The Sixth Framework Programme : The Commission s proposals

Transcription

1 The Sixth Framework Programme : The Commission s proposals European Commission, DG Research, Director European Research Area: the human factor OK, thank you very much. I am going to speak today on the new framework program and the training and mobility part of that. But I think that if somebody wants to understand really what is new in the new framework program in term of instruments and in term of the budget, it is important first to understand the concept of the European Research Area. What I mean by that, is that up to 2000 the Commission s instruments - also in the political area - were just the framework program; and through a financial instrument, the Commission was trying to make some co-ordination of national policies. Since the communication on the creation of European Research Area, priority has been given to political action, and the framework program is just the financial instrument of a policy, the policy being the creation and development of the European Research Area. That means a completely new approach and a new structure for the framework program compared to the previous one. It means new instruments, and also explains why the Commission has proposed for human resources and mobility to double the budget, since these areas are a fundamental part of the creation of the European Research Area. We proposed 1.8 billions; in the end we got 1.58 billions. But this in any case is really the highest increase in all the activities in the framework program, and I think for the first time these activities represent a little bit less than a ten percent of the whole amount. So represents the political priority put on this activity put by the Commission because of introduction of the concept of the European Research Area. And it is in this frame that we have thought through the different instruments and how they will serve this activity. And we have tried to have a more coherent approach compared to the past and this approach I think can be summarized in that, which we call internally le pyramide de l excellence: if you want this structure, and the idea is to build not just individual fellowships, some training networks, and some activities as before, but instead to try to integrate all the process of training and the measure of excellence in scientific field (and when I say scientific I mean not only chemistry, biology but also the humanities and social sciences). And the idea is to follow that pyramid, and to use the instruments on this basis. The first part, which in the Commission proposal is a fundamental part, is the initial training of researchers. Through that we will use and we are proposing to use what we call the host instruments. Why host instruments? Just because in this phase what is important in term of evaluation of individual researchers is their potential: these are people who have no real track record, you cannot ask them for a list of publications you can not ask someone else what they think about these people s publications, etc. All we can evaluate is the potential. So at that moment the evaluation of the potential of a researcher in this phase must be done by the host. It is not in Brussels that we will be able to judge anything for them. That is why the host instruments are necessary for the initial training, initial training which is for early stage researchers, meaning that they have less than four years of experience in research. And there through these host instruments we also hope to have some structuring effect on the offer of qualified training for researchers. The financing through the host permits the host to select researchers on basis of their potential. Also, we hope to have a more structural effect on this effort, to better structure this offer and to arrive at more joint recognition and more convergence. That is the fundamental idea we are aiming for. And here we have three kinds of instruments. First is the Host Fellowships for Early Stage Training, that is our financing of individual organisations, that offer structured training for early stage researchers. Second is Conferences, which will go on as in the past framework program, the only new aspect being that we don t want to finance just individual initiatives but a more coherent series of conferences and training programmes to have a major impact in terms of European added value. And last but not least the Research Training

2 2 Networks, that will be more focused on inter-sectorial or interdisciplinary research. The difference between Research Training Networks and host fellowships is that the training of young researchers in the Research Training Networks will be around a common project carried out by a consortium. In the host fellowships there are individual projects carried out by each researcher. That is initial training; afterwards you have a second part, which is the transfer of knowledge. Mobility is also transfer of knowledge and there fundamentally we will have two kinds of mechanisms. One is, I would say the normal transfer of knowledge, as in the fifth framework programme, with a priority placed not just on the totality but in terms of equation effects. By this I mean in two words less favoured regions and associated countries, but also a second instrument which I would like say is more a cultural transfer of knowledge. I speak of the relation between Academia and the business world, business world meaning industries, and multi-medium companies, but also incubators, start-ups, venture capital companies. There we can offer financial help, and we propose to finance the exchange of researchers between these two worlds on the basis of some long-term strategic cooperation between two actors in the two different fields. Going on the pyramid you have advanced training. Advanced training is to answer to individual needs of training of researchers. So there we have the individual fellowships. What I think is important to underline in this case, is that these individual fellowships are proposed more as lifelong training toward independence, acquisition of complementary skills and long life training toward independence, and not just as was in the past or as very often is the case in the research world, job opportunities for post docs. Our goal, the goal that is set for this program by the Council and the Parliament is training and mobility, not job opportunities. And there I fully agree. We as we saw with somebody who spoke this morning, job opportunities must be financed through projects and not through training instruments; I mean that we have to put things in the right place. In this field for individuals, we have also two new instruments that take up the problematique of the European, of an open European Research Area. And that is in term of international cooperation, where we will have both incoming and outgoing fellowships. The incoming individual fellowships are for third country researches who are willing to come for maximum of two years to Europe, and we are prepared to pay their return to their original countries if these countries are more developing countries or in transition countries, but not for the industrialised countries of course. With the outgoing fellowships, the idea is to permit our researcher to leave Europe for a while, and to finance them if they want to gain some experience in third countries, including the U.S, including Canada, and including Australia. But the outgoing fellowships have a return mechanism built in, so that the idea is to finance a three-year work program out of which the two first are, can be and are in a third country, and the last must be in Europe; and if recipients don t return they have to reimburse the program. So we make it possible to go and gain the experience, we finance the return and the one year follow up of the research in Europe, but we don t want to automatically finance the brain-drain. And the last area is excellence. Here again we have three instruments. The first and least important is the awarding of prizes, important for the visibility they confer as well as the financial component. The two other instruments are more important, and the first is what we call the excellence grant, which is the financing of the independence of the recipients research at the earliest stage of the recipients career possible. Mister Siotis spoke to us about young investigator programmes, with which the excellence grant has something in common with, namely a focus on allowing research independence, but differs in not enforcing an age limit. The Commission refuses to have any age limit because it is not clear why somebody can be excellent at thirty five point eleven months and then at thirty six point one months is no longer excellent. That is why we have taken out all the age limits from our programmes. But the goal is the same, namely to permit the emergence of new European teams and finance the start up of these new teams. The financing will go on for up to four years. We finance both cost of personnel, including the team leader, and all of the researchers who are part of the team, as well as the cost of equipment and research. It is really focused on the start up of new teams. The other instruments are the Chairs, which are just teaching and research chairs, offered for a three-year period. That is the structure of the incentives program, and you can see how we have tried to integrate the different phases of a researcher s career, while trying to intervene to facilitate that European level, the constitution of new European teams in Europe. Last but not least, we have spoken a lot about the return or reintegration grant. That will be a kind of grant that will be given to a host institution who

