EU missions and the way forward for mission-oriented research & innovation

CESAER - the strong and united voice of universities of science & technology in Europe - welcomes the European Commission communication ‘EU Missions two years on’ and the accompanying staff working document. The EU missions were introduced in Horizon Europe to provide ‘a new way to bring concrete solutions to some of our greatest challenges’. Part of the conceptual foundation was laid down in a 2018 report ‘Mission-oriented research & innovation in the European Union’ which included a definition of missions as ‘big science deployed to meet big problems’. The introduction of the 2018 report concluded by asking ‘how can the missions be best designed to enable participation across actors, bottom-up experimentation and system-wide innovation?’. 

In a section of the communication on outstanding challenges, the Commission identifies the following as the first two issues: (i) ‘improve the governance and political steer of EU missions’ and (ii) ‘secure more and better co-investment, including from the private sector’. We agree that these are two main challenges that the EU missions are facing. However, the solutions proposed, largely focused around ‘the Commission will work harder’ falls short of addressing the underlying issues (which are not because the Commission is not working hard enough). Instead the issues are more conceptual around the approach to implementation.

The missions were introduced to ‘enable participation across actors, bottom-up experimentation and system-wide innovation’. Member of European Parliament Christian Ehler has stated that for mission-oriented research and innovation “the model should be the European Research Council: everything it does is geared to enable the best proposals in a bottom-up approach.” In contrast, what we see for the EU missions from the last few years is a highly political landscape encumbered by complex governance structures and where research & innovation funding is being diverted away from well-functioning and high-performing instruments in Horizon Europe towards the EU missions. Instead, we should envision the EU missions as lean and clear instruments where a key measure-of-success is their ability to ‘crowd in’ and marshall new funding from new sources (non-governmental or governmental sources at EU, national or regional level), and especially from sources not typically related with research & innovation activities, toward such activities. This would evidence the ability and value-add of a mission-oriented research & innovation approach to ‘enable participation across actors’ to boost ‘system-wide innovation’.

An adjusted trajectory is needed. This realignment can be achieved by efforts in several interconnected dimensions: (i) unprogramme the missions to unleash bottom-up experimentation in science & technology, (ii) shape the missions to drive new synergies across science & technology, and (iii) enhance citizen and stakeholder engagement to advance shared understanding of vital role of science & technology in society.