STOA STOA Science and Technology Options Assessment. STOA Panel meeting Thursday, 13 June 2013, 9:30 a.m. 11:00 a.m. SDM-S1, Strasbourg.

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1 STOA STOA Science and Technology Options Assessment 1. Adoption of the draft agenda (PE ) STOA Panel meeting Thursday, 13 June 2013, 9:30 a.m. 11:00 a.m. SDM-S1, Strasbourg Minutes Mr António CORREIA de CAMPOS, Chair of the STOA Panel, informed the meeting that Panel members Mr Malcolm HARBOUR, second Vice-Chair, and Ms Silvia-Adriana ŢICĂU were unable to attend the Panel meeting and were sending their apologies. He then welcomed Mr Anthony TEASDALE, Director, Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value, DG IPOL, Prof. Eleni TSIPOURI, Chair of i4g 1, University of Athens, Department of Economic Sciences, and three other i4g members: Mr Matthias KOLLATZ- AHNEN, Senior Expert, PwC, Prof. Patrick LLERENA, University of Strasbourg, Ms Frédérique SACHWALD, Service des Entreprises, du Transfert de technologies et de l'action régionale, Ministère d Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, Paris. He also welcomed Mr Mathias RAUCH and Mr Werner WOBBE, European Commission policy officers, Relations with stakeholders unit, DG Research and Innovation. He finally welcomed Ms Vanessa CAMPO-RUIZ, Science Officer to the Chief Executive, ESF 2, and Ms Urska GRAHEK, JRC 3. The draft agenda was adopted without modifications. 2. Approval of the minutes of the STOA panel meeting of 23 May 2013 (PE ) The draft minutes of the Panel meeting of 23 May 2013 were approved without modifications :35-10:30: Exchange of views with the European Commission's High Level Economic Policy Expert Group Innovation for Growth (i4g) The Panel took note of the following documents: a short i4g presentation and the list of i4g members; the programme of the i4g workshop on 13 June 2013 in Strasbourg, including the meeting with the STOA Panel, and a discussion summary by i4g; notes on a European Initiative for Excellence by Prof. LLERENA; i4g Policy Briefs 10 and 11; Members also received a compilation of i4g Policy Briefs 1-10; documentation of the i4g workshop Public Research Systems and Innovation in Europe, scheduled for 12 November 2013, Berlin. The Chair gave the floor to Prof. TSIPOURI, who briefly introduced the mission and objectives of i4g by highlighting, inter alia, that it offered advice to the Commission on policies for research and innovation and assessed, based on empirical evidence and analysis of academic literature, how to turn them into economic growth. It also assessed the impact and the innovation potential of actions in the context of the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative. She argued that crises cannot be addressed only by austerity measures, but by promoting innovation. 1 High Level Economic Policy Expert Group Innovation for Growth 2 European Science Foundation 3 Joint Research Centre 1 PE

2 Prof. TSIPOURI further described the main issues addressed in selected i4g policy briefs, notably pointing out that: times of crisis could give an opportunity for innovation in the areas of the grand societal challenges, which would possibly permit an exit from the crisis; above all, innovative public policies were needed in this context; public procurement and innovation needed significant institutional and behavioural changes; it was important to reformulate innovation policies so as to avoid the socialisation of risks and privatisation of rewards; the provision of public capital for financing innovation in early stages (seed capital) still faced a bottleneck in Europe and needed further readjustment; growth-impeding innovation (the case of Greece) showed that regional development should not be content with high growth rates. She concluded by underlining that globalisation and global value chains made it necessary for Europe to enhance measures for inclusive innovation, especially in Mediterranean countries. She added that the conference taking place in November on the topic would reflect on the next steps. Prof. LLERENA focused on the current situation of the European universities concerning global research excellence issues, stressing that: global research excellence of European universities was behind the United States (US) and even behind Asia at the very top; the first 7 US universities in the top 10% accounted for a larger number of fields of scientific excellence than all European universities together; only the United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden among European countries had universities able to compete in a high number of scientific fields, while Germany, France, Spain and Denmark, inter alia, had started national actions to improve excellence of their universities. He concluded on the above topic by introducing a number of recommendations for addressing the current situation and attaining research excellence in European universities. Notably he proposed: to choose between (i) promoting in Europe a larger number of specialised universities, and (ii) concentrating on a few strong universities with outstanding quality in many fields; to increase the average quality of European universities and take into consideration the concept of smart specialisation of universities. Prof. LLERENA further examined the performance of public research and innovation systems, emphasising, inter alia, that: the European Research Area was characterised by a high degree of diversity of the national research systems, including universities and research centres; Europe should benefit from this diversity of its institutional research arrangements; there existed a lack of coherent information and data about knowledge transfer, which would be necessary, for instance, in order to monitor university and research centre activities; it was important to support existing successful institutions instead of creating new ones and to strengthen research universities, while maintaining public research organisations only if necessary and reinforcing strategic alliances among universities and research centres; He concluded his presentation by pleading for the development of a European Initiative for Excellence and for a Europe-wide monitoring system for all public research institutions. There followed an exchange of views with the participation of the Chair, Mr TOŠENOVSKÝ and Mr JOHANSSON, Panel members, the speakers, Prof. TSIPOURI and Prof. LLERENA, as well as Ms SACHWALD and Ms CAMPO-RUIZ. The following points were addressed: The Chair praised the excellent presentations and noted that they were extremely useful at the macro-level, making it possible to better understand the impact of science and technology. Ms CAMPO-RUIZ congratulated both speakers for their presentations. She stressed, above all, the importance of an enhanced coordination across Europe. She also noted that there were 2 PE

