The Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic has published its preliminary position paper on the 10th Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP10). The contribution underlines the importance of the FP in strengthening EU competitiveness and addressing global challenges, as well as the necessity of investing in high quality research to build a knowledge-based economy.
Key points of the provisional position
In terms of the general principles of programme operation:
- Strong, predictable and stable budget
- Continuation of the current pillar and cluster structure
- Boost simplification and rationalisation of various instruments
- Extension of lump-sum funding scheme
- Balanced approach between fundamental curiosity-driven research, applied research, development, and innovation, as well as collaborative projects at low to middle TRL
- Improved and operationalised synergies within and outside of the programme already at the design stage
- Focus on leveraging public and private investments and stimulating public-private
cooperation - Research integrity and ethics as an eligibility criterion
- AI and research security should be treated as a horizontal issue
- Focus exclusively on civil applications
In terms of thematic aspects of the programme:
- Continue to support further development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) within the FP10
- Shift larger investments away from EIC and refocus EIC back to its initial mission of an early high-risk fund
- Provide also smaller scale funding and investments for maturing of deep tech startups
- Avoid any so-called “Closed Club” within any partnership. To improve performance, simplifying implementation and minimizing the administrative burden of the European partnerships is necessary
- Widening must be mainstreamed across all pillars reflecting the structure of the next FP and increased even financially to enable newcomers and less experienced applicants to
take a more active role - Enhanced role of Social sciences, arts and humanities (SSH) as a cross-cutting issue
- Promote an attractive working environment for research and innovation talent with a special focus on early career-stage researchers
- RMA profession should be recognized and acknowledged across the programme, also through relevant support schemes and the creation of an RMA Academy
You can read the full text of the preliminary opinion of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Slovak Republic here.