3 3 recruits an former Marie Curie Fellow, no matter what type of grant the fellow has had. If the fellow has been away for at least two years, the grants will allow him to return. The conditions of the return are also new, in that the fellow is not automatically required to return to the institution of origin or the country of origin. The fellow can also go to another member state, or remain in the member state of the associated candidate countries where they have relocated, although of course we don t provide financing if the fellow remains at the same institution. These grants are also given to finance research costs, but with a maximum ceiling, and only if the new host gives them a contract and pays them a salary for at least two years. So this is the mechanism to try to provide what now theoretically exists, ensuring that international mobility must be a plus in a career of a researcher. Everybody knows that right now the reality is exactly the contrary, and of course the Commission cannot change this mechanism, this is not in our power. But we are now try to compensate for that by giving them some financial compensation, so that people who have accepted and moved around internationally, will have an added value when they go back or they again enter into a more long term research activity. In terms of structure, in terms of rules, there again there are big changes, among them as I said first, no more age limits. In any case in this structure the removal of age limits will be interesting, you really cannot apply age limits to this structure. And plus I think that somebody, if they are good for Europe, can be good for Europe at every moment of their career not only when they are younger than a certain age. The second point is that we will propose in the mobility allowance that is paid each month to the researchers to take into account the family situation, to facilitate this family situation, and we also introduce some flexibility from this point of view, so as to permit some part-time work for family reasons, as well as to permit the division of a fellowship into different phases to take into consideration family issues at times. Again, we are giving this kind of flexibility to take in account all the family related problems. The third point is that, in the past, sometimes the rules of mobility have been there to make sure that we work on the transnational, the added value of international mobility. So we have to make some rules, but I think that in the fifth framework program, I have the sense that there were too many different rules and from instrument to instruments they varied. From now on the approach is to have light and common rules on mobility, I mean three or four rules on mobility and that is all. And in any case, at least this is what is in our proposal, we will see what the committee will say about this, in terms of grants for excellence added value is not reckoned just in terms of transnational mobility, but more in terms of the transnational composition of the team and the impact of the research proposal at European level. So it means that a French researcher can be team leader of a project at a French institution if the new team is balanced from a transnational point of view, and if the impact of the research is at the European level. The other innovation that we propose, and we will see how this works out, is to address the problem of the return from brain-drain, the return from brain-drain is something everybody speaks of, and in terms of mobility rules there was in the old rules one particular problem. The German researcher who was six years in the US, and wants to come back with a community instruments, could come back anywhere except Germany. And I think that these rules are rather nonsensical, so we have proposed that for people that who have been more than five years outside Europe, they return and be eligible for all the instruments, also in the member states of their nationality, because the added value is in the return after five years. And for us what is important is Europe, so we have introduced some new things, what I am saying here of course will be in the proposal put to the Commission. As you know we have member state committees and we have to discuss with them, so I don t know what the final result will be, but I hope that everybody will agree with me, I have seen some members around and I passed through a message. So I suggested some light common rules, especially on mobility. All apart the Intra-European Fellowships open to third countries. I suggested two specific instruments and more, all stipulating that the host institution be the host for the initial training, and so two specific instruments for individual fellowships; and for the host we say that the recruitment is open to researchers from all over the world. What will we propose is that in any case globally for each contract you can not go up to one hundred percent so you have to put some ceiling in place there, and we will see what will be the ceiling, I don t mind something around thirty one, thirty, thirty percent maximum, but open that to third countries and permit the training of third countries young researchers who can go back, can stay, can go back. And if they return in any case then their working effort is assured.