3 in the EU examples of excellence in specific fields, such as EMBO 4 in molecular biology, and stressed the need to replicate this in other fields. She concluded by highlighting the importance of the quality of teaching along with financial support for science and innovation. Mr TOŠENOVSKÝ emphasised the role of public procurement along with research funding. He mentioned that EU universities were confronted with a heavy administrative burden, while in other countries, such as the US, South Korea or China, there was less red tape. He concluded by calling for more flexibility in public procurement. Mr JOHANSSON thanked the speakers for the presentations and recalled that he was shadow rapporteur for Horizon He then turned to the issue of whether it was important to focus on current innovation or generate new innovation and stressed the importance of developing local clusters and assessing where the results of publicly funded research go. He also underlined the importance of supporting research systems where the EU was able to concentrate its strengths, rather than Members States seeking to obtain a bonus from the system. In the end, he asked: Should Members States compete among themselves? Ms SACHWALD pointed out that one of the objectives should be to link the global value chains in production to R&D and innovation capacities. The need to assess the dynamics of deindustrialisation and the relation between the location of research, development and innovation capacity, on the one hand, and production, on the other, had to be explored. Furthermore, she emphasised the need for European universities to focus their academic production on areas which had potential for innovation, the EU being strong in many areas (physics, mathematics), but less strong in others (biology, health, biotech nology, computer science). On the issue of red tape, she stressed that the UK was managing public procurement well, which showed that problems with administrative burden could be overcome. Prof. TSIPOURI referred to several points raised by Panel members and noted, with regard to administrative burden, that positive steps in the direction of simplification had been taken at EU level. Nevertheless, further improvement was necessary, for instance with respect to content vs. form. She further mentioned the problem of competition vs. research policy, which was still a real limitation. A briefing paper assessing this issue was in the pipeline. Prof. LLERENA concluded by noting that more flexibility in public governance was needed for universities and research centres. He also noted that there had been an evolution in the last years in relation to research funding, with the EU passing from block funding to project-based funding. The administrative burden of the calls for projects became therefore a critical dimension of the management of research organisations and entailed a high cost for researchers. He also added that it was important to promote industrial and scientific clusters in the same geographical location. Mr CORREIA de CAMPOS made the final remarks pointing to: the need to further explore the bridge between research and industrialisation, even thought EU universities and research centres had a lot of potential and produced added value through creativity, e.g. in the exploitation of renewal energies; the importance of focusing on the macro-level, on clusters for innovation and on assessing whether the difficulties were the consequence of too much rigidity; the need to look at several cases of mergers between universities (e.g. Lisbon University and Technical University of Lisbon), before drawing general conclusions. 4. STOA projects The Panel took note of the following documents: an updated version of the table and the bar chart of ongoing projects; an updated version of the calendar of forthcoming STOA events. 4 European Molecular Biology Organization 3 PE

4 4.a. Update on ongoing projects The Chair informed the meeting that three STOA workshops planned for June and July 2013 had to be postponed, due to meeting room shortage: Integrated e-ticketing for city-based urban transport systems and touristic sites, initially scheduled for 18 June 2013, Sustainable management of natural resources, initially scheduled for 19 June 2013 and Potential and impacts of cloud computing services - Phase III, initially scheduled for 9 July The Panel asked the STOA Secretariat to work, in cooperation with the DG IPOL Calendar Unit, towards finding rooms for the second half of the year. 4.b. New project proposals The Chair reminded the meeting that: In advance of the discussion of proposals for STOA projects to be executed under the 2014 budget later this year, the Panel was invited to consider a proposal for a workshop on Human Language Technologies, submitted earlier this year by Mr Algirdas SAUDARGAS, MEP. At their meeting of 22 April 2013, at the request of STOA, the coordinators of the Committee on Culture (CULT) discussed the topic and welcomed this initiative and expressed their wish to be kept informed about its timing, content and any follow-up. At its meeting of 4 June 2013, the STOA Bureau decided that the Chair would contact individual CULT Members and invite them to follow the organisation of the workshop. He would especially contact the rapporteur and shadow rapporteurs of the own-initiative report on Endangered European languages and linguistic diversity in the EU. It was decided to proceed with the organisation of the above-mentioned workshop. 5. STOA Annual Lecture Update The STOA Panel took note of the following documents: a preliminary draft programme; a briefing note of the speakers confirmed. The Chair informed the meeting that: The meeting rooms for the Annual Lecture on 12 November 2013 entitled Sustaining sustainability: Making economics work for the global environment (meeting room JAN 4Q2) and the workshop Technology options for feeding 10 billion people, scheduled for 4 December 2013 (meeting room PHS 3C050) had been confirmed. For the Annual Lecture, the following keynote speakers had been confirmed: Mr Ismail SERAGELDIN, Director, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Mr Monika KIRCHER, CEO, Infineon Technologies Austria AG, and Mr Hans BRUYNINCKX, Executive Director, European Environmental Agency (EEA). Mr Achim STEINER, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), would be invited to provide a short video message. Feedback was awaited to an informal invitation addressed to Prof. Ernie MONIZ, Energy Secretary in the Obama administration. 6. Visits and External Activities The STOA Panel took note of the following document: a report of the visit to the CEA 1 premises in Grenoble and Chambéry, on May a. STOA delegation visit to the CEA 1 premises in Grenoble and Chambéry, May Follow up The Chair reminded the Panel that: 5 Commissariat à l énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives 4 PE

