SEDEC-VI/026
124th plenary session, 12-13 July 2017

OPINION

Local and Regional Dimension of the Horizon 2020 Programme and the New Framework Programme for Research and Innovation

THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
-  calls for a return to innovation and research as one of the top priorities in the debate on the future of Europe and the priorities set out in the Rome Declaration, for the horizontal governance of research, innovation and training issues within the EU to be strengthened, and for the EU's overall fiscal effort in the area of R&I to be stepped up across each of these policies, within the current and the next MFF. In this overall context, and in line with the European Parliament's draft report and the report of the independent High Level Group on maximising the impact of EU Research and Innovation Programmes, the budget for the framework programme should be considerably increased to at least maintain the growth momentum of the current framework programme. In any event, the necessary promotion of R&I must not undermine the importance of cohesion policy, which remains the EU's key financing tool for achieving economic and social cohesion and convergence between its cities and regions;
-  is disappointed that halfway through its term, Horizon 2020 is undermined by low participation among the EU-13 countries, and points to the differences in participation at regional and local level. It is important to make the framework programme – and not just cohesion policy – work across all the Union's cities and regions so as to support the best pioneers of excellence and ensure their access to European collaborative efforts;
-  considers it necessary to clarify the debate on synergies and proposes five operational principles that could be shared between the EU, the Member States, the regions and cities;
-  calls for a new collective ambition that focuses not only on scientific excellence in Europe but also on scientific excellence and the innovation capacity of Europe as a whole, by tapping into the full potential of all its cities and regions, helping to strengthen their capacities and promoting open and collaborative innovation;
-  would like the framework programme to do more to strengthen regional innovation hubs and ecosystems, with more support for technology transfer networks, and for a new "territorial connections" action to be set up to recognise and fund regional excellence networks through the framework programme.

COR-2017-00854-00-01-AC-TRA (EN) 1/15

Rapporteur
Christophe Clergeau (FR/PES), Member of the Pays-de-la-Loire Regional Council
Reference document


Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions - Local and Regional Dimension of the Horizon 2020 Programme and the New Framework Programme for Research and Innovation

I.  POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

A)  European research and innovation (R&I): an ambition that needs to be stepped up beyond the framework programme

Reaffirming the position of the framework programme in implementing the European Research Area and the Europe 2020 objectives

1.  welcomes the great success of European research policy as implemented through the successive framework programmes up to Horizon 2020 (H2020), the largest integrated research programme in the world, based on scientific excellence and the acceleration of innovation;

2.  notes that H2020 is the main support tool for developing research and innovation in Europe within the overarching Europe 2020 strategy and for implementing the European Research Area (ERA);

3.  reaffirms the relevance of the Europe 2020 strategy, which proposes a consolidated "knowledge triangle" approach (research – education – innovation), with the change in the learning approach and the goal of raising the level of training for all remaining essential, and promoting university-business cooperation; also recommends seeking greater coordination and complementarity with the Erasmus+ and Interreg programmes, including Interreg Europe, which is devoted to interregional cooperation; emphasises that the implementation of the ERA must be pursued and requires that a number of goals be met, of which scientific excellence is a vital and indispensable, but not exclusive, strand;

4.  underlines the continued relevance of the ERA objectives and the benefit of still seeking to achieve them, particularly in respect of transnational cooperation, knowledge mobility, a single labour market for researchers and innovators, gender equality, and access to information and science;

5.  suggests, in order to develop support for the project to build a knowledge society in Europe, that European talent be identified and researchers' careers monitored; European pathways for researchers should be established, enabling them to access programmes to support their research career in periods of transition; the involvement of researchers in the business environment should be promoted;

6.  refuses to limit the budget debate solely to the framework programme: depending on the valuation method, the share of cohesion policy devoted to research and innovation varies between EUR 43 and EUR110 billion, not including the major contributions from other sectoral policies and the Juncker Plan;

For a return to innovation and research as a budgetary and policy priority

7.  calls for a return to innovation and research as one of the top priorities in the debate on the future of Europe and the priorities set out in the Rome Declaration,[1] for the horizontal governance of research, innovation and training issues within the EU to be strengthened, and for the EU's overall fiscal effort in the area of R&I to be stepped up across each of these policies, within the current and the next MFF. In this overall context, and in line with the European Parliament's draft report[2] and the report of the independent High Level Group on maximising the impact of EU Research and Innovation Programmes (Lamy Report),[3] the budget for the framework programme should be considerably increased to at least maintain the growth momentum of the current framework programme.[4] In any event, the necessary promotion of R&I must not undermine the importance of cohesion policy, which remains the EU's key financing tool for achieving economic and social cohesion and convergence between its cities and regions. The full potential of cohesion and R&D policy measures will need to be harnessed and combined in order to boost regional development;

8.  calls for a new collective ambition that focuses not only on scientific excellence in Europe but also on scientific excellence and the innovation capacity of Europe as a whole, by tapping into the full potential of all its cities and regions, helping to strengthen their capacities and promoting open and collaborative innovation;

9.  believes such an ambition is particularly necessary in the context of a globalisation process whose effects are not yet contained, above all at local and regional level, and where research and innovation can offer resilience, high added value and long-term competitiveness;

