A renewed impetus for the European Research Area

The European Research Area gained a renewed impetus following Enrico Letta’s call for a fifth freedom of knowledge in the EU Single Market and the European Commission’s announcement of an ERA act. With Head of R&I Policy Julien Chicot acting as deputy representative of the university stakeholders (Nov 2024–Apr 2025), The Guild pursued its involvement in the ERA forum and its actions, to contribute to the objective of less fragmented European R&I ecosystems in which knowledge and researchers can circulate more freely.

As a particular contribution to the co-design of the ERA Policy Agenda 2025–2027, we teamed up with representatives of Sweden, Norway, EU-LIFE, the Initiative for Science in Europe and Science Europe to advocate for further attention to scientific leadership and fundamental research, as we considered this priority area of the Pact for R&I not sufficiently addressed even though the Draghi and Heitor reports highlight the deteriorating scientific leadership of Europe.

Promoting academic freedom

Following a European Parliament resolution adopted in January 2024, the European Commission committed to pushing forward proposals for better protection of the freedom of scientific research. The Guild, including through its members and experts, has been active in identifying the challenges facing the universities and their researchers and in formulating recommendations.

Secretary-General Jan Palmowski participated in the academic freedom session at the ERA Conference in September 2024. He highlighted the importance of balancing research security with researchers’ freedom to choose their international partners, while promoting a culture of responsibility in academia. He was also a speaker at a conference organised by the University of Bologna in December 2024 on research ethics and academic freedom. Besides Jan Palmowski, the event organised by the then Vice-Rector for Research, Alberto Credi, brought together representatives of the European Commission, the Italian ministry of research, academic experts (including Liviu Matei from King’s College London) and researchers from various disciplines, many of whom are involved in our deans’ group. They highlighted the multi-faceted threats to academic freedom, hence the need for multi-level safeguards. They warned about the challenges which research security could bring to the freedom of scientific research, while acknowledging that researchers should be better aware of the risks of international collaboration and of solutions to responsibly manage them.

Jan Palmowski was also a member of the sounding-board for the European Parliament Academic Freedom Monitor 2024, co-authored by Peter Maassen (University of Oslo). With Julien Chicot, he attended its launch in the European Parliament. In response to the monitor’s findings, notably the slow deterioration of the freedom of scientific research in Europe and the emergence of new threats, high-level EU policymakers, including President Roberta Metsola and Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva, committed to further actions to protect the freedom of scientific research, presenting this freedom as critical to enabling research to contribute to Europe’s competitiveness. The Guild committed to supporting the European Commission in the development of measures to address these worrying trends.

Knowledge valorisation

The Innovation working group pursued its work on the factors enabling the exploitation of research outcomes to generate socio-economic impact. Together with the Strategic Leads of Education, they formulated recommendations to strengthen resources and capacities to better support researchers in knowledge valorisation activities. The position paper enabled The Guild to provide detailed input to the consultation on the future EU Startup & Scaleup Strategy. Alessandra Baccigotti (University of Bologna) and Julien Chicot met representatives of the European Commission’s dedicated task force to share their insights on how universities could better support the establishment and development of startups.

The innovation working group also invited Federica Baldan (EC) to discuss how the stronger policy emphasis on security might affect knowledge valorisation activities. Like for research security, we understood that the concept of economic security may require universities to find a balance between finding the best partners to exploit their research outcomes and focusing on the resilience of local industries and value chains. The working group agreed to meet again to discuss how to be better prepared for addressing such tradeoffs.

Gender and diversity

The Guild’s Gender and Diversity working group has continued to engage in the ERA Action 5 subgroup on inclusive gender equality. Our members focused on several key initiatives, provided feedback on the framework for the integration and evaluation of inclusive gender analysis in R&I content, and shared best practices on covering dependent care costs. Representatives will continue to provide input through the subgroup under the next ERA policy agenda, focusing on advancing inclusive and intersectional gender equality.

In September 2024, the University of Warwick hosted the group at their Venice Centre in Italy. Participants responsible for the development and implementation of gender and diversity-related institutional strategies explored Warwick’s coordinated efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, combat sexual harassment, enhance diversity in research culture, exchanged best practices on these crucial topics. Representatives welcomed Hana Tenglerova (EC) who presented the Commission’s future key priorities on gender equality in R&I. Other topics covered through the year include experiences and shared best practices in developing and implementing inclusive gender equality plans.

Widening participation

The Guild contributed to the work of the Research & Innovation and Cohesion Managing Authorities Network (RIMA) under ERA Action 16 ‘Access to Excellence’. It was a unique space to discuss how to enhance the impact of EU R&I investment from the framework programme and Cohesion policy instruments. The main output of the RIMA group was the report analysing activities Member States have carried out, including examples of success, challenges and recommendations. The Guild shared some of the challenges universities still encounter when using the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to co-fund Teaming Centres of Excellence or MSCA Seal of Excellence grants.

The Guild also contributed to the Widening task force led by Eszter Lakos (MEP). Based on the expertise of our universities, we were able to provide concrete recommendations on how to boost R&I excellence of Widening researchers across FP10 and support a new generation of research leaders from Widening countries.

Team Europe approach pilot for Africa

As a member of the ERA task force for the Team Europe Approach with Africa since 2023, The Guild engaged with leading European R&I programmes focused on Africa, while promoting our Africa–Europe CoRE. On 19 March Secretary-General Jan Palmowski was invited to present an update on the CoRE since their launch. He reflected in particular on how our initiative is taking a Team Europe Approach and how it is an important part of the ecosystem that a scaled-up African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence (ARISE) will need to succeed in a second phase of co-funding from the European Commission and national governments.