Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-29-Speech-3-182"
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"en.20061129.18.3-182"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, ladies and gentlemen, the People programme has found its way to this House after a year of dialogue, in-depth analysis and comparisons. My professional and political experience has brought ideas that are largely shared. They have been instilled into the programme and also incorporated in part into the body of the main legal instrument of Framework Programme 7. I accordingly express my profound thanks to Mr Buzek.
The modern world moves at a very fast pace. The twentieth century was turbulent and exciting: it spanned three epochs, from peasant society to the industrial and post-industrial era, and went even further in its final decade. It was then that EU Heads of State or Government drew up their far-sighted recipe for the future. Lisbon 2000 was a ten-year programme, this being the time envisaged for the construction in Europe of a society of knowledge based on research and innovation. Today we must however take note that progress has been slow, although Framework Programme 6 has signalled a significant positive shift in European policy in this particular strategic sector.
It is a modest effort when compared with the colossal achievements of the emerging economies: in the past fifteen years investments in the research and development sector in China have risen from USD 12.4 to USD 84.6 billion, an increase of 580%. Today China accounts for 12.5% of world trade and is the second largest world producer of advanced technological goods. Then we have India and the countries of the Indo-Pacific basin, the third axis of the technical and scientific world; this axis accounts for 36% of the high-tech products of the whole world, which is exactly double what the whole of Europe produces.
Some analysts have reached a catastrophic conclusion, if this state of affairs is to continue: within twenty years, 90% of the world’s scientists will live in an East Asian country. Thus Europe is lagging behind, when compared to the huge amount – in some cases more than 10% of GDP – that is invested in research and development by those countries. Europe is the prisoner of the selfishness of Member States, some of which even today invest less than 1%, while the average for Europe is less than 2% of GDP. This, very briefly, is the overall picture while we are getting ready to launch Framework Programme 7 – for which the European Commission has rightly asked Member States to provide a more substantial financial input.
The People programme constitutes both the mind and the body of the entire legislative corpus:
. Hence the idea of motivating researchers so as to motivate research. Framework Programme 7 will create the free, independent and motivated European researcher. This is the direction in which we should be moving: from recognising the research profession to giving it legal status; from a code of practice to the creation of a data-bank for selecting and employing researchers; from aligning remuneration with the best international standards; from equal opportunities for men and women, through measures to protect female researchers, to reconciling the needs of the workplace with family life; from initiatives to support family mobility to the necessary social security and insurance provisions, harmonisation of tax regimes, recognition of professional titles across EU states, freedom of movement and independence. These are the prerequisites for creating a European area of research and professional integration, given that after years of investment in training young researchers it is in our own interest to make the most of them. To abandon them would be to give a gift to the United States or China.
The positive experience of Marie Curie Actions has appropriately been revisited and will continue, breathing life into a project that aims for excellence in the form of added value: it will have an impact on the organisation of the European research area. We also envisage collaboration and equal opportunities between the public and private sectors. Last but not least, intellectual property, towards which the Council has behaved a little like Pilate with Jesus of Nazareth: it has taken up the idea and turned it into a general rule.
No, that is not how things should be done. If we truly wish to motivate researchers, we must give them a cast-iron guarantee that their rights over the intellectual property that they have created will be protected. This is possible – I shall insist on it when I make the request to the Commission and the Council – through contractual clauses under civil law that would protect the results obtained by research and by the individual researcher.
To achieve excellence it is necessary to motivate people; and to attract researchers from all parts of the world it is necessary to offer attractive conditions. To combine quantity and quality and produce excellence in basic and technological research, as the People programme and the Framework Programme 7 intend to do, it is necessary to join up all the links and address all outstanding problems, to protect industry and private investments by stimulating them without extinguishing that driving force: the human being that is and remains the heart and mind of research.
I thank you all for your kind attention, ladies and gentlemen and shadow rapporteurs – particularly Mr Chichester and my colleagues on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, who, by voting unanimously for my report, were sending out a strong signal to the Commission and the Council rather than acknowledging my modest contribution."@en1
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