27th ERA Forum in Vienna: Insights into the next ERA Policy Agenda

On 20 November 2024, Vienna hosted the 27th meeting of the ERA Forum. The meeting was opened by Barbara Weitgruber, Austria’s Director General for Scientific Research, International Relations, Gender and Diversity. Ms. Weitgruber described the role of the ERA Forum as the ‘machine room’ of the European Research Area, praising the effective collaboration among Member States, stakeholders, and the European Commission.

One of the primary focuses of the meeting was discussing the future steps of the ERA Policy Agenda. Member States, Associated Countries and stakeholders collaborated to complete the 23 remaining proposals for ERA Actions. With this milestone achieved, the ERA Policy Agenda is now entering its legislative phase, beginning with the transformation of the work of the Forum into a Commission proposal for a Council recommendation.

To prepare for this transition, the European Commission had conducted a survey to assess the willingness of Member States, Associated Countries, and stakeholders to implement the ERA Actions at national level in case they are included in the next ERA Policy Agenda. The survey results showed varying levels of support: While some actions, such as Research Assessment and Research Management, received strong support, others, such as R&I Foresight or Greening Research, were less favoured – mainly due to insufficient resources in the respective Member States’ administrations.

The discussions at the Forum meeting addressed the findings of the survey, notably focusing on how to handle actions with lower support. Some delegates were in favour of focussing on a smaller number of actions, and to sort out the actions with low support in the survey. Others emphasised the principle of variable geometry and argued for not leaving aside important policy fields. The idea to keep actions with low support in the ERA Policy Agenda as activities to be pursued by interested countries only received considerable support. Views of Forum members on how to structure the ERA Policy Agenda were divergent: While some favoured a separation of Actions and Structural Policies and structuring them along the chapters of the Pact for R&I, others favoured a grouping of actions and structural policies that address similar/related topics. Participants also emphasised that the survey should only serve to complement, not replace, the comprehensive discussions held within the ERA Forum over the past years.

Amongst other issues, the meeting included presentations from Hungary, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, and Turkey, each explaining their national efforts in implementing (specific) ERA policies, their challenges and best practices. Additionally, attendees received updates on the ERA Scoreboard/ERA Dashboard for 2024 that monitors the overall progress of achieving ERA objectives for every individual country. Lastly, an update was provided on potential legislative and non-legislative measures under the current ERA Policy Action 2, aiming to develop an EU copyright and data framework suitable for research. This presentation received great attention, and further steps were proposed to explore EU-wide secondary publication rights, and in general a more harmonised landscape for copyright and related rights in the research context.

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