Blog post by Stephen Wyber
On 29 and 30 September, ministers for research, innovation and industry from EU countries met for the Competitiveness Council, under Denmark’s presidency.
The meeting produced two sets of Council Conclusions:
- on the role of research and innovation in the EU’s Start‑Ups and Scale‑Ups agenda, and
- on the Commission’s proposed Life Sciences Strategy for Europe.
Ministers also discussed plans for the next Horizon Europe programme and the EU’s Strategy for Research and Technology Infrastructures.
Across these topics – and in particular those covered by the Conclusions – run themes that strongly echo Knowledge Rights 21’s advocacy for laws that enable modern research: digital, data-driven and collaborative.
Facing in the Same Direction
Both sets of Conclusions recognise the need to ensure all relevant laws support research goals.
- For start‑ups and scale‑ups, ministers explicitly note that many steps needed to move ideas from academia to viable businesses sit outside the narrow research and innovation agenda.
- The life sciences text similarly stresses the need to address fragmentation.
These are hardly new observations, of course. With the Commission committing to launch both a European Research Area and European Innovation Act (within the coming 12 months), there are clear opportunities for a more concerted approach. There have, of course, those who question whether it might not be even better to have a single research and innovation act, to reduce fragmentation further.
At the same time, one (or two) pieces of legislation will not solve everything. The EU needs stronger discipline across other policy areas: treat research and innovation as first-order priorities, so that all parts of the wider EU acquis point in the same direction.
Access Matters
A second common theme is the need to provide EU-level access to knowledge, infrastructure and opportunities.
The Start-Ups and Scale-Ups Conclusions highlight the potential for such firms to benefit from research and technology infrastructures (themselves the topic of a recent Strategy). With the EU’s definition of such infrastructures including databanks and networked archives and collections, this further acknowledges the importance of access to information and research outputs.
Meanwhile, the Life Sciences Conclusions underline the need for researchers to be able to access and apply AI tools to advance science and discovery. This requires more access to data. In the case of health data, this must come with robust privacy protections, but the data needed for health research also includes research outputs.
In both cases, a proactive push makes sense to move clearly in the direction of open access publication for all publicly funded research as the default, and to explore the rules around access on reasonable terms where full openness is not yet feasible.
Embracing Partnerships
Both sets of Conclusions underline the value of partnerships across sectors and borders. The Start-Ups and Scale-Ups Conclusions highlight that a strong start-up ecosystem is often rooted in higher education and research institutions, and call for long-term partnerships with industry.
Similarly, the Life Sciences Conclusions emphasise more than once the need to coordinate support along the chain from idea to market, involving research centres, science parks and other actors.
Turning these high‑level ambitions into practice means reviewing specific rules that hold back collaboration, especially those limiting how research institutions and their libraries can work with partners. Rules that discourage any commercial activity or block the sharing of information and ideas need to be reconsidered.
Remaining Questions
An open issue is coordination between Council agendas. In parallel with the pro-research signals from the Competitiveness Council, discussions on artificial intelligence led by Culture Ministries continue to portray AI as being purely cultural industries vs big tech. This framing narrows the debate to a question of how (and how far) it is possible to oblige companies (usually American) to pay European collecting societies. This sidesteps the question of whether this is the most efficient or effective way of supporting cultural or competitiveness goals. It also fails to recognise that those least able to absorb extra costs are researchers and research institutions.
There are also a number of aspects of the start-up and scale-ups conclusions that are unhelpful and betray some old habits around competitiveness thinking. First of all, it treats intellectual property rights as if all are the same. This is a mistake, and overlooks the regressive effects that excessive copyright can have in the research space.
Secondly, while calling for the removal of regulatory barriers, it does not clearly apply the same logic of identifying and removing unnecessary red tape to research institutions. As we have argued, the EU too often thinks only about SMEs when considering how to make regulation pro-innovation.
Bottom Line
As the title suggests, the Conclusions do say (almost) all the right things. They identify priorities – around legislative coherence, the need for access, and the importance of collaborations – where the upcoming European Research Area and Innovation Acts have the potential to make a difference. We will work to ensure that they do.
2 October 2025
