European research community urgently needs to find its voice

Jerzy Langer

European science activists have long tried to create an equivalent of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Many elements are needed to copy a successful solution from overseas: money is only one of them.

The US, unlike Europe, is a truly single researchers’ market with powerful federal research-funding agencies. Europe is very much dispersed. Most taxpayer-originated research funding is locked in the countries of origin, whose national funding rules are often incompatible and self-serving. The association of the heads of European research councils, Eurohorcs, has tried to open up this locked system by adopting a “money follows researcher” model, but its scale is likely to stay too small to matter.