The 28th April as part of the Interim evaluation of Horizon H2020 meeting the Public Stakeholder Consultation results have been shared with interested stakeholders, initiated further discussions between participants and panellist and forecasted some changes the European Economic and Social Committee is planning to put in place for the upcoming 9th Framework Programme.

For the H2020 interim evaluation, close to 3500 replies to the open public consultation and over 300 positioning papers are a sign of tremendous interest and support. This shows that the R&I investments for the future and important to EU citizens. Based on the consultation 78% (2732 respondents) were satisfied or very satisfied with Horizon 2020.

ENoLL also expressed its satisfaction, the need for further funding and similarly its needs where some changes would be needed in the programme in order to enable better public engagement and consultation:

A detailed analysis and a collection of ENoLL members case studies – Laurea, Bird, Botnia, Library, Guadalinfo, Basaksehir, imec, elivinglab – were submitted for the consultation titled as the ENoLL Positioning paper: 

Some highlights from the conference for the Living Lab community:

It was highlighted by several panellists how important it is to reach out to society and be able to explain in a transparent and simple way why the different funding schemes and programmes are relevant to the public, since they involve contributions from tax payers’ money.

ENoLL expressed to better involve citizens in the context and consultation of the programme #EESC.

Goncalo Lobo Xavier (Vice President of European Economic and Social Committee) highlighted the need of further simplifying the upcoming programme.

Rosalinde Van der Vlies (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission gave detailed insight into the consultation results and statistics a high quality filtered and aggregated evaluation. 

Further though provoking questions were put on the table by Panellists Kurt Vandenberghe (Director, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission) and Ulrich Samm (European Economic and Social Committee).

–        What would happen if we discontinued R&I research funding?

–        What is the cost of a R&I programmes discontinuation?

–        What is the cost of Non Europe? 

Besides the actions that requires follow up by the EESC, it was similarly accented that member states have to strengthen their support for research activities, therefore decreasing the EU projects’ participation disparities in Europe.

Stephan Kuster (Science Europe) accented the need to keep enlarging the open science access tools, spreading the knowledge and encourage the preparation of very tangible results. He suggests not to question the value of knowledge itself. Foisting Europe wide competition, has been a success story with one of the most rigorous selection process around. He specifically mentioned the ERC programme, which provides scientific freedom and independence to pursue the results. In his opinion budgetary pression is rather a blocking element. H2020 has to keep its nature as a research funding programme money should be channeled to bottom up basic collaborative research. 

Durign the closing words it was highligted that Research Programmes must keep strong and enable networking and attracting newtalents! 

A machine that can work and is an asset for the future – to create the future together that we want. 

Don’t miss the next upcoming meeting connected to the conference:

Research & Innovation – Shaping our future – Research & Innovation

Report was written by Zsuzsanna Bodi on 3 May 2017.