Reimagining EU Research and Innovation Policy: The Question Nobody Is Asking

In Brief

The European Union's research and innovation policy stands at a crossroads. The debate is typically framed as excellence versus competitiveness, openness versus strategic autonomy. But this framing obscures a more fundamental question: who gets to define what problems European science should solve? As the Commission prepares its proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028-2034), the real disagreement isn't about budgets or structures. It's about whether researchers remain co-authors of Europe's knowledge future or become implementers of priorities decided elsewhere.

These tensions between scientific autonomy and strategic direction will be central to discussions at Human x AI Europe on May 19 in Vienna, where policymakers, researchers, and technologists will confront what kind of innovation system Europe actually wants.

The Disagreement Beneath the Disagreement

When someone says "EU research policy needs reform," what do they actually mean? The answer varies dramatically depending on who's speaking, and until this variation is made explicit, the debate generates more heat than light.

Consider the current conversation. CEPS is convening a workshop to present options for strengthening EU leadership on global challenges through strategic reorganisation of R&I programmes. The European University Association has published its vision for FP10, the successor to Horizon Europe, emphasising that the framework programme "must remain focused on excellent research, including collaborative research, rather than being repurposed as a tool to deliver industrial or short-term political objectives."

These positions aren't necessarily contradictory. But they're operating on different assumptions about what research policy is for.

Three Distinct Disagreements Masquerading as One

The current debate conflates at least three separate questions:

First: A facts disagreement about what works. Does tighter alignment between research funding and industrial strategy actually produce better outcomes? The evidence is genuinely mixed. As one recent analysis notes, "Horizon Europe retains familiar structures with thematic calls and bottom-up elements remaining part of the programme. However, compared to earlier iterations, there is less room to contest how challenges are framed and more pressure to demonstrate alignment with strategic narratives."

Second: A values disagreement about researcher autonomy. Some stakeholders believe scientific excellence requires substantial independence from immediate industrial or strategic demands. Others believe public funding should demonstrably serve public priorities as defined by democratic institutions. Both positions have merit. The question is whether they can be reconciled or whether one must subordinate the other.

Third: An incentives disagreement about who benefits. When research policy shifts toward competitiveness, certain actors gain influence while others lose it. Industry associations gain voice in priority-setting. Researchers in applied fields may find more funding opportunities. Researchers pursuing questions without obvious commercial applications may find fewer. This isn't inherently good or bad, but it is a redistribution of power that deserves explicit acknowledgment.

The Competitiveness Frame: Strongest Version

The argument for tighter integration between research and industrial strategy deserves to be stated in its strongest form.

Europe faces genuine competitive pressures. The gap between European research excellence and European commercial success in key technologies is real and documented. The Draghi report made this case forcefully. If public investment in research doesn't translate into European companies, European jobs, and European strategic capacity, then something in the system is broken.

From this perspective, the proposed European Competitiveness Fund, designed to pool resources across industrial, strategic, and innovation priorities, represents a rational response. The Commission's approach to shaping EU research and innovation policy explicitly includes "Implementation Dialogues" aimed at speeding up, simplifying, and improving EU research and innovation policies.

The strongest version of this argument acknowledges trade-offs but argues they're worth making. Yes, some research autonomy may be sacrificed. But autonomy without impact is a luxury Europe can no longer afford.

The Autonomy Frame: Strongest Version

The counter-argument also deserves its strongest formulation.

Scientific breakthroughs rarely emerge from strategic plans. The history of transformative discoveries is largely a history of researchers pursuing questions that seemed impractical, irrelevant, or even foolish at the time. Tighter steering may produce more predictable outputs but fewer genuine surprises.

"When autonomy erodes, so too does the diversity of questions pursued, the tolerance for uncertainty and the space for knowledge that does not align narrowly with current strategic priorities. Over time, this may narrow Europe's capacity for genuine discovery, and with it, the resilience of its innovation system."

The strongest version of this argument doesn't deny the competitiveness problem. It questions whether the proposed solution will actually work. If researchers become "implementers of priorities rather than co-authors," the system may become more efficient at producing predetermined outputs while becoming less capable of producing the unexpected breakthroughs that drive long-term competitive advantage.

The Global Dimension: A Different Kind of Trade-off

The debate becomes more complex when global impact enters the frame. The Commission's Global Approach to Research and Innovation aims to strengthen bilateral and multilateral partnerships while promoting "a level playing field and reciprocity underpinned by fundamental values."

But here's where competing priorities create genuine tension. As CEPS researchers note, "EU research cooperation with LMICs (low and middle-income countries) gets lost in a chasm between DG RTD and DG INTPA, and this limits the EU's ability to implement R&I policies that align science diplomacy with development goals."

The "Choose Europe" initiative to attract top researchers from around the world, including from the US as the Trump administration cuts support to research, represents one approach. But this approach has consequences for countries of origin. The brain drain/brain gain debate isn't zero-sum in theory, but it often is in practice.

Programmes like the African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence (ARISE) suggest alternative models, funding researchers to remain in their home countries while maintaining links to European research institutions. But scaling such approaches requires institutional coordination that the current EU architecture makes difficult.

The Question Worth Asking

The debate over EU research and innovation policy typically asks: How much should we spend? How should we structure programmes? How do we balance excellence and impact?

These are important questions. But they're downstream of a more fundamental one: Who decides what questions are worth pursuing?

The answer to this question has shifted over time. From the later Framework Programmes through Horizon 2020, scientific excellence and researcher autonomy gained institutional and symbolic weight. Instruments such as the European Research Council reflected a political settlement in which science was granted a degree of independence from immediate industrial or strategic demands.

That settlement is now being recalibrated. This isn't necessarily wrong. But it is a political choice with long-term consequences for Europe's knowledge system. Treating it as an inevitable evolution risks obscuring both the alternatives that exist and the costs that accompany them.

What Would Have to Be True

For the competitiveness-focused approach to succeed, several things would have to be true: that strategic priorities can be identified accurately in advance, that tighter steering doesn't reduce the diversity of research that produces unexpected breakthroughs, and that researchers remain motivated and creative even when operating primarily as implementers.

For the autonomy-focused approach to succeed, different things would have to be true: that excellent research eventually translates into societal benefit without explicit steering, that Europe can afford the time this translation requires, and that public support for research funding can be maintained without demonstrable strategic returns.

Neither set of assumptions is obviously correct. The honest answer is that nobody knows which approach will produce better outcomes over the next two decades. What can be known is that the choice involves real trade-offs that deserve explicit debate rather than being obscured by competing narratives of inevitability.

The question isn't whether Europe should invest in research and innovation. The question is what kind of knowledge system Europe wants to build, and who gets to shape that answer.