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TRANSFER OF FUNDS: Poland is set to transfer €30 million from regional EU funds to support Horizon Europe applicants as it seeks to boost its participation in top-level science and innovation programmes.
It becomes the fourth EU country to put to use an EU synergy mechanism that allows money from the European Regional Development Fund to be used to finance Horizon Europe applicants who get a positive evaluation but aren’t given grants due to budgetary constraints. Read more about it here.
WARTIME INNOVATION PROCUREMENT: For European defence start-ups, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has opened up a multitude of funding opportunities, from the EU’s European Defence Fund and NATO’s Diana start-up accelerator, to big budget expansions for national militaries. But firms could consider selling directly to the Ukrainian military, for a much quicker, less bureaucratic route to early revenue. David Matthews has the story.
THE ERC GEOGRAPHY GAP: Leszek Kaczmarek, the European Research Council’s lead on the east-west research gap, says procedures for assessing research excellence should reflect a better understanding of local contexts. Following the publication of an ERC white paper on the issue in March, Kaczmarek told Science|Business that it is time to “talk more seriously about this gap” and address the structural biases that make it so hard to close. Our interview with him is available here.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE NEXT: EU members in central and eastern Europe have attempted to tackle their research gaps, in various ways, and have introduced policies, initiatives and finances to attempt to overcome it. But their participation in ERC grants is still very low. Put together, these countries make up a quarter of the EU population and boast high levels of education and rapid economic growth, yet they secure barely one-twentieth of ERC grants.
While they acknowledge the need to increase national efforts, government and research representatives from Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia say that the ERC should also consider introducing additional support tools that would enable more equitable access to its prestigious grants. Thomas Brent has the story.
RESEARCH TALENT HOMECOMING: For decades, researcher mobility in southeast Europe and the Western Balkans has been framed almost exclusively through the lens of brain drain. Highly educated individuals leave their home countries, which thereby lose the human capital needed for development.
Gregor Majdič, the rector of the University of Ljubljana, says this narrative no longer reflects how contemporary research and innovation systems actually function. The key question now is whether researcher mobility remains a one-way flow that deepens regional disparities or becomes a governed system of circulation that strengthens research capacity, institutional trust and long‑term development in the region. Read his full analysis here. |
