Germany hosted its second enhanced dialogue with the European Commission to provide an opportunity for an in-depth exchange on the nation’s research and innovation (R&I) policy, priorities under the European Research Area, and the future direction of European R&I funding.
Enhanced dialogues with European Union countries are a new, bottom-up channel of cooperation with the European Commission. The dialogues aim to create a country-tailored approach to foster research and innovation in the participating EU country.
The analysis of Germany’s R&I system under the European Semester set the scene for discussions, underlining its strengths. The strengths include strong industrial leadership, research institutions and sustained public investment, while also identifying persisting challenges such as scaling up breakthrough innovation and accelerating technology transfer.
The European Commission says the exchange highlighted how Germany’s ambitious high-tech agenda is addressing the gaps by aligning research excellence with industrial competitiveness in key enabling technologies.
During the discussions, the need for better alignment between EU and national instruments to close the scale-up gap and accelerate the commercial uptake of breakthrough technologies was stressed.
Biotechnology and health research were also high on the agenda.
On 2-3 March, Secretary of State Marcus Pleyer of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and Marc Lemaître, Director-General for Research and Innovation met to take part in the dialogue.
Day one concluded with a reception at the Futurium – a venue dedicated to dialogue on science, research and the future. On the second day, discussions turned to technology transfer, innovation agencies and the broader innovation landscape.
Germany is one of the 18 countries having an enhanced dialogue with DG research and innovation.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Unsplash