10.  aims to promote a holistic approach to European, national and regional funding without which this ambition and the debate on the EU budget would be meaningless; points out the importance of the target of spending 3% of GDP on public and private R&I that was set for all Member States by the Europe 2020 strategy, which has been stagnating at 2.03% since 2015 and undermined, among other things, by the decrease in appropriations in many Member States; to that end, considers it essential to continue strengthening R&I systems, taking account of the circumstances in each country and region, by improving the coordination of policies at European level and promoting the necessary reforms at national and regional level, including through the European Semester and the smart specialisation strategies;

Clarifying the debate on synergies with other EU policies

11.  considers it necessary to clarify the debate on synergies and proposes five operational principles that could be shared between the EU, the Member States, the regions and cities:

-  coherence principle: sharing governance and the choice of major objectives, strategies and flagship projects;

-  compatibility principle: making it possible to pool and streamline resources simply and effectively by addressing the issue of State aid;

-  complementarity principle: ensuring a clear distribution of roles and good continuity of action when funding different strands of projects, and ensuring they receive support both upstream (capacity-building, etc.) and downstream (making use of research results, marketing, etc.);

-  co-construction principle: establishing a coherent approach based on the idea that financing together means designing together and managing together;

-  ecosystems principle: recognising the role of local collective initiatives;

B)  Revamping the foundations of the framework programme while retaining its structure

An open, collaborative programme for the benefit of all

12.  points out that the European added value of the framework programme is primarily based on its collective and collaborative dimension and on its contribution to creating a network of researchers and innovation ecosystems. This dimension should continue to take precedence over support for individual projects;

13.  is concerned about the decline in the average success rate of the calls for proposals, which is lower than for the previous framework programme and seriously impedes its dissemination in cities and regions. The competition necessary in a drive for excellence should not lead to exclusion and excessive concentration;

14.  believes it is vital to maintain the openness of the framework programme in order to ensure its availability right across Europe and its regions, as well as to its citizens; calls for greater innovation in the framework programme's tools in order to combine excellence, inclusion and participation;

15.  notes the importance of maintaining a balance between basic research and research closer to the market, but also between free research and research as a response to questions raised by society and economic operators, in order to target both incremental innovation as well as disruptive innovation, as both are capable of creating new business opportunities and jobs;

16.  notes the primacy currently afforded to projects with high technology readiness levels (TRL), which prioritises incremental innovation by encouraging researchers to focus on mature ideas that can be brought to the market within a short time span; at the same time, argues that support for projects at lower TRLs is also important for bringing more innovation to the market; stresses the importance of disruptive innovations that are based on lower TRLs and enable new products and services to be released on the market quickly. In any event, helping SMEs access the market and creating sustainable jobs should be key priorities of innovation policy. This should be the role of a European Innovation Council;

17.  calls for better account to be taken of all forms of excellence and innovation, and points out that non-technological innovation and social innovation create a need for new knowledge that can configure new areas of excellence;

18.  calls for full recognition of social innovation, which means novel ideas (products, services and models) that make it possible to meet societal needs in the broad sense of the term;

19.  emphasises that research and innovation is not targeted exclusively at companies but also concerns public policies, health, culture and community life, as well as the social economy and new economic models, which contribute to the creation of new partnerships, new activities and new social relationships. Therefore, the exploitation of innovation output should focus not only on the concept of a product with an economic value on the market but also on the concept of a service with a social value for citizens;

A new approach to excellence

20.  highlights that the term excellence is used to refer to very different realities; suggests distinguishing between the following challenges which the framework programme must help address:

-  scientific excellence, based on the principle of collaboration followed by that of competition;

-  the excellence of scientific and innovation projects, characterised by their impact and their contribution to knowledge transfer;

-  the excellence of innovation ecosystems and joint efforts between different operators;

-  the excellence of Europe as a whole and its overall capacity for innovation;

A new approach to the impact of projects

21.  when assessing the impact of projects, both in the ex-ante phase in the case of proposals and the ex-post phase in the case of approved projects, suggests taking the following into consideration:

-  the scientific impact, predominantly measured by citations;

-  the impact through the dissemination and ownership of the project results;

-  the impact through open and collaborative innovation and the development of new products and services, particularly by SMEs;

-  the impact on regional innovation ecosystems and their three pillars (research – education – innovation), and on cities and regions and their inhabitants, in particular on employment and well-being;

A new approach to the position of cities and regions within the framework programme

22.  suggests, in order to help promote excellence in all its forms, that cities and regions be given a greater role in the future framework programme:

-  partners for the overall governance of R&I policy in Europe and for the framework programme;

-  at the heart of the European excellence networks of hubs and innovation ecosystems;

-  participants in projects with facilitated involvement;

-  main actors involved in innovating, exploiting and disseminating the results of H2020;

-  leading role in the ongoing dialogue between science and society.

Transforming societal challenges to enhance their relevance and impact

23.  calls for the introduction of two new societal challenges to develop excellent scientific output on major challenges for the future of European societies:

-  tackling the challenges of the European skills agenda: life-long learning within the European social and performance-based model;

-  the territorial dynamic of value creation, innovation and employment, social links and sustainable development, including in connection with the demographic challenges facing the regions of the European Union;

24.  calls for interdisciplinarity, the human and social sciences, and risk-taking to be given more emphasis in the context of societal challenges, in order to catalyse new ideas and solutions, particularly through the introduction of undefined calls for projects;

25.  encourages the adoption of a new, complementary approach based on missions, in order to carry out exploratory work and large-scale projects, as well as on cross-cutting focuses, using the model of smart cities, environmental questions, or maritime and marine research questions; to this end, reiterates the Committee's call for a target to be set, in the next framework programme, for 10% of projects to have a significant impact on marine and maritime research[5];