A new Commission, new priorities: Europe’s global competitiveness

Towards the end of her first mandate, Commission President von der Leyen commissioned three landmark reports to consider the priorities, needs, and possibilities for the EU in rapidly shifting contexts. In the first of these, ‘Much more than a Market’, former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta argued that the EU needed to fully implement the Single Market by removing remaining barriers. For R&I, and education, he called for the fifth freedom – of research, innovation and education – to be realised, in order to catalyse R&D in Europe. Secondly, former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö called in his report ‘Safer Together’ for the better preparedness of the EU against military attacks, as well as other cross-border shocks and crises (including natural hazards or new pandemics). While these reports were critical in informing – and guiding – the policy debate in Brussels, the most seminal text in shaping the priorities of the emerging second von der Leyen Commisson was the third report by Mario Draghi, ‘The Future of European Competitiveness’. It argued that Europe had fallen behind its major global competitors, notably the US and China, not only in innovation but also in research, as well as skills. Europe was increasingly lagging behind in R&I in high, complex technologies, with Europe remaining stuck in the technologies and industries of the middle of the 20th century. Draghi called not only for a prioritisation of R&I (including through a significant increase in spending on both), but also for a transformed prioritisation of spending, focusing it on fewer, more effective instruments, including the European Research Council, and a reformed European Innovation Council.

These analyses, and especially the Draghi report, informed The Guild’s debates and reflections throughout the year, beginning with our Vice-Presidents, who discussed the report less than a week after its publication at their meeting in Tartu. But The Guild did not just discuss these reports internally – we also helped shape a wider public debate on the reports’ findings and conclusions, and how these matched up with the capacity and needs of our universities in research, innovation and education. In a dozen opinion pieces, published mainly in Times Higher Education and Research Professional, but also in widely followed and extensive social media discussions led by The Guild office staff, The Guild contributed to a wider debate about the future of European R&I, and its capacity to contribute to Europe’s future. At issue in our internal as well as external discussions was exactly how the aspirations of the Draghi report, and that of others, could be realised in practice.