5 the visit took place as planned and was successful. It gave the participants, besides an indepth and practical view into most emerging technologies, an opportunity to meet the highest level experts of CEA on research and innovation in the area of renewable energy and learn about the latest developments in nanotechnology and nanomaterials; a webpage on the visit has been created on the STOA website which would allow other members who were unable to participate at the delegation visit to share the experience. The Chair informed the Panel that the STOA delegations to the EPTA 6 Council meeting and Seminar in Lapland and to the STS forum in Kyoto had been authorised by the EP Bureau on 10 June He further added that the EP delegation to IGF 7 had been endorsed by the Conference of Presidents on 6 June 2013 and by the EP Bureau on 10 June This delegation would include two Members from the ITRE Committee and one from the CULT Committee, in addition to Ms Riera MADURELL, STOA Panel member, as decided by the Panel in February Joint activities with external organisations 7.a. STOA participation in the 5th European Innovation Summit, 30 September - 3 October 2013, Brussels As regards a possible STOA session, the Chair reminded the meeting that: STOA had organised a session linked to innovation in each previous edition of the European Innovation Summit. In 2013, the STOA session would take place on Wednesday, 2 October, and a room reservation for that date was pending. At its meeting of 4 June 2013, the STOA Bureau decided to recommend the organisation of a STOA workshop on a subject linked to innovation, preferably in connection with the STOA project Cloud Computing. It was decided to invite the STOA Secretariat to assess the possibilities of organising a STOA session on Cloud Computing. As regards the Exhibition of Joint Technology Initiatives and associated workshop, the Chair informed the meeting that: a request to host an exhibition of the FP7 8 -funded Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs), combined with a workshop at the EP to present the achievements of the JTIs, during the 5th European Innovation Summit, had been received via Mr RÜBIG's office. the JTIs in question were: Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Aeronautics and Air Transport (Clean Sky), Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH), Embedded Computing Systems (Artemis), and Nanoelectronics Technologies 2020 (ENIAC). It was decided that STOA would host the exhibition and workshop, provided that they combine: a short overview and assessment of the work done and the results produced by the five JTIs so far, and a part focusing on fuel cells and hydrogen. The Secretariat would deal with logistical issues (especi ally room reservation for the workshop) and the rest of the organisation, in cooperation with Mr CORREIA de CAMPOS and Mr RÜBIG. 8. Any other business None. 9. Date and place of next meeting The Chair announced that next Panel meeting would be held on Thursday, 4 July 2013, at 9:30 a.m., in Room SDM-S1 in Strasbourg, and would feature a presentation of the final report of the STOA project Security of e-government systems. 6 European Parliamentary Technology Assessment network 7 Internet Governance Forum 8 Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development ( ) 5 PE

6 ANNEX List of participants STOA Bureau Members Mr Correia de Campos, Mr Rübig, Mr Johansson, Mr Tošenovský, Mr Prodi. STOA Secretariat Mr Teasdale, Mr Karapiperis, Ms Van Woensel, Mr Quaglio, Ms Casalprim, Mr Evrard, Ms Uwizera, Ms Manirambona. Other participants Ms Benzinho Santos (Assistant to Mr Correia de Campos), Ms Senger (Assistant to Mr Rübig), Ms Grasso (Assistant to Mr Prodi), Mr Linhart (Assistant to Mr Tošenovský), Mr Csillag (MEP Assistant), Ms Campo-Ruiz (ESF), Ms Grahek (JRC), Mr Jones (EASAC), Ms Tsipouri (i4g), Mr Kollatz-Ahnen (i4g), Mr Llerena (i4g), Ms Sachwald (i4g), Mr Wobbe (EC, DG R&I), Mr Rauch (EC, DG R&I), Ms Fammels (EIT) 6 PE