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Thank you for that kind introduction.
I am delighted that this event is occurring
during the UK Presidency because European R&D and the creation of a
European Research Area are of key importance to us. During our
Presidency of the EU we are working with all Member States to establish
a Europe better able to create jobs with high living standards. Our
priorities during our Presidency include promoting the knowledge society
and employment through opening markets and maintaining labour market
flexibility, and making the necessary investment in science and
education.
Over the past two decades, through a series of
Framework Programmes, the EU has steadily reinforced its efforts to
promote and support research activity. As a result, Europe has made
progress towards a genuine internal market for science and technology,
and today the European Research Area is a great deal more than just a
high-sounding slogan.
However, more action is still required to
strengthen the EU’s basic research base, to make the EU an attractive
place for business to invest in research and to create the right climate
for innovation.
I am delighted, therefore, that European
Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures has taken on the challenging
task of preparing a European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures. This
will provide a unique overview of the need for joint European research
infrastructures and should be an important tool by which to facilitate
decision making both by member states, and by the European commission,
on likely future needs in this area.
I have always seen one of my tasks as the UK’s
Minister of Science and Innovation as being to provide UK scientists
with access to world-class facilities for their research. But I don’t
believe that such facilities necessarily have to be in the UK. On the
contrary given the huge cost of some new facilities, international
collaboration is likely to be central to the achievement of this goal.
I also suspect that by fragmenting our efforts
in Europe we get poor value for money, and that by coordinating our
investments we could achieve better results.
The UK has taken a lead in setting aside a
specific fund each year to support the construction of large-scale
research facilities supported by the research councils. In order to
manage this fund and to set priorities, the UK government initiated the
development of a 20-year roadmap of opportunities some 6 years ago. This
is reviewed on a two-year cycle. Facilities such as the Halley research
station in the Antarctic and the second target station of the ISIS
Spallation Neutron Source at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory are
examples of large-scale research facilities supported by this
ring-fenced fund. This roadmap has been very helpful at a national level
and I think it would be hugely helpful if we could replicate this method
of working at a European level. This is also helpful for Financial
Ministers and Treasuries to understand too.
The UK believes that the best way for EU member
states to organize their large-scale facilities is through
collaborations at a national level. We firmly believe that each state is
best placed to build and run each facility with whomever they chose to
do so.
We are, however, very sceptical of having EU-managed
projects because of the inevitable bureaucracy of international
organisations and because it inevitably introduces unhelpful political
considerations into such decisions as the location of the facilities.
But we see great scope in countries collaborating on a bilateral or
multilateral basis on large-scale projects. And we believe that ESFRI
can play a very useful role in orchestrating such collaboration.
In its role of incubator ESFRI has taken the
initiative to look at the short, medium and long-term future for the
provision of research neutron facilities. This informed the UK’s
decision to invest in the long pulse target station on ISIS in the short
term. I have asked the Council for the Central Laboratory of the
Research Councils (CCLRC) to provide me with a report on whether the UK
should seek to support and host a future European spallation source and
I expect to receive the results of their consultations at the end of
this year. I know many of you have taken part in these consultations and
that other countries are undertaking similar assessments. A great value
of ESFRI is that it provides a forum for informed discussions on this
and similar projects.
Currently, under ESFRI, there have been
discussions on future Free electron lasers with a focus on showing how
the various initiatives in different member states can provide
complementary facilities rather than duplicate effort. We are excited by
the developments in Germany on the X-ray Free electron laser and the UK
along with a number of other member states and countries such as China
and Russia are assessing their commitment to the project.
I am particularly excited by the fact that
groups are beginning to emerge to look at a truly European approach to
medical and biological science, cultural heritage and libraries. These
latter two were the priorities of the Italian and Dutch presidencies and
are now beginning to bear fruit.
I also welcome the fact that ESFRI is looking at
the types of legal, financial and management arrangements that are
currently used by internationally owned research facilities to identify
best practice. As the number of potential large scale European research
facilities expands, it is vital that a common approach to managing such
facilities is developed avoiding the need to learn from scratch each
time. Last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of CERN, but we must
acknowledge that this is a structure we would not wish to repeat for
each facility. There are models such as for the European Synchrotron
Radiation Facility in Grenoble which can provide the basis for a common
European approach. I understand that the Italian delegation under
Professor Carlo Rezuto are looking at this matter under the auspices of
ESFRI. It is vital that any common structures are flexible and allow
countries to enter at various levels. Above all the management structure
must be as simple as possible avoiding undue bureaucracy while giving
appropriate governance assurance.
ESFRI is also starting to look at the
possibilities of facility exchange, that is to say, where time on one
country’s facility is exchanged for use on the facility, or facilities
of another. These may well be very different types of facility – for
example time on a neutron source might be exchanged for time on a
Research vessel. This sort of cooperation and bargaining is another
important way of ensuring that member states are able to access all
types of facilities as and when they need them.
The future strength and prosperity of our
national economies, and of the European economy as a whole, will be
increasingly dependent on how effective we are at using our scientific
and technological resources, nationally and at a European level, to
develop new high value-added technologies, products, processes and
services.
That is why a key priority for the UK Presidency
of the EU is to “Boost our economies’ potential for research and
innovation”, and why the U.K. greatly welcomes the work ESFRI is doing
to coordinate our countries’ scientific and technological aspirations.
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