4 4 And last I would like to mention the following of discussion which came up yesterday, about the Pierre and Marie Curie approach. The intent is to try to have common proposal for families where both are researchers. I spoke yesterday evening with a lot of people, and phoned this morning to Brussels to see if from a legal point of view it was possible, and it seems that it can be possible. So probably we will propose to open this possibility, and you know that sometimes this kind of meetings are very interesting and you have always to listen to people. And we eventually we will have to make some modifications, but I hope to be able to propose something like that. Of course not with a priority placed on this, just with a global evaluation of the proposal and if they propose together they take the risk that the joint proposal can be refused because one of the two components is not good, that must be clear. But at the same time to make this possible could be interesting. That is in the new framework program but I think that the discussion of these two days clearly demonstrates that financing not only enables mobility, but also includes a lot of other points that must be discussed. I think that the first of these points is of course the obstacles to mobility. Having listened to a lot of commentary asking the Commission to be proactive on that, I think that we are proactive, we are proactive. In particular, as Sigi Gruber pointed out, if you want the Commission to take initiative on that and propose a strategy on mobility, there are fundamentally a couple of ways to go. The first is not to solve immediately the problems but to develop instruments that can facilitate the mobility while the obstacle persists, among them two instruments, one that Sigi Gruber presented yesterday, the European portal, and the other the network of Proximity Assistance Centres. Discussion is going on, we are working hand in hand with member states, we have a Steering Committee that has been put in place to work with the Commission, to work together, to solve these problems. We had yesterday morning the meeting here in Tallinn that was symbolic I think, interesting and symbolic. And I think that both actions, and it was clear yesterday morning, have, are starting to have really structuring effect on the national landscape for these two kind of activities. is The second way to go is to take action to remove some or more legal obstacles, I mean visa problems, social securities, financial issues. There I said several times that this is not only the goal of the Commission. We are in phase where unanimity of member states is necessary. And we know what it means, it means that either you have a proposal that is completely sometimes empty or you are totally blocked, and sometimes to be blocked is worse than trying to do something another way. But since Lisbon there is a new way of cooperation with member state, that is open co-ordination. To try to co-ordinate national policy, to try to achieve all together some common objectives. And we are going along this path, we have chosen this way to solve this problem and we are obtaining some first results. The first results is in the area that was most urgent, and on this everybody can agree, namely visas, and travel permits for third countries researchers. There we organised some months ago what we call a best practice seminar, where we invited researchers, representatives from research ministries and also from justice and general affairs to discuss the problem of visas for the researchers. It was quite astonishing actually, one of the first reactions came from one delegate, who said, well in any case we achieved a big result before coming here, because I met for the first time my colleague in the interior ministry one week ago to prepare for this meeting and we discussed the problem of the researchers at national level. So we had this big discussion and there is the scientific, the French scientific visa, there is the UK initiative and so on and so forth. But at the same time the Council decided, and am going to go quickly here, decided to, decided to create a new committee on immigration composed of representatives from the justice and interior ministries and the only file, the only problem that this committee is now discussing in real terms that are not general co-ordination policies but concrete regulations is the problem of researchers. And I hope that by the end of the year or the beginning of next year we can have a communication of some initiative from Victorine Busquin on this item, based on the work done by ministers of interior affairs and of justice. And we will tackle the other point. But at the global level, we can do a lot of things, research ministries can do a lot of things as our friend Kneuker said this morning often also national level people speak different language, exactly as sometimes we speak different languages at the Commission level between us and other DG-s. What is worst is that at the global political level politicians take initiative only if they feel the right pressure. And it is not the Commission that can exert that kind of pressure, it is not research ministries that can exert this pressure. Commission and research ministries can facilitate this pressure, can follow if this pressure exists, can make proposal if this sensibility exists. But the real pressure is the social pressure, is the category

5 5 pressure at the political level, directly - not through the Commission, not through the research ministry - directly, through normal ways as other professions can exert, and this is the problem. The problem is that there is no profession of researchers in Europe, researcher is not recognised as a profession in Europe. So I think that what is fundamental is to start to speak about the profession of researcher. That means three things, it means social visibility, so that we know what are the reactions of society toward science. I mean there are recent enquiries made everywhere on the scientific world, elsewhere. Tax payers, normal tax payers that exert the social pressure, and the result is just that eighty percent of, fifty percent say that they don t care about that. But also the profession has to take account of what society think on this profession. And that means social visibility, that means statutes, that means the labour market. I think that if this pressure starts to emerge, and on this note I finish, if this pressure and the profession and the scientific world is able to organise itself, the Commission and research ministries will be behind and with and will be able to take initiatives that have some hope of succeeding. Thank you very much.