Spheres Vs. Pillars

And the final piece of the puzzle is revealed!

The report of the Commission expert group on the Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe, headed by @Manuel Heitor, is currently one of Brussels' best sellers.

Together with the Letta Report and the Draghi Report, this third document is expected to contribute to the way the future MFF will be set up and (more importantly for R&I stakeholders) how the future FP10 will be designed.

At the moment, it appears clear that this is likely going to have a huge focus on competitiveness, with R&I said to have a role of primary importance. Most of the recommendations in the report are entirely agreeable and also reflect some of the positions that NTNU has expressed in its position paper on FP10. So, I assume everyone welcomed recommendations related to the increase of R&I budget or the need for it to be ring-fenced.

On a personal note, I also fully agree about the "unavoidability" of dual-use occurrence in many of the technologies under development: this aspect should be transformed into an opportunity for R&I stakeholders' role and activities reinforcement rather than considered a threat. All of this provided that the budget will be increased to cover the new and additional activities/priorities that will derive from it.

A separate reflection is to be made about the EIT, where it seems that the overall sentiment is to go for its dismissal. The question I have is: wouldn't it be better to consider a reform of it towards better integration in the overall framework? It is undoubtful that the ecosystemic approach created and managed by the EIT and its KICs at European level to generate and support innovation represents an asset that is unique and worth further valorizing as a tool for EU competitiveness.

This is unique also when compared to the nature of the innovation created by the EIC activities, being mostly of punctual nature and not structured towards a full ecosystem of actors that can replicate or nurture further innovation to happen and impact also on a territorial level.

But one of the aspects that attracted my attention in the so called "Heitor Report" is the "system of spheres" proposed as a way to structure the future FP10, supported by the introduction of two new councils to add to the ERC and EIC: An Industrial Competitiveness and Technology Council and a Societal Challenge Council.

I would like to point my reflection to the first one as it is supposed to support pan-European collaborative research of European Added Value in a context where "less prescriptive short-term calls" are supposed to be made. This means that incremental innovation does not represent an option in designing the opportunities and, if the approach is put in place extensively, the system and methodology of Strategic Partnerships is put into question, as well as the design of the future priorities that today inspire the future calls.

The idea to copy the Council approach of ERC and EIC for the two new councils could be an interesting one, but the main question is if it could be the right model for multi-partner collaborative research actions. Today, through the Strategic Partnerships and related European platforms, we have a system that engages the EU stakeholders from Research, Industry, and Public Systems in designing and agreeing on the future R&I priorities. At the same time, such a system contributes to nurturing the dialogue among actors, allowing cross-country collaborations to happen. This represents, in my opinion, one of the main assets nurturing Pillar II outcomes and generating high-quality impactful projects. If this approach is changing, the overall system will probably need to re-adapt itself, and the platforms will probably need to reform their mission and nature, basically working more on generating collaborations and dialogue in a decontextualized manner given the total desired openness of the future calls.

The extreme risk is to de-potentiate the cross-countries/cross-actors interaction, leading to a model where the main collaboration dialogues are going to happen (for vicinity reasons) between R&I and Industry actors of the same countries.

So, are we going to live in the FP10 a revolution of the role and approach of the existing Partnerships, platforms, and alliances? Are we going to see the rise of new ones?

The next months will reveal how the scenario will evolve in this sense