Spain works on a new governance model for the European Research Area

The Spanish Presidency in the first half of 2010, has committed to prepare a solid proposal for the structure of governance of ERA.

Spain is working on designing a new governance model for the European Research Area (ERA in its English acronym), which is expected to be approve in conjunction with the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union during the first half of 2010, following the agreements reached at the French presidency on general objectives, known as the “Vision ERA”. In order to present a solid proposal as ambitious as possible, the Ministry of Science and Innovation has met this January 14^th, for the first time at its headquarters, an international group of prominent personalities in science, innovation, business and politics.

The Minister for Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia, thanked the group of experts for their cooperation and willingness to “help Spain in a work that is important to the goals of our Presidency and the future of Europe” and added that ” Union’s future role in the world calls for European leadership in science and innovation, and that leadership passes to advance the construction of a single European area of research.”

Following the launch of the initial idea in 2000, the construction of the ERA process was revived in recent Slovenian and French presidencies, the so-called “Ljubljana Process”, where it were marked the steps to follow, and when Spain made a commitment to prepare a proposal for the “governance” to be presented during the Spanish Presidency of the European Union.

What is the governance of the ERA

In this context, governance is understood as defining the role that different actors of the research system as ministries, agencies, research centres, universities, play in the design and implementation of the R & D at European, national and regional levels.

It involves finding efficient ways to manage large scientific infrastructure shared between several countries and ways of managing the joint development of funding programs from several states of the union.

Moreover, this first meeting served as preparation of the objectives in science and technology to be acquire at Spain’s presidency of the EU during the first half of 2010, a crucial period for the future of the Union and the constitution of the ERA .

The meeting is an initiative of the General Office for International Cooperation, whose director general, Montserrat Torné, coordinates with the Ministry of Science and Innovation preparations for the Spanish presidency.