As the European Commission prepares the European Research Area (ERA) Act, EURASHE is actively participating in the consultation process to ensure that the voice of Applied Sciences is fully heard.
The ERA Act is a flagship initiative aimed at closing the innovation gap and establishing the ‘fifth freedom’ – the free movement of researchers, scientific knowledge, and technology across the EU. EURASHE strongly supports a legal instrument to build the ERA, while calling for measures to avoid regional divergence.
Advocating for Strategic R&D Investment
EURASHE strongly supports the EU’s ambition to reach a 3% GDP investment target in R&D. In our contribution, we emphasised that this increase must be pursued in a way that reduces disparities between Member States and regions, ensuring that excellence is developed everywhere. As part of the targets there should be a good balance between basic and applied research, in which Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) act as key connectors between research, industry, and regional authorities to translate private investment into socio-economic impact. In line with the movement to reform research assessment (through CoARA), EURASHE advocates for research assessment systems that more strongly focus on socio-economic impact over the number of publications.
Strengthening Governance and Regional Alignment
To improve the effectiveness of R&D investments, EURASHE supports a stronger role for the ERA Forum in aligning policies of Member States. We also believe that the ERA should be built on national and regional Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3), linking their priorities to those at European level, creating critical mass, and avoiding fragmentation. In this context the Research & Innovation and Cohesion Managing Authorities Network (RIMA) should play a central role in coordinating regional innovation ecosystems with centrally managed programmes.
Finally, EURASHE supports EU-level measures to provide stable and inclusive employment and improved social security for researchers.
Click here to read our full contribution to the consultation.