29 Jan 2025
The Guild calls for EU's competitiveness to build on R&I excellence
The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities has issued a position ahead of the European Commission's Competitiveness Compass which is due to be published on 29 January 2025. The Guild states that the Competitiveness Compass will point in the wrong direction if it fails to build on R&I excellence and recognise a broader understanding of the skills needed to underpin Europe’s competitiveness.
The Guild welcomes the fact that the European Commission confirms its ambition to “put research and innovation at the heart of our economy” and makes this objective the cornerstone of its competitiveness policy. However, the association sees the Competitiveness Compass lacking in a critical component, which is support for research excellence, quoting the report of Mario Draghi on the future of Europe’s competitiveness and the High-level Expert Group's report 'Align, Act, Accelerate' in this context.
The Guild urges the Competitiveness Compass to integrate the critical need to ensure Europe’s scientific leadership. Research and innovation should not be regarded only as mere instruments to achieve industrial policies. The Compass, in its current version, undermines Europe’s capacity to breakthrough discovery if it proposes merely a focus of R&I investment on applied research and the scale-up phase, the association states.
The Guild therefore calls on the European Commission to "reverse course on this apparent focus on high-TRL research which will only bring incremental advancements to knowledge" and highlights the importance of "investing in curiosity-driven research to make our competitiveness policy future-proof and agile to nimbly react to new technological and societal challenges". According to the Guild, the Competitiveness Compass "should point towards an ambitious framework programme with a higher and ringfenced budget and a renewed ambition to enable excellence in research and innovation for Europe’s scientific leadership".
For more information and the full text of the statement: