EU Strives To Expand World-Leading Research Clusters

While scientists and research institutes in the U.S. sadly face across the board cuts of their budgets and projects because of the dire fiscal situation of the country, European politicians and scientists are working to launch the next round of a massive multi-year research program for the whole EU.

Nine leading research organisations in Europe combined forces to formulate a white paper aimed at political decision makers who are currently negotiating the structure of the future Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation at EU level. The core of the initiative is to establish cutting-edge research in regions of Europe where less research is currently done, like Southern and Eastern Europe. The German Max Planck Society, which operates around 80 research institutes with over 20,000 people, supports the approach to integrate East European countries by building up regional structures for outstanding science through (already existing) cooperation and thus establishing joint Centers of Excellence. These should be set up in a range of different topic clusters so that the potential of first-rate research benefits all regions of Europe. The infrastructure needed for their establishment – investments, operating costs and personnel – is to be financed by EU structural funds. Horizon 2020, for its part, will serve as a seal of quality and offer an opportunity for generous seed funding.

To coordinate these plans with all stakeholders, Max Planck President Peter Gruss travelled to the Czech Republic and Hungary this week to meet with local representatives of the scientific and political arena, discussing how the new approach can strengthen the European Research Area as a whole.

In both Prague and Budapest, the President met with top representatives of research orga­nisations and ministries to discuss the concept of Teaming Excellence to strengthen cutting-edge research in the EU.

Hungary and the Czech Republic are among the countries which could benefit from such an initiative. "Both Hungary and the Czech Republic are two of the nations among the newer EU Member States that have been relatively successful in attracting research funding from the EU," says Peter Gruss. There is still a significant gap between Western and Eastern Europe, though: scientists from the UK, Germany and France lead the pack by some considerable distance when it comes to competing for grants from the European Research Council (ERC). Member States that have joined the EU since its eastern expansion in 2004 (the EU-12) have managed to obtain just 24 of the more than 1,180 Advanced Grants for the funding of top scientists that have been distributed in the period. "These figures show that the EU-12 are under-represented in Europe´s research programmes," notes Gruss. At the same time, he says, it is crucial that ERC Grants are allocated exclusively on the criteria of excellence. The Teaming Excellence concept demonstrates a way of uniting both concerns: "Targeted partnerships with scientists from less research-intensive regions of Europe boasting excellent research institutions could, by drawing on EU structural funding and Horizon 2020, form the basis for establishing top-notch centers, whose scientists would then be successful in competing for ERC Grants. Scientific excellence would thereby be strengthened in the countries concerned – and in the European Research Area as it competes with other Research Areas, given that there would be more top-level research being carried out," emphasises Gruss.

At the round table talks in Prague on 4 March and Budapest on 5 March, Gruss was keen to learn the opinions of scientific organisations and government alike, and to identify points upon which to build. "What's important is that we have a frank exchange. Teaming Excellence will only take us forward in Europe if we see win-win situations and consistently set about addressing them. When it comes to the concrete implementation of the concept, topic clusters will need to be identified where material for excellent research already exists.

Scientists from the Max Planck Society are already involved in numerous projects with research institutions from Central and Eastern Europe. There are currently more than 60 cooperative ventures in Hungary, the same number in the Czech Republic and more than 100 in Poland. They span a broad spectrum, ranging from simply sharing measurement data to studying climate change and extending to longer-term joint projects with Max Planck partner groups and large international collaborations, such as the work scientists are doing for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva.

(The publicly funded Max Planck Society is Germany's most successful research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, 17 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, putting it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide, also shown by an output of more than 13,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals)