to pin- the composition and function of the council remain entirely up for grabs. point the start date of the latest geological Options include: something akin to the existing European Research age, says environmental author Gaia Vince, after an International Union of Geological Council; a hard-driving, top-down innovation agency modelled on the Sciences’ working group reached a consensus United States Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (Darpa); and, that the Anthropocene, defined by human effectively, a new layer of management for existing EU innovation pro- impact, has begun. BBC News, 8/1/16. grammes. Each approach has advantages and drawbacks. “The computer actually gives me a flexibili- The EIC project is modelled politically on the ERC, which was proposed ty to change portions of the piece and adjust more than a decade ago and successfully incorporated into Framework 7. structures on a large scale more easily.” New York-based sculptor Elliott Arkin says The ERC tapped additional resources to support the diversification of the that many artists are using robots to create Framework programme to give large grants to individual academics, for highly accurate structures, due to the falling basic research. But the ERC’s success and undoubted prestige may have cost of technologies that mimic an artist’s sent a false signal. Setting up a basic research agency to support top sci- arm movements. The Art Newspaper, 7/1/16. entists was relatively straightforward. No corresponding model exists for “If you see somebody experimenting in the public support of industrial innovation. a laboratory in the opening scenes of a Darpa—at least in its early, less-bureaucratic days—is often cited as movie or TV programme, you figure that something dangerous is going to emerge.” such a model. Its dynamism is superficially attractive. But in our present James Gunn, historian and founder of the age of transparency and accountability, Darpa’s original approach of sec- Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, says an anti-science bias is entrenched in onding talented programme managers and giving them carte blanche to Hollywood movies. Euroscientist, 23/12/15. support what they like is difficult to implement at the Pentagon. It is even harder to see how it could be applied at the Commission. “Cost and risk are measured in more than That leaves the option of appointing and staffing an EIC to oversee just dollars. It’s measured in lives; in mis- sion accomplishment and mission failure.” the Future and Emerging Technology flagships and other existing inno- US Navy energy policy director Jim Goudreau vation-support instruments and advise the Commission on innovation on the rising use of renewable energy sources in the military, to cut down on dangerous mis- policy, including regulation. It has been fashionable to assume that sions to deliver fuel. Politico, 31/12/15. councils of this type, staffed by former business executives, are somehow inherently superior to oversight by professional civil servants, as at pre- sent. That was the thinking behind the UK Technology Strategy Board, decade now called Innovate UK, for example. But it isn’t really clear that these benefits exist. In fact, bureaucrats may be more discerning, responsible and intellectually rigorous in their approach than an outside board. “People tend to forget that It is important that discussions about the EIC establish precisely what this is in reality a nuclear it is expected to achieve. It is obvious that the ‘innovation lobby’ views facility, containing large such a council as a useful funding counterweight to the ERC. But the ERC quantities of radioactive has a specific, discrete function: it does not oversee all, or even most, of material and explosive and the Commission’s research budget. toxic substances.” What must definitely be avoided is the introduction of an EIC for its own sake, to lend a narrative to Horizon 2020’s successor. The EU has A spokesman for the Working Group against the ESS in Lund opposes the done that before, with the 2008 launch of the European Institute of planned construction of the European Innovation and Technology, whose effectiveness is yet to be proven.