Today the European Commission has launched a consultation to “redefine” the European Research Area, less than three years before its due date.
The ERA was launched in 2000. It aims to create a single market for knowledge, research and innovation by 2014—but progress has been slow.
Yet, the 2014 deadline set by the Council is “very strict” and will be as significant as the creation of the EU single market for goods and services in 1992, research commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn told the press before the launch in Brussels.
“ERA will mean to ideas what the internal market meant for commerce,” she claimed.
The commissioner added that the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy was personally committed to the ERA. “If we’re running up against barriers he may bring up the subject again with the Council,” she said.
The consultation aims to identify barriers to mobility and cross-border cooperation, improving what is so far merely “anecdotal evidence”, Geoghegan-Quinn said. “We have an open mind about what the ERA is all about.”
The online questionnaire focuses on researchers, including the attractiveness of science careers and mobility; cross-border cooperation including joint programming schemes; research infrastructure; knowledge transfer; and coordination on the international scene.
The consultation closes on 30 November. Results will be presented early next year, and a full proposal for an “ERA framework” will follow by the end of 2012.
The results will come after the Commission submits its proposal for Horizon 2020, the next EU research and innovation funding programme, in November. But Horizon 2020 will be flexible enough to respond to the ERA consultation results, Geoghegan-Quinn said.
The Lisbon Treaty introduced in 2009 makes it possible to use EU law to achieve the ERA. But “no decision has yet been taken however to use this new possibility,” the Commission said in a statement.