ERA Forum discusses next ERA Policy Agenda

The 22nd meeting of the ERA Forum was fully dedicated to the co-creation of the next ERA Policy Agenda.

The ERA Forum spent International Women's Day (see picture) at an intensive meeting in Brussels, dedicated to discussing structure and content of the next ERA Policy Agenda (EPA), on the basis of the following previous steps:

- At its 20th meeting in Bonn in December 2023, the Forum reached a preliminary agreement on the structure of the next EPA, consisting of three main parts – a narrative, a set of structural policies, and a set of ERA actions.

- After the Bonn meeting, a survey was launched to ask MS, AC and stakeholder organisations for their feedback on the 31 proposed ERA Actions, specifically on three main points: 1) is action at EU level needed? 2) should the proposed ERA Action be part of the next EPA? 3) should the proposed ERA Action be a Structural Policy or an ERA Action? The outcome of the survey was that 20 proposed ERA Actions received strong support (over 50% of respondents said yes to 1) and 2)). Three further actions received considerable support. The rest was clearly dismissed or marked as candidates for inclusion into other actions. The assignment to the two categories “Structural Policy” and “ERA Action” remained rather unclear.

- At its 21st meeting on 2 February 2024, the ERA Forum discussed the result of the survey. Most members expressed the view that the outcome of the survey should be respected in order to move ahead and start with the refinement of the action fiches. The three actions that received considerable support should be looked at again in particular because some delegations strongly argued in their favour.

- Between the 21st and the 22nd meetings, webinars were held on these three actions for ERA Forum members and experts in the specific fields.

At its meeting on Women's Day 2024, the Forum gave itself two main tasks. The first was to discuss the actions that received considerable support but less than 50%, and possible mergers of actions. While the ERA Forum members largely supported merging proposed actions in the area of “Trust in Science”, the three “undecided” actions remained undecided, also because several members insist on limiting the number of actions.

The second task was to clarify the definition of the two categories “Structural Policy” and “ERA action”, and to decide on the way forward. Here considerable progress was made regarding the understanding and necessity of the two categories, which can be summarised as follows: A comprehensive ERA Policy Agenda should include the building blocks of the ERA, which are the ERA policy fields that have been part of the ERA since its beginnings in the year 2000, as well as further policy fields which have been added over time. All these building blocks incidentally are also part of the Pact for R&I, and some of them already have dedicated governance structures. They cannot be treated in the same way as short or medium term actions and therefore deserve a specific place in the EPA, each with a concrete work programme for the three-year cycle of the EPA. In the end it will not be very important to which category a proposal is assigned, but the proposed structure can make the EPA easier to understand, communicate and manage.

Towards the end of the ERA Forum meeting, the work plan for the ERA Forum until autumn 2024 was discussed. It clearly focusses on the refinement of the fiches of the proposed actions, advancing them in terms of clarity, focus, outcomes/activities at both EU and Member States level, etc.

It should be mentioned here that the type of co-creation that is taking place in the ERA Forum is perhaps the most important and most positive achievement of the “new ERA” governance. Member States, Associated Countries, and stakeholder organisations co-create the design and implementation of ERA Actions together with the relevant experts of the EC. This type of co-creation clearly exceeds the level of collaboration that has been the case so far.