Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-19-Speech-3-312"
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"− Researchers are at the heart of knowledge creation, transfer and exploitation. They are the key for Europe to turn the fifth freedom – the freedom of movement of knowledge – into reality, and with that to shape the knowledge-based economy.
The supply of human resources for research is indeed best reflected in the number of new university graduates. The benchmark adopted by the Education Council in 2003, to increase by 15% the number of graduates in Member States and decrease gender imbalance by 2010, has been reached. In 2006, there were in the EU-27 about 200 000 more mathematics, science and technology graduates than in 2000.
It is clear that not all university graduates go into research. For the European Union, an additional factor here is that, due to the lower share of private research investments in Europe compared to other continents, the market for researchers in the EU is relatively smaller than those of our competitors.
On top of that, there is strong competition for attracting and keeping the most talented researchers. This is, first and foremost, a competition between research and other economic sectors. But there is also a competition between countries and world regions – in particular the US, but also, increasingly, China and India.
The European Union is facing the upcoming retirement of generations of researchers in Europe, with no prospect of their complete replacement. The situation will get worse if young people are not attracted into the research profession. What is at stake is whether Europe in the long term can remain and further develop as a world-class location for research and development.
The fact is that researchers in Europe are still faced with serious obstacles and a lack of opportunities. When I talk to researchers across Europe, I hear about unattractive working conditions and career prospects, an often precarious status and short-term contracts. Furthermore, many researchers are still trained in a way which does not equip them with the skills needed in a modern knowledge economy. There are strong disincentives for researchers wishing to move jobs within academia and industry and vice versa. Finally, the structural fragmentation of the European researchers’ labour market hinders the transnational mobility of researchers within the European Union, due to, in particular, a lack of open, merit-based recruitment and to cultural factors, as well as problems encountered by highly mobile workers in such fields as social security, taxation and transferability of supplementary pension rights.
It is therefore high time for Europe to step up its efforts to ensure the availability of the necessary researchers in the years ahead. That is precisely why the Commission, last May, proposed a European Partnership for Researchers: a partnership with and among Member States entailing a focused framework to make rapid progress across Europe in key areas determining better careers and more mobility.
The Council has responded favourably to this initiative and we are about to embark on its implementation, centred on national action plans and mutual learning. Evidence-based monitoring of progress, data-collection on mobility and career patterns are also foreseen. So, while we currently have very few data, the aim is to provide ourselves with the better statistics that the honourable Member is looking for. We have many of the other data but not exactly these specific data.
The Commission Communication on the European Partnership for Researchers is currently under consideration in this Parliament. The Commission looks forward to Parliament’s opinion, which will hopefully reinforce this common endeavour for the future of research in Europe."@en1
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