RIs look to renew their role in new-look European Research Area

Sharing costs and access to large science labs was the high point of early attempts to create a single EU market for research. But as ERA is rebooted, these labs are beset by budget woes and policy changes.

By Florin Zubașcu / Science|Business
Photo: BKA/Ines Bind

Setting up shared European research infrastructures is the key achievement of previous attempts to establish a single European Research Area (ERA), but these large labs are now caught in the cross hairs of European Commission plans to revitalise the single market for research, cuts to the budget, changes in oversight and increased controls over international collaborations.

The question of how research infrastructures fit into ERA remains to be decided by the Commission, which in the thick of setting out the policy agenda, expected to be published this autumn.

“How ESFRI sits in [ERA] depends on the actions that will be defined,” said Jana Kolar, executive director of Central European Research Infrastructure Consortium and chair-elect of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the body that coordinates strategy for pan-European research labs. “I wish that ESFRI would contribute to as many of the relevant actions as possible,” Kolar told Science|Business. 

Read the whole interview of Jana Kolar at Science|Business