Europe needs to invest heavily to retain young talent

Bredenoord: "If we want to remain effective in research and innovation, we must do everything we can to retain young talent in Europe. That means investing much more heavily in research and innovation than we are doing now. That is our unanimous advice to the European Commission. It is remarkable, of course, that in the Netherlands the government has opted for a policy that is completely at odds with this. It is really a wake-up call for Europe, we are losing relevance and are being overtaken in all kinds of ways by other countries and continents."

On Wednesday 16 October, the High Level Expert Group presented the report 'Align, Act, Accelerate' with a total of 12 recommendations on how to proceed with European investments in research and innovation. 

Investing 220 billion 

The proposal includes a package of investment measures totalling €220 billion. In the current FP 9 Horizon Europe, this is 95.5 billion. With these solid investments, the HLE Group proposes, among other things, to attract and retain talent through an improved Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions MSCA (for doctoral and postdoctoral education) programme, including a new tool to advance the careers of young researchers ("Choose Europe"). Essential to this is a new system for awarding start-up grants, in line with the new approach that we call Recognition & Rewards in the Netherlands. 

In addition, the experts advise that companies should also increase investments. The private sector, through all kinds of initiatives, should match every public euro with almost 4 euros. In addition, all national governments must invest more in education and research; several countries are still lagging far behind the percentage of 3% of GDP/GDP, including the Netherlands currently 2.3%. 

In addition to these specific financial incentives, the experts of the HLE Group make a number of other recommendations such as the establishment of two new European councils, one for Competitiveness and one for tackling major societal problems such as the energy transition, social innovation and growing inequality, the Societal Challenges Council. 

Science can play a crucial role

Bredenoord, as the only member of the HLE Group with a background in the social sciences and humanities, emphasizes the importance of this: "Science can play a crucial role in devising and shaping solutions to major societal issues, but then you have to properly organize the conditions and funding of that research. Enabling true interdisciplinarity and new, more inclusive forms of recognising and rewarding scientists. The Societal Challenges Council can drive this. The HLE Group emphasizes the crucial role of the Social Sciences and Humanities in this." 

Dual use

Another remarkable recommendation from the HLE Group is that for so-called Dual Use: accept Dual Use – the fact that virtually any form of science can also be used for environmental purposes – as inevitable and make it a truly two-way street. Bredenoord: "The boundaries between research for public and military purposes are actually impossible to control. The rapid development of, for example, Artificial Intelligence or everything related to energy and climate adaptation is moving at lightning speed and is of great importance to both the public and the military."

Horizon Europe is the world's largest public programme for research and innovation and aims to challenge academia and industry to work together to find solutions to societal issues across Europe.