Political energy now needed for missions’ success, say advisory board chairs
Advisers on the EU’s planned R&D missions, which are being introduced in the 2021-27 R&D programme Horizon Europe to help link it to policy goals, have said they have been impressed by the level of public input to their work.
“I’m amazed at the amount of questions, of observations, of requests for interaction which we got,” Pascal Lamy, chair of the advisory board for a potential mission on healthy waters, said at the European Commission’s Research and Innovation Days conference on 22 September. He praised the “incredibly fruitful interaction with citizens and stakeholders”.
Missions are initially planned in up to five areas: healthy waters, adaptation to climate change, cancer, climate-neutral cities and soil health. Chairs of advisory boards for each area provided their final recommendations for goals at the opening session of Research and Innovation Days after spending a year developing them with stakeholders and the public.
The Commission hopes that co-designing the missions in this way will encourage contributions towards the mission goals from industry, national funders and other R&D actors because the level of public support for achieving them will be high.
“We need concrete engagement,” EU R&D commissioner Mariya Gabriel said in the session, adding: “Above all, it’s about our citizens.”
The mission boards have identified concrete aims through a consultation process involving the public, stakeholders and experts. Their next aim will be to generate the political willpower to secure EU member states’ participation—and their financial support.
For instance, the mission on climate will work with 200 communities and regions to exchange data and best practices. It will also involve 100 regions in 100 “deep-demonstration projects” for climate solutions. The healthy waters mission has five overarching objectives, including “revamping [the] governance” of oceans.
“All we need is the will,” said Cristian-Silviu Bușoi, an MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s research committee.
“It is time to act because we are facing challenges and because we need common answers,” said Gabriel.
The final recommendations handed over by the mission board chairs at the conference differed only slightly from those presented in draft reports published in June. Overall targets include, for example, aiming to save three million people from losing their lives to cancer by 2030.
In a policy paper published on 21 September, the European University Association warned that the EU needed “the right mix between curiosity-driven and mission-oriented research and innovation”.
It said the missions’ scope and priorities should “flexibly integrate bottom-up proposals or emerging global priorities”, and that adequate funding was needed.