Υπουργείο Παιδείας, Θρησκευμάτων και Αθλητισμού

Δικτυακός Τόπος Διαβουλεύσεων

• Σχόλιο του χρήστη 'Εθνική Τεχνολογική Πλατφόρμα «Food for Life»' | 20 Ιουνίου 2011, 13:37

  Μόνιμος Σύνδεσμος

  Substantial investment in investigator-driven frontier research is essential for Europe’s long-term competitiveness. The support areas currently governed by the ERC must therefore be continued and expanded in the CSFRI, while improving the link between the research agenda and the needs of European industry. However, it is not realistic to expect that the societal challenges could drive the agenda for future Ideas-like actions to the same extent as future Cooperation-like actions. Fundamental research must continue to be investigator driven although the link between industry needs and economic potential must be strengthened. The “bottom-up” approach has also an important role to play in collaborative research projects. Policy must give better orientation to the RDI efforts but must not dictate the specific focus of projects. Broader calls for proposals within a clear and specific policy context, possibly with a given minimum impact target, having taken into consideration input in a bottom-up fashion (e.g., from Technology Platforms) may therefore be warranted. It should, however, be kept in mind that too general calls will result in massive oversubscription, a correspondingly high waste of resources among failing applicants and the entities managing the selection process and in difficulty to maintain focus on fields of strategic importance. According to the Europe 2020 strategy, research and innovation activities should be better linked and new instruments to strengthen the innovation dimension should be pursued. SMEs are important drivers of innovation and, thus, their involvement in research and development must be increased with an urgent need for translational research and a shortening of the time taken to move forwards research into practical application. SMEs and their Associations or other suitable actors should be able to benefit from specific grants (i.e. new funding instruments) to foster the Transfer of Technology from Research to Industrial Application (bottom – up approach). ERC should be continued and reinforced as it represents a source of future industrially exploitable results which are necessary to keep the European competitiveness on an appropriate level. Networks like the European and the National Technology Platforms (Hellenic Technology Platform “Food for Life”) should be considered as useful tools to enrich the research priorities of FP calls and ensure their relevance to the local capacity and potential. It is important to give a role and some resources to finance the coordination activity of National Technology Platforms (bottom – up approach of industrial priorities).