Coordination of EU-related work of bloc’s member states passes to Czech Republic in July
The Czech Republic has named research infrastructure and improving synergies between different research funding sources as priorities for its upcoming presidency of the Council of the EU.
Council presidencies coordinate the EU-related activities of the bloc’s member state governments for six months at a time and have some influence over what topics and work get prioritised. The Czech Republic is taking over the presidency from France on 1 July. Its priorities for research and education were outlined at a ministerial meeting in Prague on 3 February.
Czech minister for science, research and innovation Helena Langšádlová said at the meeting that cooperation among member states and investment in research, innovation and education were needed “in order to continue to be a prosperous part of the world in the future”, according to the Czech National Agency for International Education and Research, which co-organised the meeting with the ministry of education.
That is the reason “why the topics of large major infrastructures and funding have been chosen [as priorities] in the field of research and development”, Langšádlová reportedly said.
A key event of the Czech presidency will be the 2022 International Conference on Research Infrastructures, which will take place in October in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic.
One of the presidency priorities in education will be digitalisation, the meeting revealed.