The Guild has published its position on the mission-driven approach for the EU’s next Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (FP9). Our network welcomes the Commission’s plan to adopt R&I missions, which address the Sustainable Development Goals from a European perspective, foster interdisciplinary research, and help articulate impact more effectively:
- Missions should build on European research excellence and make long-term contributions to global challenges by providing more opportunities for collaboration.
- To achieve wide-ranging societal impact and address different societal concerns, the variety of missions should cover all disciplines.
- Missions should integrate research-led education into their outreach and societal engagement.
In addition to these guiding principles, and the six detailed recommendations for the mission-led approach included in the position paper, the academic communities of the network’s member universities proposed five topics for future missions:
- Restoring the cultural authority of science
- Leaving a sustainable city in a sustainable landscape to our children
- Eradicating Europe’s digital divides
- Personalised prevention, precision medicine, and healthy ageing
- Take arms against anti-microbial resistance (AMR)
The proposals are intended to feed into the debate about what kind of research and innovation missions could be introduced in FP9. We hope that they will inform the European Commission on how these could be formulated, and how acute research questions could translate into missions that inspire citizens.
Further comments on the missions by Jan Palmowski, Secretary-General of the Guild, are available on our blog.