Blog post by Stephen Wyber
The European Research Area (ERA) Act has the potential to be a significant piece of legislation. Not only is it the first time that the EU is seriously considering a holistic piece of law focused on research itself, rather than just on funding or infrastructures, but it is also one of the flagship proposals in the wider drive to boost Europe’s competitiveness.
In July, a public call for evidence was issued, representing the first formal stage in the process that will bring us to a draft legislative proposal, expected in the 3rd quarter of 2026. The call closed on 10 September 2025, and this article provides an overview of the responses received and the questions they raise for the European Commission.
It is based on an analysis of the 178 responses received from different sources, which were subsequently coded according to the themes they addressed and the positions taken.
What Matters for Respondents?
A Better Deal for Researchers
Almost half of the respondents highlighted a desire for the ERA Act to do more to support researchers in their careers, including when moving across borders.
Beyond general statements in favour of a more supportive environment, there was particular emphasis on the potential to support early and mid-career researchers, as well as doctoral candidates. Specific suggestions focused on giving greater employment rights or a more stable outlook. A set of coordinated inputs from unions highlighted the role of researchers’ unions.
The need to protect the interests of groups of researchers at risk of marginalisation – and in particular women – was apparent in at least 25 inputs. Representatives of knowledge transfer professionals, research managers, and independent researchers all made a case for their professions to be better recognised and supported.
Around mobility, roughly similar numbers of contributors (around 15 each) called for simpler access to visas or other forms of research passports, easier transitions between social security systems, and more progress around the mutual recognition of qualifications. 12 called for work to create a common career framework or similar.
A Clear Call for Openness and Access
Based on this analysis, themes around openness were brought up in 74 of the different responses, ranging from explicit calls for open science to be recognised as a policy principle, broader calls for open access, and a desire to look again at research assessment policies.
Of these, 70 were in favour of more efforts to support openness, while 4 were more mixed – one from Ericsson suggested that obligations to make research results open could conflict with business interests (see more on this below). The others came from publishers – two very similar responses from STM and Wiley, and then a further one making similar arguments from RELX. These argued that Europe’s open access system is currently working well, and that these companies play a key role in ensuring quality, and so needed copyright revenues to be able to do this.
This argument is, of course, challenged by numerous other respondents who expressed frustration with current scholarly publishing models and underlined a desire for community-run infrastructures. Indeed, the 3 calls not to advance work on Secondary Publication Rights are far outweighed by the 17 who wanted to see the inclusion of such a provision in EU law, and the 7 who also wanted to see more to support rights retention. 22 respondents each urged more work to make data available for research, and to incorporate research assessment reform concerns into law, and 13 urged broader reforms to copyright.
A Renewed Focus on Investment in Research
52 responses addressed levels of investment in research, with the Commission making much of the drive (finally) to achieve the target of 3% of GDP spent on research, set over 20 years ago. Some (10) argued that there should be still more ambition, with a goal of 4% to be spent this way.
Of these, 31 called for a hard target to be created in law, with penalties or other consequences for governments that failed to achieve this by a given date. To do so, the idea of agreed action plans for those countries needing to progress was raised.
Others nonetheless noted potential concerns with ‘hard’ targets. It was noted that countries are coming from different places, and so a more flexible target may help. Some highlighted a risk – as we have seen with development funding – that fixing targets could encourage governments to reclassify activities such as military research or subsidies to business as research funding. A more sophisticated approach may be welcome.
There was a strong focus in particular on support for infrastructures, not just from respondents representing these. The value of coordinated, long-term funding was clear, as was the need for broad access to these infrastructures.
Finally, 3 respondents connected research funding goals with wider EU processes, suggesting that research spending should not be included in calculations of budget deficits (meaning that countries facing tight budgets would face less of a disincentive to invest). They also proposed incorporating the goal part of the European Semester process. Similarly, some contributors – mainly from unions – argued that research funding could be made conditional on meeting minimum standards of employment and social rights.
