Blog post by Stephen Wyber
With the European Parliament elections in June 2024, and the appointment of a new College of Commissioners in the coming months, the change of the holder of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers is perhaps the lowest profile transition in Brussels this year. Understanding the drivers of competitiveness and cohesion within the EU will be crucial during this period.
This is not to say it doesn’t matter. Chairs of the Council of Ministers have a potentially highly influential role in steering negotiations and bridging gaps that are preventing agreements. They also lead in the preparation of Council Conclusions, which shape work programmes and wider agendas, and even trigger legislation.
Therefore, while inevitably most attention will be on the new cohort of MEPs and Commissioners in the coming month, it is worth looking at what Hungary plans to do in its 6 month tenure, and in particular, what this means for the research and scientific agenda.
Bringing the New European Competitiveness Deal to Life
A major focus is the plan to build on the New European Competitiveness Deal, agreed by the European Council (made up of Heads of State and Government) in April 2024 under the Belgian Presidency.
This highlighted in particular the need to ‘foster […] a more innovation-friendly environment based on excellent science, which accelerates market uptake and the industrial and commercial scale-up of innovation’.
Hungary draws on this, as well as the Letta and upcoming Draghi reports, echoing the points made in particular in the former’s piece about the need to address fragmentation in the European Research and Innovation Area, and to resolve the Innovation Paradox (understood as Europe’s high performance in basic research, but poorer performance when it comes to turning new ideas into businesses and markets).
Particular highlights include a focus on promoting horizontal, cross-industry (and technologically neutral) strategies, addressing factors that disadvantage small and medium-sized enterprises, and to look at how the European Research Area policy agenda can, going forwards, support both integration and growth.
The priorities indeed promise a set of Council Conclusions in this area, alongside more specific ones around a circular bioeconomy and advanced materials.
These calls align strongly with the messages in the KR21 Action Plan – Knowledge for a Stronger Europe. In this, we echo the call for a fifth freedom, making the freedom of circulation of research and knowledge into a clear policy priority for Europe.
We also underline the value of more flexible approaches to copyright, which are technology neutral, as well as providing a proportionate means of regulating information flows in a changing world. Crucially, we need to maintain the momentum on open science, which plays such a role in ensuring that research is both high-performing and inclusive.
We trust that the upcoming Council Conclusions will take an ambitious approach, calling for research and education to be centred in planning and law-making (rather than dealt with in scattered legislation and strategies), and promoting coherence in the EU’s approach to knowledge valorisation (which currently claims to support knowledge valorisation while simultaneously making it harder through copyright provisions that discriminate against research-industry collaborations and commercial research more broadly). It should make clear – building on the results of the study commissioned by DG Research, Technology and Development – that now is the time for a new legislative package that achieves these goals.
Bringing the New European Competitiveness Deal to Life
The issues highlighted above will primarily be on the agenda of the Competitiveness Council, which has a formation focused on research.
However, relevant issues are on the table elsewhere. How the EU makes the most of the Single Market (notably by enacting a fifth freedom) will be discussed in other formats, including the European Council itself most likely. Similarly, we trust that the plan to review the EU’s policies to verify that they are fit for the future will include work around both copyright and research.
There is also a cohesion angle, with Hungary setting out a desire to make sure that Cohesion spending contributes to stronger competitiveness.
We would argue that the approach set out in the KR21 Action Plan is particularly positive for Europe’s less wealthy countries and regions, ensuring that their institutions and researchers benefit from legal guarantees to pursue their work. Furthermore, as set out above, spending designed to support research capacity in more deprived regions will be better spent when not tied up by unnecessarily restrictive and disproportionate copyright regulation.
Finally, there is a welcome reference in the Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council’s plan to the need to look at the role of libraries in society. This role, of course is broad – covering issues around democracy, digital inclusion, sustainability and much more. Nonetheless, this is an opportunity to highlight what libraries themselves need in terms of laws and regulation in order to be able to deliver for their communities.
As underlined at the beginning, Hungary’s presidency falls at a time of change in both the Parliament and Commission. Yet this can be an opportunity to set out and advance priority issues for Europe and its citizens in the next five years. Few issues can be more important for Europe’s long-term success than realising its potential in research and education.
9 July 2024
