Innovation Union
Innovation Union
Farewell Message - Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn
Inside the Commission, I worked with my colleagues to push research and innovation further up the political agenda, and to direct research funding towards important challenges in policy areas such as transport, the marine, energy, climate change, environment and the digital agenda. The cooperation truly made this outgoing College the "Innovation Union Commission"
Farewell message
When I took on the role of European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science back in February 2010, I had three main aims:
- to place research and innovation at the heart of the EU's economic narrative;
- to radically simplify, refocus and better resource the Framework Programme; and
- to put in place policies that would enable all Member States to use research as a motor of growth.
Back in 2010, the minds of Europe's leaders were almost exclusively fixed on the economic crisis. Research and innovation were not on their agenda. Today, research and innovation are at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy, and EU leaders have reconfirmed the Europe 2020 R&D investment target of 3%.
Inside the Commission, I worked with my colleagues to push research and innovation further up the political agenda, and to direct research funding towards important challenges in policy areas such as transport, the marine, energy, climate change, environment and the digital agenda. The cooperation truly made this outgoing College the "Innovation Union Commission".
Innovation Union, a comprehensive and ambitious strategy with 34 deliverables, is what has driven us for the past five years. We have delivered on all these promises, including Horizon 2020, but also a unitary EU patent (finally, after 30 years of stalemate); a venture capital passport to ensure cross-border operation of venture capital funds, and modernisation of the standardisation framework.
Innovation Union has also been about making progress towards completing the European Research Area. Even if that progress has been mixed, we now have a working framework at the EU level which we can build on and implement at the country level. Putting ERA in place will improve career prospects for researchers, increase the flow of scientific cooperation and information around Europe, and reduce gender inequality in research.
Innovation Union is about excellent research and about innovation for all Member States and regions, not just a select few. In partnership with the Structural Funds, our drive towards spreading research excellence and smart specialisation has moved decisively forward.
And Innovation Union has been about common priorities for scientific cooperation with third countries. In this respect, I took great personal pride in seeing the Marine emphasised as a new frontier for research and innovation, not least through the Galway Statement on Atlantic Ocean Cooperation in May 2013. Work on "blue growth" stands as a great example of promoting inter-disciplinary approaches, and more generally getting ourselves out of research silos.
Innovation Union has set research and innovation into a new economic narrative, finally recognising it as a tool for economic growth. The Communication on "Research and Innovation as Sources of Renewed Growth 
" underlined the importance of investing in research and innovation as the basis for competitiveness, growth and jobs. And it set out the priority reforms to ensure that public investments get the best value for taxpayers' money.
Through the EU Semester process, and in close cooperation with the Member States, we have started identifying these necessary reforms. The growing number of Country Specific Recommendations related to research and innovation bear proof of this.
In short, research and innovation policy has now finally arrived at the core of economic policy-making at European, national and regional level.
Most importantly, Innovation Union was the point of departure for revolutionising the EU’s own Research and Innovation Framework Programme, now called Horizon 2020.
EU governments and the European Parliament voted for a 30% increase in the EU research budget to fund Horizon 2020, while the overall EU budget fell. This was an €80 billion vote of confidence in EU research and innovation, in a programme that will increase knowledge, boost competitiveness and improve our quality of life. We have radically slashed red tape, making the programme more attractive to researchers, SMEs and others. We have convinced industry to get on board and co-invest with us through the "Innovation Investment Package" of public-private partnerships.
We have taken a challenge-based approach for the 21st century, which stresses the importance of working across disciplines, across policy areas and departments, across Europe, and across the globe, to solve the problems that matter to people. With a programme covering all the stages from lab to market, we made it easier to turn ideas into products and services.
One aspect I am particularly proud of is that we focused on the importance of women in science. In Horizon 2020, we took radical steps in the mainstreaming of gender in research. While we have not yet reached a situation where all research takes account of gender, Horizon 2020 nonetheless constitutes real progress, and can proudly be held up as best practice worldwide.
The challenge now is to ensure that we stick to all these commitments, so as to deliver on our promise to support European researchers, innovation and businesses and ultimately to growth and jobs.
Many challenges will of course remain for the years ahead. Those I see as amongst the most important are the following:
- firstly, ensuring excellence remains the basic benchmark for research, alongside a challenge-based approach; curiosity-driven research remains the foundation of a knowledge-based society and so we need to continue to support that alongside applied work.
- secondly, Member States delivering on the next phase of ERA; and
- thirdly, further mainstreaming research and innovation policy into economic policy.
None of these challenges is insurmountable. In fact, I am convinced that the political will is there: in the Member States individually, in Council collectively, in the European Parliament, and in the Commission, to truly make the whole of the European Union a Research and Innovation Union.
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn
October 2014