Freedom as a Value
While academic and scientific freedom was already on the agenda ahead of the change of regime in the United States at the beginning of the year, concerns about attacks on this have only grown over the course of 2025. Going beyond blunt efforts simply to close down research programmes or ban the use of certain words, parallel concerns are around the impacts of how funding is organised, the employment status of researchers, and self-censorship.
At least 43 responses addressed this question in some way, mainly (31 cases) simply to underline its importance. At least 14 respondents were clearer in saying that one function of the ERA Act could be to make clear that this freedom was a core value of the European Union. Others referred to the importance of scientific integrity and institutional authority as connected issues.
At the same time, 3 respondents underlined the need for any EU-level definitions not to be overly prescriptive, and in particular not to conflict with national or other international principles. Meanwhile, 2 respondents suggested that it may be more appropriate to deal with academic/research freedom in a separate piece of legislation.
Enhancing Coordination of Policies and Programmes
Another core element of the Commission’s own discourse around the ERA Act has been the need to better coordinate research programming both within the EU, and with national efforts. This, the argument goes, will help ensure greater efficiency and so effectiveness from investments.
At least 31 respondents talked about this issue in their responses to the consultation, with 2/3 of them broadly welcoming the idea. At the same time, it should not be ignored that the remainder had a more mixed attitude, with some actively concerned about a loss of independence at national level, while others urged any coordination efforts to remain light touch.
Beyond questions around programme coordination, 8 respondents highlighted the need to ensure that the ERA Act interacts properly with the European Innovation Act. Some suggested that dealing with these as separate pieces of legislation was unfortunate, while others simply underlined that treating research and innovation in separate legislation sent the wrong message.
Maximising the Impact of Knowledge
Knowledge valorisation has been a major part of the EU’s wider work on research for some years, and it appeared in over 40 of the responses to the consultation.
Responses here were overwhelmingly positive, with calls from research, industry and knowledge transfer organisations alike to make it simpler to form collaborations, enable mobility of researchers between public and private sector jobs, and develop end-to-end planning from the laboratory to the market. Only 3 contributors identified concerns about a focus on knowledge valorisation and competitiveness as a potential threat, although elsewhere a similar number argued for more transparency around research funding (presumably to identify private sources).
Towards Legislation
To a large extent, the responses to the consultation simply echo many of the themes which appeared in the original consultation document, although certainly with some helpful nuances – notably the strong call for open science to be given a key role.
The next step will be to develop a questionnaire in the coming weeks, which will gather further inputs from stakeholders around the focus and content of the act. Through this and wider discussions, there is an opportunity to start to define answers to the following questions.
Is European Law an Appropriate Solution?
Just because something is important, it does not mean that it needs a law. Furthermore, it also does not mean that it needs a law at the European level. This will certainly be a consideration for the Commission as it moves towards developing concrete ideas for the ERA Act.
A number of the comments made in the consultation focused on questions around the governance of Horizon Europe, or proposed areas where more funding should be mobilised – questions which are better left to budget discussions. In other cases, there are references to topics that already exist in fundamental EU texts, such as the freedom of research.
At the same time, in other areas, the question is more subtle, as the differing responses around targets for investment in R&I show – a variety of options from detailed legislation, to framing legislation, to soft law are possible.
In some cases, while it may not be appropriate to specify what needs to be done in European law, the ERA Act could mandate the development of strategies or reports on a topic such as research assessment, which at least would provide a structure for advancing reform. This will be a particular question when it comes to the ‘alignment’ of national and European research agendas and funding programmes.
An additional factor will be the question of competence – Member States are likely to block any proposals in areas which are seen as national competences, such as education. This may well make those contributions to the survey, which called for the integration of education into research initiatives, more difficult to respond to.
As we have already argued, steps to align the EU’s copyright laws with its research policy goals certainly do need EU law, given that this is an area where there already is an acquis that needs to be reformed, and that harmonisation is essential to enable cross-border exchange.
In addition, it is also not the case that legislative action alone will be enough to make change happen. Laws will continue to need to be backed up by funding and ‘soft’ measures to have their full effect. This is, for example, the case with Secondary Publication Rights, which serve as an essential guarantee for researchers, but will only ultimately achieve their goal if there is investment in infrastructure and behavioural change.
How Far Should the ERA Act Amend Legislation Elsewhere in the Acquis?
Again, looking across the responses provided, many of the suggestions touch on reforms that would, by their nature, amend EU law outside of the research space. There already are laws and provisions around social security coordination and employment, for example, which by default cover researchers. However, as the consultation inputs show, these leave plenty to be desired.
A particular question is around visas, which can be a hot topic, while references to the importance of accessing data could imply reopening laws around open data, privacy, and more. Clearly, copyright is also part of the mix here, given the weak nature of the EU’s existing research exception for a start.
The answer to this question may well be political, depending on the readiness of other parts of the European Commission to sanction amendments to Regulations and Directives which they oversee. There is an argument that the more other Directorate Generals are involved, the slower and more complex the process becomes, and so the less likely it is to pass anything.
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) suggests bypassing these concerns instead by setting the principle that governments should have an obligation both to remove any existing or new provisions that hinder the freedom of movement of research and knowledge, and to take positive steps to encourage this.
The idea is elegant, and may well make it far quicker to pass legislation. There will remain, however, the challenge of implementation, as each barrier to this free movement needs to be challenged in turn. It also raises the question of how to deal with any potential conflicts with existing EU laws, which continue to enable blockages (for example, the non-mandatory research exception).
In arguing for dedicated legislation for research in Europe, a key argument for Knowledge Rights 21 has been that it has, in fact, been the spread of provisions affecting research across multiple laws that is the problem. While some respondents to the consultation indeed suggest continuing with this dispersed treatment, the problem is that this carries the risk of decisions about research being taken by decision-makers who just aren’t thinking about the needs of research.
This is particularly the case when it comes to copyright, where too many debates end up reduced to a clash between the entertainment industry and big technology; the discussion around artificial intelligence is just the latest example. While publisher contributors explicitly state that they would prefer copyright debates to take place in a copyright space, this runs counter to the logic of placing the needs of research at the heart of things.
Framing Next Steps
In the questionnaire due out in the coming weeks, there is the scope to build on the inputs already received and start to concentrate work on those issues where inclusion in the ERA Act will have the greatest effect.
Particular questions to address could include the following, while also of course recognising the considerable work that has already taken place, not least under Policy Action 2 of the ERA Policy Agenda 2022-24:
- To what extent does (the absence of) EU regulation tailored to the needs of research in the following areas hinder the mobility of researchers and knowledge?
- Social security coordination
- Employment law
- Free movement of persons within the EU
- Free movement of persons between non-EU and EU countries
- To what extent would the inclusion of freedom of scientific research in the ERA Act help to uphold this principle in practice?
- Could this goal be achieved in other ways? If so, what?
- What modalities of coordination of research programming and budgeting could find an appropriate balance between EU and national priorities?
- What amendments to existing EU legislation on research infrastructures would contribute to the broader goal of a European Research Area?
In particular, in questions around open science and copyright:
- To what extent are current models of open access publishing in Europe:
- Sustainable
- Inclusive
- Effective in ensuring that all (publicly funded) research is available
- To what extent do researchers enjoy guarantees of their ability to publish open access?
- To what extent do differences in copyright law represent a challenge for cross-border research involving copyrighted materials?
- To what extent does a restriction of the research exception to non-commercial uses conflict with mandates to promote knowledge valorisation?
- To what extent are research institutions protected against unfavourable contract terms when seeking to acquire or access content?
This table distils the main findings from the consultation responses and frames the central challenges for policymakers as they move towards drafting the ERA Act.
Key Takeaways from the ERA Act Consultation
25 September 2025
