Mariya Gabriel – European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth – is the woman who wants to change the way science and technology is done in the 27 Member States, and to do so she has a budget of 95 , 5 billion euros to be distributed between now and 2027. These are the funds of the new program Horizon Europe, designed to address major challenges such as the competitiveness of European research in crucial areas including medicine and frontier technologies.
Commissioner Gabriel, Horizon Europe has great ambitions and an unprecedented budget. What is its spirit?
«The new Horizon Europe is the most important research and innovation program in the history of the European Union. We want to send a very strong signal to our researchers about basic research: we must explore the frontiers of research because no one already knows where we will be in 10 years. And we want to send a very strong signal to our industries and to small and medium-sized enterprises, with which we must build strategic partnerships. And of course we want to send a strong signal of innovation: Europe is a leader in science, and now is the time to turn that force into innovation leadership. By solving problems such as the gap between states in research, and by fostering strong collaboration between academia and industry. The Covid-19 crisis was a warning to everyone on the need to invest in research and innovation “.
What are the most important points of Horizon Europe?
«The Horizon Europe structure has three pillars. The first is about excellence in the sciences. And it includes the European Research Council (i.e. the ERC, the EU agency dedicated to supporting frontier scientific research), which in just two years has become a world reference point not only for Nobel laureates, but also for the quality of European researchers. In the same pillar we also have the Marie Sklodowska-Curie program, which supports researcher mobility and knowledge exchanges. The second pillar concerns global challenges and European industrial competitiveness. And this is where we have outlined the strategic areas – such as hydrogen and batteries – where we need to affirm leadership and technological sovereignty. The third pillar, renamed “Innovative Europe”, has a precise mission: to transform the excellence of our science into products and services, so as to create our European champions on the market. This is why we now have the European Council for Innovation, which has a budget of 10 billion euros: it will have to become a European factory of “unicorns”, in synergy with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology ».
How is the Covid crisis changing European research?
«The pandemic has accelerated trends already underway for some years in the science and innovation sector, such as open science, the multidisciplinary approach and international cooperation. The first lesson we learned is that science and innovation are vital to addressing pandemic crises. On the other hand, we launched the first call for Covid research already in January 2020, we did not wait for March to react. And in the whole of 2020 we have invested one billion euros in research on Covid with our Horizon 2020 program. But in the future we must anticipate: we cannot wait for a crisis to occur and then react. This is why we have already launched the first calls with the ERC and the European Council for Innovation (EIC) for a work program dedicated to addressing the variants of Covid, with a budget of 123 million euros. And in parallel we are preparing, together with the Member States, an epidemic preparedness partnership. Because no one can predict when a new crisis will occur, but we certainly can – and must – be better prepared. Another lesson from the pandemic crisis was the need to cooperate and exchange data in real time: we have seen this with our European platform for exchanging data on Covid, and we will strengthen these initiatives. Finally, to tackle health crises we need easier and more immediate access to science. According to the open access principle. We have some great examples to start from: the European Open Science Cloud and the European Health Data Space. Horizon Europe will now translate these opportunities into concrete benefits for researchers, industry and citizens ”.
What have been the major changes in Horizon Europe in response to the pandemic crisis?
“We have increased Horizon Europe’s budget for the health sector to 8.2 billion euros. And in this budget we have the innovative medicine initiative, with many projects on the antimicrobial fight. We also have the “Vaccelerate” partnership, which is the new European network of clinical trials to deal with variants of Sars-CoV 2. Launched in February, in just two months, “Vaccelerate” has already collected 355 clinical sites in 26 Member States and in 10 non-European states. An important component has been the inclusion of sites for pediatric trials, an element that has been missing so far: of the 355 clinical sites participating in the network, 173 have the capacity to carry out pediatric vaccine trials. And with the emergency call launched in March, we have allocated 123 million euros to research on the transmission factors of the variants, on the different symptoms, on the immune response to vaccines in the various population groups “.
In a recent interview on Nature you said ‘European research has made progress, but there are signs of stagnation’. What was he referring to?
«Some concrete examples: first of all we must reach the goal of investing 3% of the European Gross Domestic Product in research and innovation. We are not there yet: today we are at 2.19%. And 3% was a target already last year. This is why it is important to raise awareness that if we no longer invest strategically in research we will be able to continue to be, like Europe, a leader in science, but we will have no chance of becoming a leader in innovation. The same goes for public investment, which has stagnated since 2010. China, the United States, Japan and South Korea are investing more. A third aspect is that of the gap between member states: we cannot form European leadership if we do not help states with fewer resources to have access to infrastructures, networks and consortia. The fourth point is that we must try harder to translate scientific results into benefits for our economy: this is why we have developed common technological roadmaps between the university and the business world. And finally, we need to do more for women. Women now account for 48% of PhDs, but in the technology sector only for 16%. And women in senior positions are only 24%. Many analyzes show that if we integrate women even more in the fields of science, research and innovation we will have better results ».
Should research follow new paths?
“There is a new generation of innovators, who use” agile “methods, in the spirit of startups, to develop prototypes to be placed on the market, so that thousands of users can experiment with them and help the innovator to evolve the idea – and the business model – initial. So as to get closer to what the market really requires. It is the third wave of innovation, that of technology and biotech startups. We must strengthen this spirit in European innovators and we must be ready for the fourth wave of innovation, that of “deep tech” startups, positioned on the convergence of the physical and digital world. There is a process underway, a transition from digital startups, which develop solutions based on bits, to “deep tech” startups, which develop solutions where bits are intertwined with the physical world. And it is here that we must affirm the leadership of Europe: in artificial intelligence, in space technology, in synthetic biology, in robotics ».
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